Wolves

With a single twitch of each numb, cold – swollen digit I took count of the massive beasts hauling me across the barren landscape. I ran out of fingers before I ran out of dogs. My thoughts turned to how I would finish the count when I realized that only a single pair remained unaccounted for before my vision faded into the gently blowing snow and caused whatever was in front of me to blur.

Twelve dogs with thick fur as black as pitch. Each one was easily six feet tall at the shoulder. They were harnessed to the sled I found myself on. Between them was a contraption of leather and metal and wood. I knew nothing of its construction, nor did I feel the least bit interested in studying it at the moment. My biggest concern had to be what I was doing on a sled.

No memory of how I got there, nor where the intended destination of my journey could be found as I searched through my thoughts. I know who I am, so clearly I am not suffering from a full memory loss. I can rhyme off the names of my family members – even those I have not seen in many years come to my mind’s eye with little effort. I remember my teachers all through school, from Mrs. Preston in kindergarten, through to Mr. Busse in high school English class. Each one’s face comes to the forefront of my thoughts as their names flash across the screen behind my eyes. Despite this clarity of thought and recollection, I cannot bring myself to know what I was doing on a dogsled, in what was clearly the middle of nowhere.

Turning from the giant dogs for a moment, I studied the world around me. Stark white nothingness stared back at me. Snow and ice as far as I could see – flat, for the most part, with only the slightest rise here and there to alter the landscape. Bright sun glared off the ground and flashed off the patches of bare ice as my strange transport hurtled across the emptiness.

I shivered.

The dogs were utterly silent. Not a sound came from them. I returned my attention to the animals, my thoughts taking off on their own as I continued to dig deeper and deeper into my memories in order to figure out what I was doing and where I was going. An image came to me. It was either from a movie I had seen, or a book I had read at some point in my life. A man was driving a sled across the frozen tundra. He stood tall at the back of the wooden construct and called out to the dogs who were yapping and barking as they ran.

There was no one behind me in control of the sled. No commands being given to the silent animals in front of me.

Bitter cold ate at my skin with tiny ice crystal teeth that took bite after bite from my exposed face. I felt the surface of the sled, my hands searching for something to protect me from the wind. I found nothing. Only the bare wooden surface of the sled met my nearly senseless fingers as the groped and prodded around behind, beside, and, eventually, in front of me.

Why was I not wearing gloves?

My hands came up as I considered this. I brought them closer to my face and they acted as a much needed windbreak, blocking the frozen air from doing further damage to my likely frostbitten features. My palms were mottled in pink and white – dark and pale across the expanse of them where blood alternately rose to the surface and retreated back into the thicker tissues. I flexed my fingers slowly and found that only a few would move. Most of them stayed in the half curled position that seemed to come naturally to them as the cold set in deeper and deeper.

I brought them closer to my face and cupped them as tightly as I could before blowing what little heat was in my lungs through dry, cracked lips in an attempt to warm them and bring them back to life. The air was only marginally warmer than that which surrounded me and did little to improve the situation my hands were in. I wondered how long it would take for the skin to die and turn black, as I had heard happens in extreme cold.

Paranoid about the potential loss of one or more fingers, I shoved my hands down between my legs and pressed my thighs together as tightly as I could. I felt nothing with my fingers and had to look down to make sure that I had, in fact, done what I had intended.

My arms were as uncovered as my hands and, as my eyes tracked slowly down the length of them from elbow to forearm to wrist, I began to shiver again. This time it was not from the cold.

My hands were not visible. As it happened, I had managed to get them secured between my thighs as I had intended. My white, slightly hairy, naked thighs. The hairs stood on end in some meager attempt to maintain a level of heat. It was not helping and I was pretty sure that even the follicles were frozen and ready to be snapped off with the slightest contact.

Without being commanded to do so, my gaze travelled the rest of my naked legs to my bare feet. I knew without looking that I was also completely uncovered on top.

At that moment the loss of a finger to the cold became only a marginal concern and I cast around looking for something else on the sled. Surely I would have brought a coat with me. Or a blanket. Or even a portable heater that ran on batteries of solar power or something. I’m a pretty smart guy and had serious doubts that I would embark upon a journey across the frozen wastelands without some kind of heat source or protection against the elements.

