I think it was about her eyes. The fleeting glimpse she gave me upon entering the room. I did not catch their colour, nor did I notice the features of her face, but the stab of recognition struck me from that very first second. We had not met before, and still, she knew who I was. It is something one learns living in silent disobedience in a world where being yourself is a privilege not everyone inherits. Wolves read signs, they desperately look for them. At some point, I became consumed by the itching urge to be recognised.
She said she played the guitar. I nodded. She did have guitar fingers with short, chipped nails and calloused fingertips. My eyes lacked a fovea but I could sense their rosy warmth. The apartment where we gathered resembled any other on Grustniy prospect on a Friday night — soaked in beer and laughter, stuffy, cramped, with a frayed armchair in the corner where every newcomer would inevitably drop their coats and bags. We were in our early twenties, wild enough to hang out till late and to show up for the first English class on Saturday morning.
“Well, I’m from Verkhny,” she was sitting cross-legged, “I enjoy it here, but you see the place is cramped. How long have you been…?”
“Five years,” I interrupted hastily, the pulse echoing in my temples drowning out the evening’s clamour. “I’ve always wanted to get away from my hometown. Of course, we have woods there. Such marvellous woods. With all the trees around, the pine scent makes your head spin. But I thought… I don’t know. Maybe I hoped it would be easier here. In small towns, everyone is sniffing around all the time. I couldn’t take a step without Grandma Lyuba from the neighbouring building giving me a scolding. In a big city, nobody cares.”
“Yeah, sometimes they hardly care at all,” she took another sip from the bottle, and I noticed wide rings on her left hand, four at least. “Guess what, in Verkhny, we don’t have pine trees. Like, none.”
The lamp overshadowed her pale skin. When she smiled, I could see her teeth — small and narrow. It was easy to imagine that smile turning into a grin, those teeth effortlessly entering the flesh. In the apartment, balloons were flying around like giant snowflakes in the middle of October, she caught one of them and placed it between us, pronouncing the distance. She watched me inquisitively, yet warily as if I posed a threat. In the woods, clarity of intent is the first rule of any interaction. But humans were always elusive, and a wolf in human’s clothing had to carefully read the room.
message from userRagingSpir
I’m sick of u, beast.
I glanced down at my phone and flipped it screen down.
“Masha, come on. Let’s go,” Viktor appeared from nowhere, invading the little sanctity I shared with her. I heard the balloon pop. Viktor offered to help me up, but I froze and stared back with a plea. My defiance seemed to annoy him. He scratched his head, ruffling his light hair, and dug his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. I could smell his resentment, and Viktor knew it. “Listen, taxi prices will stay high for a while. If you want me to drop you off, we gotta go.”
Viktor had a way of talking me down. I had no extra money, I spent it all on rent, food and a couple of beers on nights out. I was also afraid to walk alone in the streets at that time. In the city, I became helpless, and menaces from lunatics in my DMs did not make the situation any better. She watched me stand up with a look of resonant despise — like I was a lapdog or something. We both came close to the line, the fragile line of recognition, but we never crossed it. And as I was walking out, she took all her signs away from me and shut herself from my reach.
Like we were just humans in a room full of other humans.
I felt a void in the street. Grustniy prospect, night frost, cynical silence and empty roads. It was only my walk of shame that broke the stillness, cracking ice underfoot. Coated in concrete, the city lacked lightness. Viktor and I did not speak, not even a word, as we waited for the car to warm up. I was shaking despite the amount of beer I drank, and the notes of her perfume stuck not on my clothes but in my mind. So I sighed with relief when we finally drove to the Parkovaya, it was easier to breathe. I cowardly escaped. Viktor turned on the song we had been listening to non-stop for the past few weeks. I chuckled.
“You are not helping.”
“Who is she?” Viktor asked. We were friends for over three years. I was the new kid in my graduating class, stern and stubborn, and we quickly found common ground. Viktor joked about my Grandma’s shawl, and I told him to fuck off. We chatted for a while, he asked me out, I said yes, he kissed me, his mouth tasted of garlic bread, we had a few dates and I hated him for every second of it. Then I brought mud from the woods on my shoes to class and burdock on my scarf, and somehow Viktor figured out the truth.
over the last month, wolves have become more frequent in suburban areas. should people be wary of encounters with the predator?
