"You want to know why you have to die?" a sultry voice rang through the darkness; it was the darkness, and like the black, it was boundless and greedy. It devoured Maeve whole, stealing her outline from even her eyes. She whipped out her hands to guard her face, but she couldn't see them.
"You want to know why you have to die?" The voice came with a laugh, and terror seized Maeve. A pair of cold, green eyes, a little like hers, gleamed from the darkness and drew nearer with each passing second. Four pristine fangs danced beneath them and then a tongue whipped out like a serpent and licked her across the face.
Maeve shrieked, but she couldn't hear her voice. It was swallowed by the dark too. She was screaming, but she couldn't hear what she was saying. The green eyes lurched forward and a pair of powerful hands grabbed ahold of Maeve. They wrapped tightly around her neck and pulled.
"You want to know why you have to die?"
The voice sounded louder – however that was possible. Maeve's ears were filling with the sound and it was interrupting her thoughts.
"Nine aspiring Lunas were killed… Only six remain, and you're one of them," another voice said, almost faintly from a corner of the limitless darkness. It was Aaron's. "You're one of them."
"You want to know why you have to die?"
Maeve was in tears, but she could hardly feel them trickling down her cheeks. She felt something between her torso and head strain, and unnatural agony filled her. As the pinch of the pain peeked, so did the shrill of many other voices from the darkness; they were intent on driving her mad.
"You're supposed to be buried in the backyard!"
"What the fuck are you doing in my house?"
"I'd rather drown in a pool of piss!"
"You as good as sprouted from the ground, you little bitch!"
"They were nothing special and neither are you!"
"You want to know why you have to die?"
"DON'T TOUCH HIM!"
Maeve was sure she went mad. She felt something snap in her brain and suddenly, she was the one crying in the different voices, reciting what they shrieked from the black.
She was Tony.
She was Gerald.
She was Millie.
She was Aaron.
She was Maeve.
The pain was gone. No, it was there, but she was also the pain. She drifted in darkness, the pair of green eyes haunting her, stalking her.
"…the moon shows great favour to a Luna and grants them privileges."
Aaron's voice sounded again, but it didn't come from her. It sounded distant, faint. And then came her own, loud and bark-like.
"Why do you keep speaking of the moon as if it's some kind of fucking god or something?"
She could almost hear the tender patience in Aaron's reply.
"What makes you think it's just some rock drifting in space?"
There was a lull, and then a sharp, teal light parted the darkness. At first, it was distant, almost inconsequential, but then it grew brighter. It warded away the darkness around Maeve, cut through whatever the black and mixed into her outline. She felt all the vileness flee as stringy, helpless tendrils.
And she was free. She was Maeve. She could see it. She could feel it.
She could see the shaggy wolf glowing in teal looking at her with sharp yellow eyes. It sat on its haunches, its ears twitching. The two locked eyes for what felt like an eternity and then Maeve heard her voice ringing from her lips.
"You're…" she began.
"I'm what?" Bridget said, looking down at her with a brow raised.
For a moment, Maeve couldn't make sense of anything. She could hardly comprehend why she was on all fours on the floor. An instant later, sense caught up with her brain though, and she hurried to a stand. She realized she was still wearing her shoes; she hadn't bothered to take off her clothes last night.
"Were you… doing some exercises?" Bridget asked. Her voice was walking on eggshells. Maeve remembered why.
The piercing light coming from the window and the toothbrush in her friend's mouth cleared a lot of things up.
"Yeah. Kinda. I thought it'd help me relax," Maeve lied.
Bridget shrugged.
"Alright then. Relax all you want, but YOU still have to go to work today. I hope even without me you can remember to be on time," she said in a stiff tone.
"…Yeah." Maeve would have preferred to jump out the window that continue this awkward conversation.
No more words were said after this though. Bridget kept exiting and entering the room awkwardly. Maeve had half a mind to tell her to stop, but she figured that would make things even more awkward.
Bridget wasn't on shift today. When she wasn't on shift, she usually went to study with her friends. Maeve had always called her life the 'perfect college girl breeze'. She didn't really envy it, but she was always jealous of how smart Bridget was and how easily she could connect with people. Perhaps being the proper oldest sibling helped build her character.
It was only after Bridget left the bedroom for the umpteenth time with a little wave and an awkward, airy kiss that Maeve plopped onto her bed and allowed herself to drown in the contents of her dream.
She didn't drown as she expected to. In fact, she felt… eerily free and relieved.
She had dreamt getting her head ripped off by Tony with the background music of Millie and Gerald Mitchelle's shrieks, but her heart was at peace. It was calm.
'Was that really a dream?' she thought to herself. It felt real. Too real. 'What was that wolf?'
She couldn't have found an answer to that, but the largest bit of her had many theories. If Bridget hadn't just walked in and interrupted Maeve – as she was crawling on all fours – she (Bridget) might have gotten a different impression of what Maeve was doing. As it happened, Maeve didn't know what she herself had been doing, but judging by what she last recalled from her dream…
'Was I imitating that wolf… in my sleep?' she thought, somehow feeling a little sullen. Her eyes grew. 'Was that the Howling?'