My hands slipped from between my thighs and patted at my hips as I checked, inexplicably, for a lighter that I would never have carried even if I’d had pants on. Was this some kind of sign that my brain had frozen? When had I ever carried a lighter? What would have made me think that I’d have one?

As I frantically scanned the sled I came upon a dark bundle that had been tossed somewhat haphazardly, it appeared, onto the sled at just about the point where my feet rested. I had not felt whatever it was with my soles. This brought about another wave of paranoia as I considered how I would get through life without feet.

I flexed my legs and kicked at the bundle several times, but it did nothing. Whatever it was, clearly it was not alive. Had it been alive at some point earlier and simply frozen to death? For some reason, this seemed unlikely to me.

I bent forward at the waist, bringing my ice cold chest as close to my equally frigid thighs as I possible could, and reached out with unfeeling fingers in the direction of the bundle. I felt the slightest sense of resistance as my fingers came into contact with whatever it was. The nerves in my fingers were dulled and I got no sense whatsoever of what I was touching, only that there was something there. My eyes agreed with my hands. There was contact between my fingers and the dark bundle of something that was at my feet.

Ice and snow fell across my back. I want to think that it melted there, but some little kernel of logical thought told me that my internal temperature had already dropped to a point where this was unlikely to have happened.

“Close,” I whispered to my fingers as I pressed down against the bundle. It gave and flexed and kind of looked like it was soft. “Just close. Grab it. Bring it up here.”

My first and middle fingers flexed and bent and I was able to somehow hook them into the bundle enough to give me something of a grip on whatever it was. I pulled with the expectation that it would not move and was surprised to find it free of any encumbrance. Nothing seemed to be holding it in place and it came free of the sled without my having to put much effort in.

In my semi – frozen right hand, a brownish blanket unfurled. The wind caused by the rapid transit of my sled caused it to flip and flap around and over me. I let out an involuntary whoop of excitement as I realized what it was that I had found.

Instantly I felt some heat rush down my arms and into my hands and fingers. Adrenaline, I guessed, had begun to course through me and was in the process of freeing my limbs from their useless state in order to give me some kind of ability to bring the blanket up and over my body.

I pulled the edge of the thick, heavy cloth up and over my legs and waist and wrapped myself in its warmth. While the material itself was no less cold than the air – due in no small part to its being kept at the end of the sled – I felt a hundred degrees warmer now that it was around my shoulders and covering me. My legs twitched and I pulled them up to my chest, pressing my thighs against me until I could rest my chin on my knees. I wrapped my arms around my shins and pulled my legs in as tightly as I possible could. The combination of the heavy blanket and my slowly increasing temperature began to thaw the ice in my blood and I was almost able to close my fingers completely around my toes when I felt the sled begin to slow.

I don’t know when, but I must have fallen asleep after pulling the blanket around myself. There was no other possible explanation for the change in the air and the colour of the sky. When I’d counted the dogs, it had been daylight, probably around noon based on the lack of shadows cast by the beasts as they barreled silently over the snow. Now the sky was a mix of orange and yellow and red as the sun set over the horizon. The light was quickly chased from view by the dark of night and the sled came to a halt with a gentle slide and the crunching of snow beneath the skids.

As one, the dogs turned in my direction.

The harness apparatus that had secured them to the sled crumbled and vanished into the snow and ice. Twelve pairs of glowing red eyes stared at me. I slid myself further back on the sled and pulled my legs in tighter, trying to make myself as small as possible in the ridiculous hope that they would not see me.

Deep growls rose from the animals as they stalked around the sled, slowly forming a loose circle to surround me from all sides. Black lips curled back to reveal shining white teeth that looked longer than my middle finger and were likely as sharp as a finely honed blade. Saliva dripped from the monster dogs’ teeth and lips and chins as they moved slowly closer and closer to me, the circle growing tighter and tighter until there was no space between the dogs and they became a single, black mass of fur and teeth and eyes.

As one they lunged at me. Their massive paws left the white ground and razor sharp claws shredded the blanket as if it were nothing but thin paper. Bits of the dark material and white fluff flew in all directions and I was, for a moment, mesmerized by the strange beauty of the slowly falling and blowing stuffing as it fluttered and flipped and turned in the air all around me.

My fascination was short lived.