When the news came on the radio, Viktor would groan and look out the window. He seldom said anything, though. Viktor kept my secret. He took me to the woods on weekends and bombarded me with questions on our way back. At first, his insistence freaked me out. Then, I got used to it. In a way, I enjoyed having someone by my side who knew I was different. And this question, gentle and caring, proved that his confidence prevailed over mine.
“Anton’s groupmate.”
“Another ‘Frenchie’, Jesus,” Viktor smirked. At the university, we had a few groups in the department, each studying one foreign language. It was the first thing you learned about anyone — what language they were reading. This defined you as a part of the snobbish philological ecosystem. It predetermined your identity for the whole four years. Anton, who hosted the party, studied French, and so did she. But the ‘Frenchies’, as we fondly called them, were not solemn; rather, they seemed whimsical, spirited, exuberant, unreachable. English or German provided reliability and solid prospects despite tremendous competition. French was captivating but ephemeral. She was protective over French, and that made her even more intimidating.
“God, leave them alone,” Viktor started making silly impressions of Anton’s attempts to speak French until I smacked him on the back of the head. We kept laughing when he said decisively,
“Are you sure she’s alright, pup?” Viktor addressed me in English. Although every other person in the department spoke better English than we did, he tried to use English as our secret language, a bonding element. Still, Viktor uttered his teasing ‘pup’ to differentiate between us and her. He wanted to remind me that we had our own pack — with no voiced uvular trill.
I stubbornly replied in the common language.
“Maybe it’s none of your business.”
“OK then,” Viktor raised his hands in a surrendering gesture, though I could hear the sneer in his voice. “Ask her out.”
The silence broke from the street into the car. I shook my head.
“You know it’s complicated. I have no idea if she is…”
“Oh, I think you do,” Viktor intervened once more into my doggedness. “You both spent more than an hour without moving, like two monuments, talking. You didn’t even notice I gave you a new beer,” I kept shrugging off his words, “You do know. Sometimes you make it even more difficult for yourself. Just ask.”
“Just ask…” My voice died down. I kept repeating this as I walked from the car to my house. I breathed out the words with the fumes. Viktor was not able to understand that there was never a ‘just’. My phone buzzed.
message from userRagingSpir
such a shame u have to be this thing. so fit and a fucking freak.
Wolves must hide.
I still carried traces of the woods on me. The remnants of pine in my hair were not tarnished by cigarette smoke. I rolled the cherry Chapman flavour on my lips with my tongue as I watched students in their woollen coats flocking to the main entrance. Groomed and polished, impatient and cautious — like a deer herd. Today, the greyness was thicker than usual. The air was damp from the rain, the wind howling haplessly. I looked over my shoulder: the empty road trailed away into the horizon. I imagined that if I followed it beyond the shopping centre on the outskirts of town, the road would fork left and lead me back to the wilderness. My arms and legs were pleasantly aching with the memory of the firm earth under my paws. It was time. I followed the herd.
The university was soaked in bustle. Its chaotic defiance beat me over the head and my thoughts kept running away from the methodology in philological research, deadlines and group chats. I suddenly noticed the cramps twisting my insides, although only a few hours ago I had been running at full speed through the thicket. I took my coat to the cloakroom. The herd piled into a long line outside the cafeteria. I rolled my eyes — this place.
the proximity of wolves concerns local residents. the citizens of Mrymsk are distressed about the increasing number of wolf sightings. there are no casualties yet, but should common people stay idle waiting to be attacked?
this is bloody Gomorrah. have you ever seen a thing such as that? have you, I ask you? wolves amongst people? it’s simply disgusting. unnatural.
1.5K liked this message
I occasionally saw wolves in the corridors. I identified them by the withdrawn or slightly lost expression. They did not laugh as loudly as the others and often looked over their shoulders. They lived only in one dimension, half silent, like me. Plagued with beast blood boys and girls, we did not talk to each other because the others wanted us to be secluded. They kindly asked us to tear out our sinful tongues and be quiet.
I chewed my tongue and swallowed it. We all did.
I met her here and there too. I knew she would always get a coffee after her French classes on a Monday morning, she would be in the canteen around 2:30 pm on Thursday. She wore converses or timberlands. She bit her nails. She looked at me longer than one should look at an acquaintance. I held my breath every time she hugged me because she smelled of spring and grass, and if I inhaled too deeply, I would not let her go. I would bury myself in the field on a rainy day in the mid-spring.
