Happily Ever Afterlife

by J A Campbell

  Once away from the ghostly masses, I am better able to see the shape of the wolf's belly. It is not pink and fleshy, as I would have expected, but rather grey and rocky. Moisture drips from the stalactites that loom from the tall ceiling, leaving puddles in the cracks and valleys that make up the bumpy floor. Though I can see no walls, every drip echoes through the air as though we were trapped in a small cave.

  My vision has slowly been adjusting to the dark conditions, and I can see farther as time passes in its meandering and immeasurable way. I am surprised to discover that the woods from my memory are here in the belly of the wolf. I suppose that they too are a victim of his appetite. Once a safe place to have adventures or spend a peaceful afternoon, the woods have become a place of fear and caution, tainted by the beast that lives within them.

  Though they are host to my final and terrifying memories, I find myself drawn closer and closer to these woods. I want to see them. I want to walk their path again and learn what I could have done to prevent my death.

  * * *

  I have taken my final leave of the hopeless dead. I may have been eaten, but I don't need to be one of them, wailing at my fate in a sea of blame. The walk to the woods feels like it takes days, but in a world without sun or hunger or fatigue, it's difficult to say for certain how long it's truly been.

  I feel a sharp chill in my heart when I reach the edge of the woods. The path is so familiar it feels like it was only hours ago I first set out on my final journey of life. My basket lies on the edge of the path, waiting for me. I pick it up and start walking.

  This time, I do it right. I keep my gaze ahead of me, never once stopping to look at flowers or listen to birds chirping. I encounter no one and make it to Grandma's cottage unscathed. Swallowing hard, ignoring the churning within my stomach, I open the door and step in. I check the bed first, but it is empty. Everything is empty. This is only the ghost of the cottage, and my grandmother was never here. For the first time, I allow myself to face the reality of her death. I let the tears fall, burying my face in a pillow with a shadow of her scent, and fall asleep once I cry myself out.

  When I wake, I am back at the edge of the woods, curled up with my basket at the foot of the path. I have to fight a wave of anger. I did it right. I did what my mother told me, made it to the end of the path, and nothing happened. I did it right. Why do I have to do it again? I briefly consider returning to the other dead, but the dreary memory of those girls sobers me quickly. I decide to stay and try the path again. I pick up my basket and begin the walk.

  Once again, I keep my eyes ahead of me and do not dally. I pass the patch of wildflowers that made me pause before on my last day of life. I remember my mother's warning, a voice I too often ignored. She had often fretted, and it reached a point where it lost its effect on me. I wish her voice had echoed in my memory on the day of my death.

  A rustling in the underbrush just off the path stops me cold and chills my heart. I am halfway to my grandmother's cottage, a spot that burns in my memory, and I turn slowly to see what made the noise. Through the leaves and twisted thorns, I see the unmistakable glowing eyes of the wolf. We lock gazes for a moment, and then I break into a run. I make it to the cottage, locking the door behind me.

  I am hyperventilating. I did not expect to see the wolf again, but I expected my own reaction even less. It's done, I'm dead, I'm trapped in his belly, and there's nothing more he can do to me. What do I have to fear from him?

  Reasoning with myself helps me to get my breath back, but it doesn't stop the trembling. I walk around the cottage, touching every surface, running my hands along the bric-a-brac I used to admire when I was younger. The familiarity is soothing, and weariness begins to take hold. Once again I crawl into my grandmother's bed, this time pulling the covers over my head to ward off the monsters that lurk outside.

  I awake at the beginning of the path, my basket at my side. I can't bring myself to stand up and walk again, so I spend what feels like days just lying on the ground and staring into the woods as the echoing drips of the wolf's belly sound in my ears. I am cold and I feel pathetic, laying on the hard ground and half-hoping to be found and blamed by one of the dead. I feel stuck, more so than ever, knowing that even in the wolf's belly there is no escape from him.