Less than a second after the final set of claws had done its work and the blanket was nothing but tiny bits of fabric the dogs came forward again. This time, they did not come as a single unit, but seemed to fall into some type of hierarchy that I did not understand. There was, clearly, some kind of leader of this pack – and he (I presumed it to be a male) took point and bounded up, onto the sled with no effort to speak of.

“Good boy,” I stammered and mumbled as I tried in vain to press myself further into the sled. “That’s a good doggie.”

The dog was definitely having none of my complimentary attitude and continued to approach me, taking one measured step after the other. His front paws came down on either side of my hips and he lowered his massive head until he was nose to nose with me. I felt the heat of his breath as he puffed and sniffed. Hot, wet drool fell in blobs against my chest and stomach where it froze almost instantly. I shivered and shook but could not say if it was from the cold of from the icy fear that filled me.

A deep growl rose from somewhere in the giant dog’s chest and his upper lip shook and quivered with the vibration. What little remained of the sun glinted off the massive teeth that were on display and cast them in red. I knew, somehow, that this was not the first time that the animal’s teeth were red. And would likely not be the last.

He lowered his massive head and sniffed at my chest. I felt its hot breath on my skin as it exhaled in a deep, huffing sigh. Then, inexplicably, the animal stepped back from me and tilted his huge head from side to side as if studying me. Its lips came down and covered the teeth, hiding them from view. The sky darkened further and it was not long before there was no hint of light from the sun. The moon’s light was not yet bright enough to make any difference and I found that I had been plunged into nearly complete darkness. My eyes had been able to adjust slowly as the sun’s light diminished, but the greater bulk of the dog in front of me seemed to vanish into the night.

I dared to glance around, moving only my eyes as I expected that even the slightest change in the cast of my head or body would set the beast off. I could still feel the other dogs around me – the heat from their breathing warmed the air just enough that I could feel the subtle change on my exposed skin. They, like their leader, had virtually disappeared into the night. All that remained was a collection of small, red spots floating in the air where their eyes rested on me. They made no sound save for the soft crunching of the snow under their feet as the shifted from paw to paw in anticipation of…something.

Distracted as I was by the animals around me I did not notice when the monster in front of me moved. It lunged forward with such speed and force that, even if I had been paying attention, there would have been nothing I could have done to prevent what came next.

With one massive paw, the beast slashed across my stomach. It raked four razor sharp claws across my skin, tearing through the layers of dermis and into the soft, squishy stuff beneath with almost no effort. I heard the tearing sound as my body split open, but did not feel anything. Had the extreme cold numbed my nerves so much?

Steam rose from the newly opened wound in my flesh and I had the strangest moment of recollection. I do not remember where or when I had heard or read or learned this little tidbit of information, but it came to me in a rush right at that moment. Perhaps it was my cold addled mind trying to find some way to flee from my slowly emptying body; a way to distract me and offer me some sense of hope at the same time.

Many years ago – perhaps even a century or two – it was believed by the native peoples of North America, and possibly other parts of the world as well, that the rising steam from a man’s body when killed in the winter months or extreme cold was actually the soul making its escape to the next life.

My soul rose slowly from the torn flesh at my stomach.

It didn’t get far.

The monster dog in front of me, blood dripping from the tiny bits of shredded skin and muscle and tissue that hung from its still raised paw, inhaled the steam through its nostrils and sucked it into itself. It breathed in the smells of my newly exposed organs and tissues and I watched as its eyes closed part way. An addict getting that first taste of his chosen fix would not have looked more blissfully satisfied than the dog – beast did at that moment.

That was when my body caught up with my brain and the pain hit me. I hissed and screamed and my hands came up to grope at the hot, wet mess that had become of my body. I felt the heat of my own blood and various other fluids as my fingers pressed at the open wound and I tried to pull the flaps of skin closed and hold my insides in place.

My vision began to blur and fade and I had to concentrate on not passing out, though nearly every part of my brain told me that unconsciousness was likely the better path. I shook my head quickly, which was also a mistake as it drew the attention of the giant animal in front of me away from my exposed guts and back to my face.

It growled a warning at me. Almost like it was telling me not to move or things would get much worse for me, though I could not imagine how that could possibly be the case. What could be worse than having my organs slowly slip out of the cavity of my body?

That is what was happening under my warming fingers; though I had no way of knowing whether my fingers were warming in the blood, or if the rest of me was simply cooling to match the temperature of my extremities.