“But there is no other way. Imagine that — you move here from your shithole, live in a dorm, and how much does the uni give you? Two grand? And that’s for an increased loan. You can’t buy shit with two grand. Some paper noodles and a sack of buckwheat. That’s it,” she wagged a sausage roll in her left hand. After a month of discreet stalking, we started to have lunch together at 13:15 pm on Tuesdays. She had no classes in the afternoon, and I skipped my lecture on the Western canon. I chose a bowl of pickled soup and her lips covered in breadcrumbs over Joyce. I wanted to lick every crumb off her skin, “That is why I try to get as many pupils as I can. Tutoring is the only chance to earn money while studying full-time…”
“Do you charge much?”
“Nah. Five hundred a lesson.”
“Charge more. Viktor gets eight hundred for teaching English, and he is fine. He gets away with it,” she wiped her mouth with the sleeve. Usually, I was careful enough not to mention Viktor. She immediately went cold. She could not get why I was hanging out with a human — worse yet, a human male. He was a stone in her shoe, a threatening figure, a robber. She was convinced Viktor came between us, and she never let me forget he was not of our kind, as if I was not perfectly aware of it.
“Not everyone is a smart-ass like your boyfriend,” she hissed. We froze — two wild animals, ready to attack, but maybe for the first time, I knew I would bite her back. If we were in the woods, we would be rolling around on the ground by now, two furies of claws and fangs.
“He is not my boyfriend,” I barked out. Pickles were falling off my spoon. The canteen disappeared, and even its stink of overcooked meat vanished.
“Does he know that?” she did not look away.
“We have been friends since school. That’s just nonsense.”
She leaned back in her chair. I slurped my soup. I heard someone reading Esenin’s poem at the other end of the table, giggling and wailing. This place.
“Do you fancy a Kriek?” she asked.
“What?”
“I am asking if you are into fruit beer.”
“Well, yeah. It’s fine.” I mumbled caught off guard by her change of subject.
“How about Saturday night?”
“Works for me.”
We left the canteen in a rush. Others could have eavesdropped. She left her tray on the conveyor and did not say goodbye. My heart was racing.
message from userRagingSpir
stop acting like a fucking wolf or smth.
message from userRagingSpir
let me fix you baby.
I swiped away the notifications. At that moment, I could not be bothered less by them. I walked towards the cloakroom smiling foolishly, with the faint sensation that I was floating above the ground. I felt invincible.
“Where the hell have you been?” Viktor called out to me on the central staircase. I turned around and stared at him for a few long seconds because I did not recognise his silhouette anymore. My thoughts were far away — curling up on her lap. “I almost died of boredom, pup. The Canon guy is praying on Bloom’s book like it’s the flipping Bible.”
I nodded absent-mindedly and continued downstairs. Viktor threw his arm around my shoulders and we almost tumbled down. He kept chatting about schedules and essays due in a week and a bunch of parties planned for the upcoming weekends.
“She asked me out.” I blurted out all of a sudden. We stopped at the cloakroom room, and I reached into my rucksack for my number tag.
“You mean her?” he questioned, scratching his stubble. Viktor had not shaved in weeks and barely changed out of his black shirtsleeves.
“Yes. Don’t tell anyone.”
“Stop making up bullshit, pup. Why would I tell anyone?” I finally found the number and looked at Viktor. I got a bit ashamed because the only reason why I mocked him was because she could not stand his very presence. “Congrats, I guess?”
I smiled.
“OK, shall we go now?”
“Actually…” I only noticed then that Viktor had not even taken his coat. “I guess I’ll meet up with the guys. You gonna be fine though?”
“Sure. Absolutely,” I replied with a slight surprise. I could not remember the last time I spent the hour-and-a-half journey back home alone. Viktor pressed his lips together and walked away.
When going out on Saturday night, a lone wanderer must step into the monstrous rumble of the big city, feeding small parts of themselves into its ravenous jaws. As an alien, I paid double the price. A streetlight illuminated rotten foliage on the pavement. The leaves did not crack beneath my boots, rather squelched. It took me five songs to get to the metro, it took me another thirty minutes to get to one of the main stations. The closer the train approached the centre, the younger and dressier the crowd got. At these hours, sad faces in down jackets were heading to their homes in the suburbs. I wore my beige trench and secretly hoped that, unlike the stains of mud on it, the torturous anticipation of this night would not last long.
