Here's March's White Rabbit Story:
HOWL
The dog was howling again. It had been howling
like this all week; each night, always at the same time, a similar high-pitched
keening sound.
Daryl
checked his watch: just after midnight. It never varied. The howling always
began at the same time and went on until exactly 1AM, like clockwork. Like a
machine.
He
wriggled out of his thin sleeping bag and walked slowly to the window, being
careful not to step on any sharp debris or broken glass.
A
few nights ago, he’d nailed an old piece of tarpaulin across the shattered window
pane to serve as a curtain. He reached out and moved it aside, looked out into
the empty, lamp-lit street below. Nothing stirred down there; there was not even
a breeze to shift the littler gathered in the gutters.
The
moon was a thin pallid thing stuck onto a sky without stars. The buildings
surrounding the one where he slept where all empty, abandoned. Some of them had
boarded doors and windows. Yet more of them had been partially demolished –
broken stubs of stone walls stuck up out of the foundations like shattered
teeth.
The
dog continued the howl.
Daryl
slipped on the boots he’d salvaged from a skip three days ago. He grabbed his
old, torn jacket and left the room, moving down the scorch-marked stairwell that
still held the ghost-aroma of an old fire. Out, out into the darkness.
There
was no real purpose to what he was doing, other than the vague notion that if
the dog was in pain, he might be able to help it. Life on the streets was
lonely; perhaps a companion would make things more bearable.
He
followed the keening sound, tracing a route through dirty, nameless backstreets
behind empty tenement buildings. The howling drew closer; he was nearing its
source.
Ducking
along a narrow gap between a row of derelict shops and a decades-empty
warehouse, he came upon a hidden alleyway.
Litter
was piled against the walls. The ground looked damp, glistening as if it had
rained here - but Daryl knew it hadn’t rained in weeks.
The
sound drew him to a pile of rags in a shallow doorway.
“Hey,
boy,” he said. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.”
Reaching
out, he grasped the edge of a filthy blanket and pulled it aside.
There
was a woman under the rags. She was thin and pale, with long limbs and a short
body. She might have been naked, but the rags provided her a modicum of modesty.
Her head was bald, and her eyes were so dark they looked completely black. She
had no eyebrows. Her nose was tiny, barely comprising much more than a raised
strip of flesh around two holes in the centre of her face.
Her
mouth was open wide, and she was still howling, but the sound seemed to be
moving farther away, along the length of the alley and away from him.
Rather
than fear or even confusion, Daryl felt sympathy, compassion. He knelt before
the woman and opened his arms, a simple gesture to show her that he meant no
harm.
She
had not blinked since he’d arrived. It was an odd thing to notice, but he had
noticed it anyway, perhaps because it was so unusual.
She
stopped howling and licked her lips. Her tongue, as it darted between her thin
lips, was short and narrow.
“Are
you hurt?”
She
smiled. Her mouth contained no teeth, only bare gums. These were as pale as her
skin, and translucent.
Daryl
did not move as she leaned towards him, embracing him. He lay down beside her,
shifting the rags so that he could maximise the contact between them. Her hands
were cold. Her breath was warm. She did not smell of anything: an absence of
odour. There was something primordial and comforting about her presence, as if
she were the origin of whatever he was, the true source to which he must finally
return.
As she pressed those thin, cold lips
against his cheek, Daryl heard the howling once again, but this time it was far
away, nothing but a distant lament. A long, sad song to accompany him as he
eased down into her darkness.© Gary McMahon 2019
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