The beast turned its head and seemed to look at each of the other dogs in turn. Some form of communication clearly passed between them, though not a single sound was uttered from either the animal that was in front of me, or the ones that surrounded the sled and waited patiently for whatever was to come next. I could only guess what that would be, though it was fairly clear to me at that moment what was bound to happen. I was simply refusing to accept the inevitable outcome.

In front of me, the dog brought its paw to its mouth. I had never seen an animal, especially a canine, balance on three legs to lift one to its mouth before. This was a nearly simian, or even human gesture as it licked at the blood and picked what was left of my flesh from under its claws. It watched me with one eye as it did this, the expression on its face almost one of disdain for me. No longer was I even worthy of whatever respect a predator gave its prey.

Apparently satisfied with the job that had been done on its paw, the animal set it down between my legs, the claws dug gently into the skin on my thighs. It had no desire to split me open there, I was simply in the way as it put its foot back onto the sled. In the silence of the night – a complete silence that I had not even noticed had fallen – I heard the tips of his claws as they came into contact with the wood beneath us both.

He lowered his head again and pushed my hands aside with his muzzle in order to once again expose my glistening guts to the cold night air. I did not resist. I had become both resigned to what was happening, and sapped of any and all strength. I could not have put up a fight even if I’d wanted to. Which I didn’t.

I felt the animal’s whiskers – sharp and soft at the same time – against my skin as he explored the open would with his nose and tongue before plunging his face fully into the opening and taking a mouthful.

Something inside me ruptured and tore as the dog clamped his teeth down on a part of my body that should never be exposed to the light of day. I felt as he pulled on whatever it was that he’d taken hold of. Every part of me shook as the dog pulled something free. Once again I heard rather than felt the tearing of my body as I was being shredded by the dog’s teeth.

The monster’s giant head came up and I was spattered with hot, wet blood as it flew in an arc from the dark mass held between the dog’s teeth. I smelled the stink of blood mixed with the horrid stench of shit and knew in an instant that it was coming from me.

I screamed; I cursed; I begged for death.

The dog dropped his prize on my lap and licked his lips clean of blood. I couldn’t help but look down at the hot mess that covered my thighs and was thankful for the dark of the night. I could just make out the rough shape of whatever it was that the animal had pulled free. It looked almost like a giant lima bean but was dark and wet and kind of felt loose and squishy against my skin. The moon broke free of whatever had been preventing its light from shining down – or it finally rose above whatever hills or mountains had been blocking it. Either way, the newly cast bluish – whitish light glistened on the mess in my lap.

I reached tentatively for it with one hand.

The dog swiped at me with the same paw that had been responsible for my earlier evisceration, obviously thinking that I was trying to take his food away. I did not move my hand but took the brunt of his claws as they ran across the back of my hand and forearm and separated tissue from bone.

I was beyond any sense of pain at that point and merely looked on in abject disinterest as a chunk of my own flesh came free of my arm and tumbled through the air for a foot or so before being caught by one of the remaining dogs. A bit of a tussle broke out as two of the waiting animals fought over the morsel. Growling and snarling was punctuated by a loud whine as one of the pair won the fight and came away with a mouthful of fresh meat.

That was, at last, all it took for the surrounding animals to break free of the strange control that the lead dog had over them. I was instantly covered in dark fur. Dozens of claws tore into my chest, my stomach, my legs. Teeth followed almost immediately and I was ripped to pieces by the animals who were now gorging themselves on my flesh and organs and muscle. I heard a loud snapping noise from somewhere to my right and knew that one of the animals had managed to bite clean through the bone of my arm. It shook and pulled but I barely felt it as my forearm was torn free at the elbow. The dog let out a bark of delight and I heard it hunker down in the snow where it began to feast on the exposed bone.

It was not long until the other animals followed suit and my left arm and both legs were yanked and ripped free as bone was separated from bone and joints were shattered under the immense pressure of the animals’ muscular jaws.

The lead dog, the alpha of the pack (my mind pulled the term up from nowhere as the beasts fed on me,) lowered his head again and I felt his hot breath on my neck. He tilted his head to one side, lining up his jaw, and opened his mouth. His tongue, wet and warm, caressed the skin at my throat and I shivered. It was strangely pleasurable. The dog growled low and deep and almost mournfully. Was he apologizing to me? Somehow, I found that to be a rather dubious proposition.