She bought us beers, and I was uselessly shuffling around on the slippery surface of the ceramic bathtub that replaced the sofa. Design choices of underground bars. She took a small sip, dipping her lips in foam, taking a swig before wiping her mouth with her sleeve. She had a fine cluster of dark hairs above her upper lip and equally dark, wide eyebrows. I blinked and looked away. Looking at her face so indiscreetly felt too much.
“I like your jumper. I’ll borrow it sometime,” she stroked my collarbones, pulling at the collar of my favourite red jumper. The gesture seemed so instantaneous as if nothing could be more natural.
“It belonged to my grandfather,” I whispered helplessly.
“Ask me a question,” she sounded even more cheeky as she relaxed, her gazes grew softer. I drank the beer in big gulps, hoping it would go to my head sooner.
“I already asked you three. Is this a bloody interview?”
“Maybe… It’s fun.”
“Do I look like someone fun?”
“No, you don’t.”
We stared at each other for a few long seconds and laughed. I let it go.
We sat in the bar until closing time. We talked about the books we loved and the ones we hated. She spoke about music, how she dreamt of living in France, even though she did not know much about it — it was all Flaubert, Modiano, Ernaux. She diagnosed the country through its artistic prose. Was it the real France though? I could not guess. She spoke little about life in her native town or about her school years, but she recalled her family with warmth. She had a very religious grandmother — one of those remarkable women who simultaneously believed in God, Domovoy and the beneficial effects of SCOBY. So, in solidarity with her grandmother, she wore a silver crucifix under her clothes and her skin under it had a tiny unhealing scar. She touched wood three times when she said the wrong thing and felt ashamed. She was not as close with her parents, but they were generally fine, too. Her mother worked at a music school and her father went to the office — it was a normal, good life with a seaside holiday once a year. She loved to visit them when she could save enough for train tickets. Her mother beaded, so they only had scratchy cushions in their house, all in embroidered flowers and birds. A cosy family life.
But, of course, they did not know the truth about her.
“And they never had a clue?” she shook her head. “And you didn’t want to tell them?”
“Why would I?” There was a twinge of irritation in her voice as though she was swatting a fly, “I want my parents to love me.”
“Aren’t they supposed to love us anyway?”
“Even if you killed someone?”
“Did you kill someone then?”
“Oh, shut up,” she snapped back. I shrugged. In reality, wolves did not behave the way humans expected them to. Still, I wanted to hurt her, to prick her stupid smugness. My glass was empty by some count, and my head was spinning. “I’m sorry,” she reached across the table, touching my hand with her fingertips. An electric shock ran up my spine. “Who needs that? Think about your child running around with claws and fangs like a wild animal. It doesn’t do any good to anyone.”
“No, but it’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t always about fairness. We walk alive and that’s enough.”
I took my hand away. She tapped the wooden table three times. That evening, nothing about us resembled predators. We were not wolves, not even light-legged deer. We appeared as draft horses dragging the burden of people’s expectations and unfulfilled fears behind our backs. Not being entitled to the freedom owed to mankind, we sighed woefully. Were we angrier and more determined for our equality, perhaps something could have changed. Unfortunately, our kind was shaped differently. We grimaced and cried, but we endured everything the world was willing to subject us to. We pathetically walked around with this pain as if it was a yoke of suffering, as if it was the very Lamb of God.
The more I drank, the more nausea clogged up my throat. I wanted to throw up my cowardice, honestly, I was ready to put my insides on the table. But I said nothing.
there should be no mercy for these creatures. Is the future of wolves doomed to exile?
We struggled to climb up the stairs, speaking half a tone louder than one should when outside at late hours. The bar was hidden in the nooks and crannies abounded in central urban neighbourhoods. Under old archways, there was a hidden world, a part of the city forged beyond time. We did not rush to get out onto the main boulevard to stay away from reality slightly longer. She held her fist to my mouth like a microphone, bombarding me with questions, and I answered with all kinds of rubbish that could occur to me. She kept speaking whilst approaching until our faces were close enough so I could close my eyes and see nothing succumbing to the darkness.
Kissing her equalled taking in a lungful of air and choking. I felt intoxicated.