  The dripping sounds fill my ears in their staccato repetition. I am becoming delirious, I think. Each drip sounds like a voice, one sharp word at a time. Sometimes, it is my mother's voice, full of disappointment. Sometimes, it is my grandmother's, full of regret. Most of the time, it is the sound of the ghostly girls I never met, accusing.

  * * *

  I am wallowing in self-pity and my fear can't last forever. It becomes clear that no one is coming to find me, and I must make a decision or lie on the cold ground until I fade to nothing.

  Stiffly, I pull myself up from the ground and pick up my basket. My steps are small and full of trepidation, but at least they move me forward down the path.

  I pause at the midway point, where the wolf lurked before, but there is nothing there. Feeling a little foolhardy and lightheaded from the anxiety I had carried with me, I step off the path and into the patch of brush where he had been hiding.

  There is evidence of his presence; a tuft of fur is snared on a thorn, and a few paw prints indent the soft earth, partially covered by leaves. I had not imagined seeing the wolf before, but he is not here now.

  Birdsong, or perhaps the ghost of birdsong, fills the trees. I suppose it was here the whole time, but my fear of the wolf kept me from noticing. Now I'm almost giddy with relief and noticing everything. The memory of sunlight streams through the shadows of the trees, replicated almost perfectly from the world of the living. I listen hard, and the ghost-forest remembers to put the sound of wind in the treetops.

  It's rejuvenating, sitting in these woods. Though there is the fear in the back of my mind that the wolf will come, I am still able to relax in the dappled shade. The woods were always my favorite place to go when I didn't have chores to do, which is why I leapt at the chance to deliver food to Grandma in the first place. These woods are tainted by the memory of the wolf, but they are still mine.

  After a time, the ghost of sunlight fades and I have more trouble calming my fear. I stand up from the mottled leaf matter, brushing dirt and stray twigs off my dress before returning cautiously to the path. Quickly, I rush the rest of the way to Grandma's house and bar the door behind me. In the distance, the wolf howls. I light a fire with trembling hands and its warmth lulls me to sleep.

  * * *

  I wake again at the beginning of the path. I'm starting to feel like some sort of force is trying to tell me something, but whether it's the woods or the wolf or my own head, I cannot say. Perhaps this is simply a special kind of Hell for girls who talk to strangers and stray from the path.

  My mood dark, I once again pick up my basket and begin the walk down the path. I take my time on this journey, pausing to take a closer look at the ghost of the forest. It has gotten some of the details wrong; the sunlight streams down in an almost calculated pattern and the trees in the distance seem to repeat.

  Unnerved, I pick up my pace, only to stop short at the sight ahead of me.

  The wolf is on the path.

  The wolf is on the path, and he is looking at me.

  I stand there, heart pounding, staring into his yellow eyes and unable to move.

  He is huge, but smaller than my memory painted. He stands squarely on four massive paws, head hanging low as he takes me in with his gaze. His wiry black and silver fur moves softly as wind teases through it.

  I don't know how long we stand there, staring at each other. The wolf breaks the silence first.

  "Hello," he says, his voice deep and charming like it was when I first met him. I hadn't heard the growl until later.

  Somehow, the short greeting is enough to shock me out of my frozen reverie. Don't talk to strangers, I remember, and steel my gaze forward and past him.

  It takes all of m
y willpower to take the first step, but I manage, and the second step is easier. He's already eaten me, I tell myself; he can't hurt me now.

  I walk past the wolf, who moves aside for me and watches me as I continue down the path. He does not follow, and I make it to Grandma's house once again. I lock the door and this time fight hard against sleep, trying to keep myself from waking at the beginning of the path and having to walk through those woods again.

  Though I never needed sleep among the other dead girls, Grandma's house has an odd soporific effect. I run through all the tricks: pinching myself, jumping in place, even holding my eyelids open against their preference. In the end, I lose the battle and wake up once again at the beginning of the path.

