One Dark Night
Magda walked to the pot of boiling water bubbling on the fireplace and removed a steaming cloth using a long wooden spoon.
“This will hurt, Yohan, but it will draw out some of the infection from the bite. We can go into the village tomorrow and get the doctor to use leeches on the rest.”
Yohan grunted and rolled onto his side, presenting the wound to his wife. It looked worse than it had that morning–the puncture wounds inflamed and oozing with foul-smelling pus. He groaned in pain as the scalding cloth was placed onto his skin. Red blossoms of blood spread across the white surface of the fabric. Magda squeezed the dirty liquid into a bowl and reapplied the dressing.
Michael began to cry in his crib and Magda picked up the child in his blue blanket, singing to him, rocking him back and forth in her arms.
“Do you think it will come back tonight?”
Yohan coughed and wiped his forehead with his arm.
“It probably crawled off to the woods to die. I managed to get a shot off when it got me, and it ran away. Biggest damn wolf I ever saw, but a bullet doesn’t care how big something is, it kills it anyway.”
She walked to the window and pushed back the curtains, peering into the inky shroud that had settled.
“I hope you’re right, Yohan. We can’t afford to lose any more animals. The winter will be hard enough, especially with the baby to take care of.”
“Everything will be all right. I won’t let anything happen to you or Michael. Can you see anything out there?”
“Not yet, but the moon is rising. Soon it will be as bright as day.”
Yohan cried out and Magda put the baby back in his crib, then hurried to her husband’s side. The bed sheets beneath him were soaked with sweat and his face contorted into a mask of agony. He gave a long guttural groan.
“Oh God, Yohan, I’ll get Doctor Schmidt. He will know what to do!”
Magda grabbed her coat and Yohan’s rifle then rushed from the cottage, into the night. The full moon bathed the clearing in cool light, casting deep shadows, and Magda ran towards the forest lane that led to the village.
As she reached the lane, a long shrieking howl echoed across the clearing, seeming to come from everywhere at once. Magda stopped and looked around, her eyes darting back and forth, the rifle held tight against her shoulder, but could only see the darkness of the woods surrounding her, could only hear her pounding heart and the ragged gasps of her breath. The forest was silent.
A deep growl came from behind. She spun around, the rifle raised before her.
A huge grey wolf stalked forwards, eyes cold and green in the reflected moonlight, its muzzle covered with blood, staining the fur black in the moonlight, a small piece of blue fabric hanging from its mouth.
The baby, she realized, it’s eaten little Michael.
Magda’s stomach lurched and a wave of grief washed over her.
Yohan, she thought, what of Yohan?
The wolf lunged forward, its teeth tearing into her shoulder and she felt the rifle’s sharp recoil before darkness claimed her.
Magda awoke as the first shards of sunlight pierced the trees. She pushed Yohan’s cold corpse away and regarded the man she had loved. Scraps of pink flesh and fragments of blue cloth were caught between his teeth. A bullet had torn out most of his throat, the edges of the wound burned black from the rifle’s discharge.
She knew what had happened, to Yohan, to their baby, and, looking at the bite in her shoulder, what would happen to herself. She fell to her knees, sobbing.
She looked up to the sky as she placed the rifle’s barrel under her chin. The cold metal was soothing somehow.
“I will be with you both,” she said, and pulled the trigger.