The next three weeks consisted of her face — lips covered in breadcrumbs, cold kisses in alleys. I smiled at her messages and ignored everything else; neither disturbing news nor my stalker seemed to exist any more. The rest of my life also started to pass me by: classes, homework, calling my parents on the weekends. I would occasionally join my friends in a bar. However, I would just sit there in a dazed wordlessness, not listening to what the others had to say.
As promised, Viktor did not speak about what he knew. At the same time, I was too fixated on her and our blooming attraction to notice that Viktor went quiet in general.
“Your eyes changed, pup,” he said with his voice of bitter vermouth. “They got shinier.”
“No way,” I nodded.
Viktor stretched out on the table, spreading his long arms with silver-chained wrists. He did not utter a single word.
message from userRagingSpir
have you ever thought of trying a human? a real man?
We acted like all couples stupidly in love, the only difference being that we were discreet. We did not hold hands in cafés, parks or cinemas — no sitting too close, no gentle leaning, certainly no stolen kisses. I touched her with my warm gaze, constantly electrified and dizzy. For us, hostels were not safe, it was even worse with dorms, so we tried to save a little for a weekend in a hotel. She would take more pupils, I fiercely scrolled freelance websites. Everything had to be perfect, it already was.
When we finally got a hotel room, it was snowing outside. Not a drizzle that instantly melted underfoot but giant white flakes. We had white sheets and a heavy duvet, instant coffee, and waffle robes, we ate olives straight out of the jar. I looked out the window at the low, cloud-covered sky, at Vronskaya Street, and at the construction site with excavators bellowing at me. For some reason, that view seemed distant, as if we existed in parallel worlds.
She had nice hands with warm palms and scratchy touch, whilst her body was soft and velvety. She fit easily on my lap and in my heart.
My whole life, people expected me to feel shame. To their bewilderment or not, I was not ashamed. I was hot, wet, tight in my own body. The heat made my insides twist, it took my breath away, but I kept kissing her and for a few moments, I could exhale with relief.
I never thought it could happen to me: sighs, moans, smoke breaks after intense orgasms, laughs, phones on silent mode.
The hotel. The Vronskaya street. Dinner to take away.
She smelled of spring and grass. I clamped my thighs around hers and pressed closer. My knee felt her wetness. We resembled some human monstrosity with four arms and four legs tightly intertwined, but I liked how our limbs fused together. Was it even possible to get any closer? Try harder, we would grow into each other’s skin.
She rolled me onto my back again, her fingers tickling my nipples, my belly, spreading my legs. A rhythmic thrill pressed against my chest, and fuzzy goosebumps ran up my arms. I heard my own voice from outside and I saw us on the crumpled sheets, a laptop streaming the series at the desk, unfinished boxes of fried noodles on the floor. I looked around, and it was still snowing. Smooth and dense. First snow in November.
shouldn’t we just shoot them? shoot them all.
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“No, it’s fine, darling. No worries. No, you better tell me. Are you seeing anyone? Any boys? How’s that Viktor of yours?”
I sat on the couch with a plate of mash on my lap. Viktor and other guys from our English group played cards on the floor. I was half-listening to my mother’s mumbling, clutching the phone to my shoulder, but as soon as she asked the question, that dreadful question, I tensed up. My hand holding a fork froze halfway to my mouth, and the mash spilt back onto the plate.
The TV exploded with the happy tune of a new juice advert — “It’s a new flavour, new packaging. It’s ‘My family’.”
No, it is the same old thing.
“He’s alright, ma. We’re friends,” Viktor gave me a quick glance. He was listening.
“Friends, friends, friends,” mother chuckled conspiratorially and hung up. I always forgot that for the parents, being friends and dating was the same thing.
“All good?” Viktor waved his hand, offering me a beer. I nodded.
The TV continued:
public concern about the closeness of wolves is growing. local authorities are discussing methods to control wolf movements and potentially reduce the population.
“Pass that shit here,” I demanded irritably, leaning forward to grab the remote and finally turn off the voices.
The windows of the car fogged up. I did not need to stare into the darkness outside, I could see the contours of the houses and trees covered by the gentle hand of shadows.
“You are being reckless, pup,” Viktor yelled at me, but I was not even pretending I cared about what he meant. But I simply could not let this opportunity pass. As hungry as I had been for years, I wanted to devour these potent, forbidden feelings. “You’re acting stupid.”