  * * *

  Every day now, I walk the path to Grandma's house, trying different things each time to ward off the wolf. Sometimes, I run the path. Sometimes, I take it slowly. Often, I don't stick to the path at all, and one day spend hours out in the woods, only finding Grandma's house well after dark. It doesn't seem to matter what I do; the wolf is sometimes around and more often not, with no pattern or apparent cause.

  He hasn't spoken to me since the first greeting on the path. He just stares at me when I walk by, sometimes standing on the path and sometimes hidden in the underbrush of the woods.

  Familiarity has dulled my fear somewhat, turning it into a strange sort of thrill. It is almost a disappointment when a day passes without seeing the wolf, a loss of pointless anticipation and meaningless worry. Seeing him comes with the relief of fear.

  * * *

  We watch each other now, the wolf and I, when we run across one another's path in the woods. At first, it was just quick glances as I hurried by, but I have become bolder with the passing of time. I meet his gaze for longer spans each day, breaking off and rushing onward when eye contact becomes too uncomfortable to maintain. One day I stare him down until, finally, he is the first to break.

  His gaze seems older and sadder than I expected. He doesn't look at me with the same barely concealed hunger I remember from the day I died, but it's not quite regret in his eyes either. I suppose it's a sort of resignation. I find myself wondering if he is just as trapped as I am in his belly. Perhaps he, too, is a victim of his own appetite.

  * * *

  I haven't seen the wolf in days. I walk the path through the woods, whiling away hours at a time, climbing trees and picking the ghosts of wildflowers that all look the same.

  It takes me awhile to identify this feeling that has me trapped here, looking through the trees every day for a hint of fur or a flash of yellow eyes. It was a feeling I had resigned myself to having forever among the dead, and I had failed to notice when it left. Now that it's back, it's crippling and suffocating. I am lonely.

  I should not be lonely for the wolf, but I am. Terrifying company is still company.

  I spend several walks exploring my loneliness, reveling in the emotion. Fear, while potent, is fast-burning and all-consuming; there is no pleasure in it. Loneliness oozes slowly, giving me plenty of time to feel and enjoy the experience of feeling, an experience I thought was barred from the world of the dead. However, loneliness, like its sister, self-pity, becomes indulgent and self-serving. It's a rich emotion and it makes me feel sick after a while.

  Walking the path, time after time, with no sign of the wolf slowly transforms my fear of him into hope of seeing him, and hope into rage at his absence. Rage is a powerful enough distraction from loneliness that I allow it to fill my focus entirely. How dare the wolf eat me, condemning me to an empty death, and then abandon me without warning or acknowledgement?

  In the midst of one such rage-fueled walk down the path, I decide to seek him out. I can't keep living with this uncertainty, this constant knot as I continue my repetitive journey into nothingness. I will not go to Grandma's house until I find him.

  * * *

  The woods are vast and become more dark and tangled the further I travel from the path. The tempting wildflowers give way to nettles and thorns, and old vines strangle the ancient trees that grow intertwining and stooped. This is no longer the wood I knew. This is the sort of wood where witches lay in wait to eat children and tempt young women to their fall. I remind myself that I am already dead, but I can't help but wonder what happens if you're killed again in death.

  I abandon my basket.

  There is no birdsong in this dark place, no wind rustling the leaves, and no sunlight making patterns through the trees. There is no need to pretend realness as it existed in life. This wood is no shadow of the real thing, but a separate real thing all its own. Even the trees feel like they have teeth.

  The thorns are longer and densely tangled through the woods. I can no longer avoid them, and they rip at my skin and clothes. I don't bleed at first, until I realize that I'm not, and the illusion of my body begins bleeding in earnest. I keep going, though pain has remembered its place in the wounds.

  Going back is just as painful as moving forward, and staying still is the truest form of death. I cradle my torn skin, beads of blood coating me. I am not sure what to do.

  The color of my skin has started to fade, I notice. I still appear solid, thankfully, but my skin and blood and clothes are washed out, bleaching like a shirt left in the sun for too long. It's coming. The true death, the final death where I become nothing and no one mourns, is coming. Looking at my faded skin, I cannot deny it.