The tips of his sharp teeth pressed against my skin on both sides of my neck and he began to apply pressure. Slowly, at first, as if testing the resilience of my flesh, then strong and hard and fast. His teeth clamped together inside my neck, around my throat. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs screamed for air. At least, I thought they did. Did I even have lungs anymore; or had one of the animals made a meal of them?

A deep howl filled the night. It came not from the creatures around me, but from everywhere else at once. The dogs froze in their feast and I heard a gentle wave of whining and whimpering rise up from all around me. The only one that seemed entirely indifferent and unconcerned was the Alpha as he tore my throat clear of my neck and gulped it down without taking so much as a moment to chew.

I watched the lump of flesh as it passed through the animal’s own throat; a massive chunk of meat appearing as a bulge against his dark fur as he swallowed. It vanished after less than a second and was, I assumed, now making its way to the monster dog’s stomach where it would join with whatever else of me the thing had ingested.

What most surprised and alarmed me was not the fact that I had become a meal for the dogs, but that I was still alive to think about my predicament. How was this even remotely possible? I was certain beyond even a shred of doubt that my internal organs were long gone. I felt empty. Completely devoid of any substance. Add to this the fact that my arms and legs had become little more than chew toys for the monster dogs, and, of course, the final, obvious issue of my throat having been torn out and I should have been little more than a pile of bones and skin and tissue floating in a pool of rapidly cooling blood. What was the freezing point of blood, anyway? I was not even clear as to whether or not the thick substance that supplied life to my body was still even flowing. Without a heart, as I am certain that it had been long ago swallowed at that point, what would even be pumping the red liquid through the last remnants of my body?

A second howl, long and deep and Earth shaking, rose in the night and this time even the Alpha beast paused in his meal. He had returned to my neck and was in the process of burying his muzzle deep into the open wound in order to get…I don’t know what. Maybe he had decided that my spine, where it attached to the base of my skull, was the next morsel that he wanted and was going to be working his way in that direction through the shortest means available. Whatever it was, the animal stopped.

I felt his exhalation of breath inside my neck where it tickled the exposed nerves. It was warm and soft and felt as though it was full of fear. This was something I would not have imagined that the Alpha of the pack would have felt. Especially after he had taken such a hard stance and managed to keep the other dogs in place. His whiskers shook inside the open gash that was once my neck and I felt his body quiver as he slowly extracted a bloody mouth. His teeth dripped with gore but he did nothing to clean them.

He stood in front of me, his back up and the thick fur around his neck looking fuller than it had before. His tail was down, nearly between his back legs as he looked from side to side, cocking his head first to the right, then the left, then back again as he worked to triangulate the source of the howl that had filled the night less than a second ago.

The rest of the pack had slunk away into the darkness. I heard not a sound from them and chanced a look around, both pleased and somewhat surprised that I had enough muscled left in my neck to allow my head to pivot from side to side in such a manner. I saw only a small collection of cracked and broken bones, some spatters of blood in no particular pattern, and a few trails of paw prints that vanished into the darkness. I don’t think I was able to see much more than maybe ten or fifteen feet in the pale white light cast from the moon, but it was enough to know that the other dogs had left their leader to fend for himself. I guess respect only went so far.

A third howl broke the silence that had come over the Alpha and I where we waited on the sled and I turned to my left. The monster standing over me had determined the same source and his head was swiveled in the same direction, nose in the air and sniffing at the night to get a better sense of what was out there and where it was. I wondered idly if this was another dog that had smelled the blood and was coming to try and take the feast for itself. Wouldn’t it be surprised to find that there was little more than table scraps left?

Then, a strange sense of reality set in and I shifted my early theory. Not another dog, surely, as there was not a hint of civilization around us. A wolf, then. I knew, somehow, that I was deep into wolf territory at that moment. Don’t ask me how I knew this, since I still had not the foggiest idea as to where I even was, never mind what I was doing there. This simply seemed to be right, so I accepted it as fact. Something had the giant black dog concerned, and I assumed that it would not be another of its own kind.

The Alpha grumbled and snarled low in his chest as the fur on his back stood pretty much straight up. Was this a voluntary act? I definitely do not know enough about dogs – monstrous or otherwise – to know if they have that level of control over the position of their fur or if this was simply a reaction to fear or stress.

