Of Teeth & Claws

3: Tell That To The Wolf That Murders Me In My Sleep Nearly Every Night

Ugh. Blindly, I grope the nightstand for the phone that has obnoxiously woken me up. My shaky fingers knock the earpiece off the base. Thankfully, it's a really old phone and it dangles off the edge by its cord. "Hello." I holler into the room as I reach for it.

I can hear Lyra yelling through the little speaker hole, "Get your butt down here. Now."

"What time is it?" It feels like I just got into bed. "How did you get this number? Why are you even calling this phone?"

"You didn't answer your cell. Now get ready. It's well after ten and we're going shopping."

I knew I was going to have to leave at some point in time. I would prefer that it wasn't today....or tomorrow or the day after or the day after that. "Whatever, I'll be down in a minute." Or maybe two or three or thirty.

She starts a countdown, "sixty. Fifty nine. Fifty eight."

Groping for the dangling phone, I manage to hang up before she gets to fifty five. I'll definitely be down way after she hits zero. It takes me a minute to crawl out of bed. I'm not sure what time it was that I fell to the floor from my nightmare. All I know it was late, really late by time I crawled back into bed and actually laid down like a normal person. What I didn't do though is change out of my swimsuit.

A groan escapes my lips as I push through my exhaustion and stiff limbs to change into real clothes, jeans and t-shirt. A quick look in the mirror shows dark circles starting to develop under my eyes and my nightmares must have scared all the color in my skin away, because I'm looking deathly pale today.

Without looking at the clock, I shuffle out of the room as I make my way downstairs. The lower I go, the more busy it gets. The hotel is hustling and bustling this morning. Weaving my way around the main lobby, I spot Lyra and Eden. They don't have wide smiles on their faces, but smiles nonetheless. The closer I get, I realize that she's still counting down.

When I come to a stop in front of her she says, "negative seven hundred and ninety two."

"You made that up." I don't put it past her to keep counting, but she probably stopped around negative ten. She mutters under breath something about being insulted, but I've learned that Lyra is a drama queen. Remember desperate housewife. "So where are we going?"

Eden takes the pleasure of answering. "Breakfast."

"Lead the way." As I twist around to the door, my back hitches halfway through. Lyra and Eden's concerned gaze look at me questioningly. "It's nothing. Just slept weird is all." There's no way I'm telling them that my shoulder is sore because of some residual pain due to being mauled by a wild animal in my nightmare. Not to mention that I fell off the bed in a panic.

Lyra quickly leads the way, but Eden stays at my side. "Did you get any sleep last night?" Is it that obvious? "We know that being back here is hard. Family can be brutal sometimes, but sometimes you have to face tough situations so you can grow from them."

Tell that to the wolf that murders me in my sleep nearly every night.

The truth remains unknown to Lyra and Eden. They don't know about how my mother died. Therefore, they definitely don't know about the wolves. And they absolutely are unaware of my lack of memory from my time here. They just think that my mother died by means of a car accident and it tore our family apart. Hence, why Twyla is still here and not with dad and I.

I can't help but to wonder what my mother would say with me being back here. Would she be proud of me confronting the past? Or pissed? She died trying to run away from this place and the beasts hiding within it. And here I am, walking the streets in broad daylight. Now if it was vampires I was hiding from, I would feel a little better walking around in the bright sunshine. But wolves look and act just like anyone until they turn into a huge furry angry dog.