“Man, fuck off. I’m happy. Maybe for the first time in my life, I’m genuinely happy.”
“It’s not about that. You heard the news, it’s getting tough for you guys. Think of your safety. Think of something other than your god-damn fangy chick.”
I wiped the window and my eye drifted towards the route leading to the forest. The silence between us grew vast and unbearable. Viktor twirled the ring on his middle finger nervously, chewing his lip. All of a sudden, I felt like I had enough of these dog training sessions.
locals are determined to take action. social media is abuzz with discussion of effective wolf poisoning. will the population reduce?
“Hey,” I whispered with tenderness, dialling the radio down and facing Viktor again. He did not move, waiting. I climbed into the seat with my feet up, clenched my eyes shut for a few seconds and opened them again, looking at Viktor with unconcealed, stupefying anger — wolf anger. I saw him pull back in his seat. I was not sure if it was at that moment that he finally understood that in reality, we had never been in the same pack.
In reality, I was a wolf, and he was not.
“You just can’t take it, can you? What’s wrong with you?” my voice trembled.
The seat belt clicked, and the car door slammed. I walked hurriedly on the cold concrete eagerly wishing to break out of the stone cocoon, to be able to breathe. Viktor’s words did not trouble me, nothing did apart from the unbearable desire to get free. I glanced at my phone screen.
message from userRagingSpir
it will do you good. make you feel good.
I craved her to hold my face.
People rarely reflect on the liberty of possessing the Self. The Self turns into a drop on the surface of consciousness, hardly worthy of contemplation. I could only feel myself when running along the needle-stiff ground, tearing bushes with my chest. Nothing was more fulfilling than to hear birds whistling above my head, look up into the sky, and distinguish only jagged glimpses of light behind dense downy branches.
She had become a part of everything, and in a way, we had been behaving more and more careless each day.
Desperate from starvation, we would run off into the woods and bring back a sense of wilfulness on our shoulders. We were jumping over snowdrifts and looping between trees as we raced. She loved to leap over streams, and I kept flinching, afraid she would fall into the icy water and the current would drag her down. But she clawed confidently at the stone with her hind legs tensed and sprang. Her whole body took the shape of a black arrow stretched in the air.
Once at the café, I stroked her fingers in a payful, frivolous mistake. Another time, we hugged goodbye in front of her house, and I pressed my cheek against hers for too long.
“Oh, baby,” she whispered in my ear. “Seule la nuit peut nous cacher.”
Although the meaning of her words slipped away from me, I sobbed intimidated by her intimacy. Languages did not matter when she was touching my soul.
But then, it all faded.
On a soggy colourless day.
“You heard that? The stuff is all over the news,” Viktor’s voice sounded hoarse, it could be frost or cigarettes — judging by the butts scattered at his feet, he smoked one after another. He stood crouched on the hood, and his shout barely reached me through the fierce wind. For the last few days, though, everything had merged into a solid white noise. I was walking through an endlessly long tunnel, with the lights of Viktor’s car blinding me at the end.
“Like a deer in the headlight,” he crooned when I approached.
“What?” I almost did not make out his face in the breaking of shadows. We had not spoken since our last fight.
“I’m telling you, it’s all over the news,” he shoved the phone screen in my face, and I squinted, my eyes stinging from the glare.
a disturbed citizen hit a wolf with his car. the driver was unhurt.
She was with me. She was me. It was meant to be me.
She no longer returned my calls. My messages were left on read. I scrolled the news non-stop in the idle hope of discovering the features I loved in the scene description. But it was all dry journalistic reports. The brave citizen faced the beast, the driver miraculously survived. Wolf nature proved to be unpredictable. The fate of the predator remained unknown. I read it over and over.
I looked for her in the university hallways, but she was gone. Other wolves would either turn away or stare at me with that sneering, clammy pity. Some looked with both terror and relief. I was familiar with that feeling. The shameful pleasure that it had not happened to them.
“OK, let’s get into the car,” Viktor grabbed my forearm, and I followed him — indifferent, unconcerned.
Viktor spoke rapidly. He literally could not stay silent for a second, waving his arms frantically. He turned on my favourite song, first louder, then lowered the volume, meticulously watching my reaction. I still gazed ahead and gave him nothing, and then he opened his mouth again.
“Don’t worry, pup. The woods will cheer you up. You love the woods, you always feel good there. Don’t you?” I could hear his anguish and nervous excitement. Yet, I did not answer.