After the snarling grumble, the night fell silent. Not another sound rose from the black dog as he continued to stare into the night, his nose twitching now and then as he smelled something on the air. I could not smell anything beyond the stench of my own blood and excrement, and the smell of the dog’s wet fur where snow had fallen, and melted, on it, so had no idea what it was that he was scenting. My thoughts continued to return to a wolf, but I wondered if a bear was not entirely out of the question. The howls that split the night could have been a warning to other wolves in the area that a polar bear was on the prowl and looking for an easy meal.

I hoped for the bear. At least it would make my death somewhat faster as it crushed the life out of both me and the dog with its great paws.

Another howl came. That made four assuming I hadn’t blacked out at some point and missed a couple. This one was so much closer than the last one that I was able to get a bead on the source. Somewhere just off to my left and behind me, hidden completely from my sight but not from the keen eyes of the dog that still stood over me.

His head lowered and his lips curled as he bared his teeth once again. They looked mostly clean now, likely a result of having been covered by the animal’s mouth, but I think I caught sight of a few tiny hunks of pinkish meat between them. It may have been my imagination playing a horrible game with the rest of my mind, but I am fairly certain that tiny bits of my body still clung to the beast’s teeth and gums. I was almost tempted to reach for them before I remembered that my warms were no longer attached to my body.

Why do I feel nothing?

Where was the pain that should have come with this knowledge?

I heard the sound of snow being crunched underfoot in roughly the location my slowly failing mind guessed the new arrival to be. I twisted my head around and strained to look back over my shoulder. In my haste, I had forgotten that the front of my neck was no longer intact and I soon found that my head could turn nearly all the way around on my spine. Without the muscles and tissues in place to stop the rotation, I was able to see nearly completely behind me.

The back of the sled met my gaze, with its rear frame standing about four feet straight up and ending in a curved handle where the driver (was it me?) would have rested his hands and held on while controlling the dogs. There was a small loop attached to the curved bar which appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be a cup holder. A heavy thermos was slung in it and sat at a canted angle where the top – heavy thing pulled on the wood and metal that secured the loop in place. Something told me this was not original to the design of the sled but had been added after the fact. Either the owner of the sled (again, was it me?) really needed his coffee while driving the dogs, or he had added it to the contraption for the convenience of anyone who may have taken a rental.

The metal tube shone under the moon and I had to blink rapidly to clear my vision. It was an unexpected light in an otherwise dark landscape.

Snow crunched again and I focussed on the source of the sound. As I had thought, a new arrival was slowly working its way onto the expanse of bloody snow. It was another dog! If not a dog, than another canine at the very least. Four legged, thick with heavy white fur, dark eyes that were almost as black as the night itself. Like the black monster that straddled my thighs and glared into the night my new guest had to be at least six feet tall and probably weighed something over four – hundred pounds. It was built more like a tiger than a dog – solid muscle rippled under the thick fur as it slowly stalked its way into the my visual range. The black Alpha had seen or smelled it some time ago and was somewhat more prepared for the arrival than I was.

He snapped and snarled a warning at the white animal as if to tell the new arrival that everything here belonged to him, and to move along or face some kind of horrible wrath. Looking quickly at the remains of my own body, I imagined this wrath to be something that I would want neither to experience, nor to witness. Not that I would be given much choice in the matter.

The white dog ignored the warning and continued to step forward. I felt its eyes on me as it came further into the space. Its head went down and it sniffed at something on the ground before continuing into the space around the sled. I wondered what had attracted it to the ground before I realized that it was likely something I would not really want to see. Probably some part of my body that had been discarded by the dogs.

Above me, the black Alpha stepped forward until his chest was nearly at my head. His own head was now above mine and I could feel the expansion and contraction of his lungs as he breathed deeply and slowly. It seemed that the animal was irrationally calm in the face of whatever challenge this new comer was bringing. Was this an animal he had encountered before? Somehow one that had been following the pack for some time and, perhaps, previously run off or chased away when attempting to join in on the feeding?

It looked like the white animal was big and healthy. Its body was full of powerful muscle and it radiated power as it moved, so I doubted that it was starving or had to fight for food in any way. Instead, it seemed almost as if the white dog was now challenging the black one. Perhaps the white had been the Alpha previously and was looking to reclaim his title.

