Not a wolf
633 Words
Day 31
There’s a new kind of darkness today. Not just the absence of light, but the absence of hope. I felt it in the stale air. Something worse was coming.
They dragged me out before breakfast. Strapped me to a cold steel slab and whispered words I didn’t understand. One of them—Delnaaz—used a blade on my legs, slow and precise, like she was carving wood. Deep enough to see the flesh spread open.
And then she glued it back together. Not stitches. Glue.
I didn’t scream until after.
Day 32
The cuts are starting to sting beneath the surface. I think they’re infected. Or maybe that’s what they want.
Today, they reopened the same cuts. Poured something in—Carl said it was wolfsbane. It burns like fire, like a match pressed against my nerve endings. I passed out.
When I woke up, Amber was whispering my name from the next cage. Her voice was the only tether to this world I had left.
Day 34
More silver.
They embedded it under my skin today—just beneath my collarbone. Like an experiment. I felt the heat crawl under my flesh, but it didn’t blister like it does for Amber.
One of them muttered, “She’s not one of us.”
Not one of them. Not one of us. Just… a thing they can use.
Day 36
A girl two cages up—couldn’t be older than fifteen—was sobbing last night. Carl came during feeding. I knew what he was thinking when he looked at her.
So I begged him.
I dropped to my knees and offered myself instead. Told him she was too young. That I could make it more “fun” for him. I knew it made me sick to even say the words.
But it worked.
He smiled.
And he chose me.
Day 38
Amber dropped her piece of stolen bread near my cage. We both saw the guard spot it. I stepped forward and shouted that it was mine. That I had stolen it. Not her.
They took me.
Used a whip soaked in wolfsbane and silver-dust. I screamed until my throat went raw. Amber cried after, her hands shaking when she passed me water through the bars.
She whispered, “Why?”
I whispered, “Because I can still take it.”
Day 40
The silver in my collarbone itches like it’s trying to burrow out. I tried to dig at it with a broken nail until I bled.
Amber stopped me. She told me she heard her brothers again, in a dream. She says they’re close.
I want to believe her.
But the pain makes it hard to dream at all.
Day 42
They’ve stopped letting me rest. They drag me out for testing, or punishment, or for Carl’s games. My legs are a patchwork of old cuts, fresh wounds, and burned skin. I think they’re trying to break me.
They haven’t yet.
But I’m cracking.
Day 43
They smeared wolfsbane into the silver wound today. Just to see what would happen. I convulsed. Amber screamed for them to stop, even though she knew they wouldn’t.
Delnaaz smiled. “Not a wolf,” she said again. “But strong. Maybe that’s worse.”
I don’t even know what I am anymore.
Day 45
I held a girl in my arms today when I was allowed out of my cage for a little while today. She was younger than me, maybe sixteen. She was dying from an infection. They don’t care when we die. They just replace us.
She whispered, “It hurts less when you’re near.”
I sang to her softly until she passed. Something I used to hum to Ellie.
I wonder if she remembers my voice.
- Writer