We pulled into the same car park as usual. At the same time, the wood staring back at me out of the blackness looked alien. I was shivering, even though the heat was on full blast.
“Come on,” Viktor leaned towards me, raking me into an armful. He rubbed the warmth across my shoulders and held my palms. “That’s it. It’s gonna be alright.”
“No. Don’t touch me,” I mumbled with the same nonchalance, but he continued massaging my fingers. Both my hands could fit in his one fist. Viktor filled the space with his Self, he was taking over. The nausea came up my throat. “Let me fucking go!” I yanked my hands out, and Viktor went quiet, letting me break free. I looked around cautiously.
“I’m sorry. I just need some…” I almost reached the handle when noticing a crack spreading across the windshield on Viktor’s side. I opened the door but hesitated the second after. Wolf instinct made me suck in a slow sniff of air.
“What have you done?” I heard myself hiss. Now, Viktor could not find any words. He strenuously squeezed the seat knob. I imagined it being my throat. “Huh…? What. Have. You. Done?” I repeated slower, enouncing every word. My heart was pounding in my chest.
“You were in danger,” Viktor muttered as if apologizing. I shifted my gaze from Viktor to the cracked windshield and back. She laughed when I kissed her cheeks, and I loved catching her breath with my mouth. “I wanted to protect you. This…”
“Shut the fuck up.”
I rushed outside.
“Masha, no, Masha, don’t leave,” he gripped me against his chest in an oppressing embrace. I felt a powerful, almost primal terror lick at my temples with icy heat. I snapped out of my seat and ran. A few seconds later, I knew Viktor was running after me.
Heavy footsteps in his combat boots.
message from userRagingSpir
stop being a bitch.
He was two heads taller than me. He was faster.
message from userRagingSpir
I want you so bad.
He could knock me to the ground.
message from userRagingSpir
are u even real?
“Wait! Masha!” Viktor tore up his lungs, and I ran at full speed, until the tree trunks covered me completely, until the smell of needles opened my second breath.
message from userRagingSpir
die, animal.
The frost pinched my fingertips. My lips burned with every exhalation, chapped from the cold, but still I started to count. I counted second by second. I counted until I landed on all four paws. The wind whipped against my scruff, and I raked my paws through the air. I sped up. Viktor raced behind me. Now, I heard his hurried human steps even better.
“Masha!” Viktor called. I braked sharply and turned around, the snow flew up from under my paws. The saliva was dripping from my snarling maw. I ducked my head low and pressed my ears back tightly, staring at the approaching figure with a sidelong glance. Viktor stopped the second he noticed me, falling awkwardly. He crawled back with his hands out in front of him in a warning gesture people make when facing a wild animal. A growl rumbled in my chest. Viktor trembled, and I leisurely moved towards him. His terror was so lustrous that I licked my fangs.
“It doesn’t have to be like this, pu…” the growling intensified, and Viktor faltered. “Let’s just go home. Let me drive you back,” his lips turned blue, he burrowed helplessly into the snow, and the tremors grew heavier. “What is this even? You know, Masha. You know, I…”
I leapt forward, bringing Viktor down completely. My paws were as large as his face. My whole body, from nose to tail, was twice his size. I opened my maw greedily, tasting terror. Viktor tried to cover his head with his hands. I ran my drooling tongue to his wrist. Killing him would be so easy, and was not that what they expected me to do? Viktor did.
I grunted and raced further into the darkness with no intention to look back.
I did not stop until my legs gave out from fatigue. My sides rose and fell heavily. I climbed up the hill, peering through the veil of dusk. The wind shifted, smoothing the ruffled scruff against my fur. My heart beat pleadingly. The breeze brought notes of spring and grass.
I closed my eyes and howled.
Iana Moskalenko is a Russian writer and screenwriter currently based in London and pursuing a PhD at University College London. A recognised author in Russia, her work explores themes of identity and marginal experience. She is the author of the novel The Auction (Elena Shubina Editorial, AST), included in the “Top 50 Books of the Year” selected by writers for Pravila Zhizni (former Esquire Russia, 2024).
Living and working between cultural contexts, Moskalenko engages with questions of language and selfhood, and, like many Russian émigré writers before her, writes across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Izba Arts invited the author to publish Wolves Noirs, her first short story in English.