  Better to hurt than feel nothing.

  There are no more trees, but the thorns are like a wall now. I can feel them give way a little when I push against them, so I have hope that the wall is not too thick or impenetrable. I wish I had a knife to help me cut through, but in life I was only armed with the warning not to talk to strangers, so I have no useful weapons in death.

  With mangled hands, I pull at the thorny vines, ripping the weaker ones and untangling the stronger from the snarl in which they have grown. I am being more careful now than I was when rage fueled me through the depths of the woods, but there's no avoiding the sharp thorns entirely.

  Finally, I am able to make a hole. I peer through it to see a small clearing and the mouth of a cave. Seeing a world beyond the thorns is incredibly motivating, and I push my way through them, agonizingly ripping raw wounds against the sharp points. My hat gets caught in the tangled plants and I leave it, a bright spot of somewhat faded red against the dead grey of the twisted vines.

  I turn away from my hat and face the cave. There is a rustling behind me, and I turn back to see the thorny vines interlacing once again to fill the hole I had created. There will be no running away; I cannot face those thorns again. I turn back toward the cave.

  There is a sound whispering from its mouth, a shuddering breath, repetitive and slow. I know that breath; I heard it before beneath the sheets of my grandmother's bed. The wolf is here. A familiar, comfortable fear fills my core and I revel in it, taking a step closer.

  The cave is shallow and dim light reaches its back, bouncing off the form of the wolf. He is sitting with shoulders hunched and back toward me. I take another step. He looks thin in the body, and his fur is matted and tangled. I take another step. His head is hung low and an ear twitches in my direction, but he does not move. I take another step. He heaves a shuddering sigh, and I can see his ribs against his skin. I step inside the cave.

  The wolf does not turn to face me. "Why have you come?"

  This is not what I expected and I do not have an answer. I simply blurt the first question that comes to mind. "Why did you go?"

  He shifts uncomfortably in his corner. "I am being hunted."

  "Here?"

  "No," he replies, turning his head further from me. "In the world, they call me ‘child-eater' and come for me. I will die soon."

  "Well, you are a child-eater," I point out sharply. He snarls quietly and shifts away from me. "But why come here? Why did you leave the path?" I am surprised that I feel more betrayed than angry when I look at him.

  "I am being hunted for your mur
der," he growls, turning toward me at last. "Do you think I want to spend my last days trapped in my own appetite, constantly bombarded with reminders of my weakness? Trapped in an endless repetition of that day when hunger ruled reason and I once again became a monster? No. So I fled, and now here you are, following me into my heart where I thought I could be safe." A shudder runs through him, and he turns from me again.

  "I'm stuck here now," I say with regret.

  "Stuck in the heart of a wolf, your final resting place," he replies and then laughs darkly. The sound makes my hair stand on end, but I resist the urge to back away. The last echoes of the laugh fade from the walls of the cave, and an uncomfortable silence takes its place.

  The silence becomes unbearable. "Why did you eat me?"

  He sighs and says tiredly, "I was hungry."

  "You ate my grandmother first. You couldn't have been that hungry." I take a step closer to him.

  "Bloodlust is not sated in one meal. I had not eaten in so long..."

  "There are deer in the woods, and rabbits and things. Why me, and why her?" My voice is gaining strength.

  "I used to have a family, you know," he says, turning to look me in the eye. I am thrown by the non sequitur, but I cannot help feeling a strange fascination. "I had a mother and a father, two aunts, and three brothers. We hunted together, but I was the weakest and the slowest. Eventually, I was left to hunt for myself. A lonely life...

  "Deer are too fast for me alone, rabbits too clever. I make do on mice and weak game, but I am always hungry and always lonely. I only wanted to talk to you that day, but my appetite overcame me. You were trusting, and young. You had never been told that wolves can sometimes wear disguises. It was...easy."