As I considered this, the white dog rushed forward. In a single, powerful leap it came off the ground and through the air to slam into the black monster that stood over me. I closed my eyes and braced myself for the weight of both animals falling onto me – surely that would finally kill me – but nothing happened. I felt the wind as it blew over my face. I felt the soft tickle of cool fur brush my chest and opened my eyes in time to see the tail and rear legs of the white dog as they flew over me. Without thinking, I followed the course of the animal with my head, turning quickly and sharply in order to catch whatever was happening.

The white dog had the black one on the ground, its front paws holding the beast down while it shoved a stark white muzzle into the thick, black fur at the Alpha’s neck. I heard the black dog whine before the soft sound of skin being torn open filled the air. The black dog kicked and snapped and struggled for a few seconds before falling still. Standing above the fallen body, much as the dog had been standing over my own destroyed shell only a few seconds before, the white dog dug deeply into its opponent’s neck and feasted on the black beast’s throat.

It was making satisfied little growling noises as it slurped and sucked at the black dog’s neck, taking whatever nutrition it could find. I considered calling out to it – maybe hoping that whoever its master was would hear me and come running to not only claim his dog, but also figure some way to help me, but in the end I did not. I had no voice with which to speak, nor any way to get air into my body even if I could.

Finished with its meal, the white dog slowly raised its head from the black one’s neck and, li8cking its lips clean of the blood, turned in my direction. There was not a trace of the gore that I would have expected to see on the animal’s face and it was still as clean and white as the snow upon which it stood.

The dog tilted its head from side to side as it studied me and I’m fairly certain I followed suit in some attempt to communicate with the animal that may have saved me. Though, I could not imagine that my safety would be long lived as I was still certain that I should have been dead. The very fact that I was still alive to see all of this perplexed me to no end, but I shook the thoughts of my strange lack of mortality away for the time being in order to focus on what was happening in front of me.

The black Alpha dog was beginning to shrink where it lay on the ground, belly exposed and throat torn asunder. The sounds of bones cracking and reforming filled the night as the previously massive dog slowly reverted back to a somewhat more normal size. As I watched, the black fur turned to a more subtle charcoal hue, than silver and grey until it was nearly as white as the snow. Bright red that looked almost black in the moon’s light flowed sluggishly from the wound in the animal’s neck and turned the snow around the corpse into a strange soupy mix. I was reminded of making maple syrup taffy as a child – pouring fresh, hot syrup into a trough dug in the snow where it would flash freeze into a sticky, warm treat. The dark blood that drooled from the beast’s neck was cooling in the snow much as the syrup would.

Snow crunched as the giant white animal approached the sled. Its eyes were on me, but I did not see the same hunger that had pervaded the gazes of the black monsters earlier that night. In place of this was a strange feeling of remorse or longing or something like that. I was immediately reminded of those advertisements for The Humane Society where they show images of abused or neglected animals – the look in this huge white animal’s eyes was the same. A look of sadness, loneliness, and desire to do nothing but love and be loved in return.

I wanted to reach out and take the animal in my arms.

My vision grew blurry and unclear and I realized that I was crying silently as I watched the white dog. I could do nothing about the tears as they flowed freely down my cheeks where they froze into tiny icicles at my chin and on the end of my nose. I sniffled and whimpered and sobbed, but there was nothing I could do for either myself or the dog.

Somehow sensing my plight, the animal came up to me and nuzzled my face with its own. It rubbed the thick fur that encircled its heavily muscled neck over my face and across the still open wound where my throat once was. After a moment, it stepped gingerly up and onto the sled where it lay its head in my lap and closed its obsidian eyes. With a heavy sigh, it fell asleep there in an instant.

I soon followed.

With a single twitch of each numb, cold – swollen digit I took count of the massive beasts hauling me across the barren landscape. I ran out of fingers before I ran out of dogs. My thoughts turned to how I would finish the count when I realized that only a single dog remained unaccounted for before my vision faded into the gently blowing snow and caused whatever was in front of me to blur.

Eleven dogs.

END

Note:

This story (which I have only titled here and nowhere else) was originally written in 2015 at the start of my journey toward mental health. It has not been edited (beyond spelling) nor touched since initially written. Any errors in grammar have been left, any missing words or incorrect verbiage has been left. This is a picture of my state in 2015 and as such is something which I have never intended to "clean up" or present in any other form other than the original stream of thought as it was being written.