The Halfway Wolf

[Junebugtwin]

Spoiler

Hello all! Just a few things to state here before you begin reading- this story is a bit of a writing exercise for me because it will almost always be from Rachel aka 'Bitch's pov. Her way of seeing the world and style of narration is not what I'm quite used to writing- it's very blunt, with a lot of short choppy sentences and a lack of metaphors or flowery description. This is a feature not a bug, but I'd thought I'd mention it so people don't think I'm being weirdly flat for no reason. Secondly, since this is from Rachel's perspective that means that she's going to be doing and thinking things that are...maybe a bit morally questionable. This does not mean I necessarily share her beliefs or agree with her actions. And finally, this story contains a typical amount of violence for a Worm fic, swearing, depictions of homelessness, child-abuse, and animal-abuse/death. With that out of the way, have fun!

Everything is worse without Rollo.

Her chest hurts, her eyes blink back tears, her hands are sore from clenching. She misses him. He didn't listen to her most of the time, he was scared, angry. She gave him most of her food. His fur had patches missing, some of it was dirty. His tail would wag when she pet him, happy to see her- the only one ever happy to see her.

She misses the sound of his heartbeat. The warmth of his fur.

She misses looking forward to seeing him at the beginning and ending of every day. There's nothing she hopes for now.

Rachel keeps moving, keeps walking, tries to hide herself where she thinks the adults won't look.

Finds places to curl up at night- most are shit. The best places are taken already. It's cold at night- really cold. She sees an old man lying in blankets in a dark alleyway. His chest doesn't move and he doesn't react when she gets close. She realizes he's dead. She takes anything she can carry- his patchwork blankets, his shopping bags with canned food. His backpack has a hole in the side, but it's better than carrying things with her hands. He has gloves. She has to break his fingers to get them off of him. She doesn't feel sad or scared or guilty when she does it. She would have- she thinks- she would have felt bad before.

But he's dead. He's a stranger. He's an adult. She takes his coat too. It smells bad- like sweat and vomit and cigarette smoke. She is warmer the next night, when she puts on both her coats and all her blankets.

A group of adults try to get her- they call to her with laughter, voices high pitched with anger and a tone she associates with adults trying to have sex. They follow her when she runs, and she has to crawl between two buildings and under a dumpster. She stays there for a long time, even after she thinks they have probably given up.

It's terrible. Her heart pounds. She's scared. She hates being scared. She hates being weak. Being weak means anybody can do whatever they want to you. When she made Rollo bigger and stronger he'd ripped everything apart. He was scared then too. But for a moment- when Bonnie was bleeding and screaming and dying- she'd felt safe. Felt powerful. She'd made someone else weak for once.

She wants to be like that again- so big and so scary that no one ever hurts her ever again. Maybe then she could have protected Rollo- maybe then all the adults in the uniforms and the police and the foster parents would realize she is no easy target.

---

She leaves town. There are too many people looking for her.

She walks through the wilderness beside a road- she hates people and she hates cars and noise and flashing lights- but she can't live in the forest. She doesn't know how to hunt. She doesn't know how to make a shelter. She doesn't know how to start a fire. She has to get to a different town. She can steal more food, more clothing there. She needs new boots. After that she'll probably have to move again.

She hopes two towns over will be far enough that she'll be able to sleep. She keeps waking up from nightmares, over and over again.

Bonnie is dead, Marshal was taken away. She still dreams of them when she sleeps underneath the wide pine trees. In her dreams Bonnie makes her hurt Rollo. Sometimes she traps her in the basement for days and days and days in her dreams- until her ribs finally rip through her skin.

Her dreams with Marshal are all just memories with a few details added. She guesses her mind doesn't need to make up much about him for it to still be a nightmare.

She doesn't always remember all the things he did to her when she's awake- some things are blank in her mind. Blurry. In her sleep she remembers everything perfectly.

Sometimes she dreams of Rollo. He rolls in the grass more fed than she ever had him, more friendly than he had ever been. Everything is warm and calm and safe.

She wakes up and he's gone.

She's hungry. She's hungry all the time. It's worse than when Bonnie used to keep food from her, because at least then she still had her stash. She feels like a little kid again, crying over crumbs in her empty kitchen.

She eats berries from the bush. Sometimes they're sweet and juicy on her tongue and she devours as many as she can. Sometimes she eats a few and then vomits them back up a few minutes later.

She tries to catch squirrels and rabbits and fish- she's too slow, too loud, smells too noticeable. She wishes she was lighter, faster, with sharp fangs and pricked ears.

She eats dandelions the way one of her foster sisters taught her. They don't taste good, but they don't make her ill either. She tries not to remember the blood on the broken rubble, the screams that filled the air when Rollo tore Bonnies house apart.

She chews on broken sticks just to keep her teeth busy. It makes her feel like she's eaten more than she has.

She drinks from fast flowing water only- she doesn't remember who told her to do that.

It rains one day and she runs through the wet brush, trying to find the driest place to hide under. She spends hours painfully curled beneath a thick log suspended lowly by a rock. She still gets wet and cold.

Twice Rachel thinks she's getting close to the next town, but she doesn't. She passes a gas station and a couple of cabins clustered close together. She stays awhile near the group of cabins.

She steals some pants and shirts from a clothesline. She takes drinks from a cooler left outside. Some kid forgets to take his half-eaten apple with him when he goes inside. She has to wipe the ants off it, but it's not that dirty and still has plenty of room for her to eat.

Sometimes people throw trash out their windows while they drive. If it's not busy on the road she sneaks up and takes anything that she can use. She eats a few cold fries and a mushed burger. She cleans out a beer bottle that miraculously didn't crack.

She wants to bring even the useless trash with her- so that way she can throw it away somewhere wild animals won't choke on it. She doesn't have the room or the time.

She's so tired and hungry and cold by the time she gets to the next town that she falls asleep in the first place she finds- inside an old rusted car behind some sort of warehouse or shop. It's creaky and uncomfortable. It smells like oil and rust and something sour. There's a bee nest in the back of it.

She falls asleep anyways.

---

Marshal towers over her, body stretched ugly to the ceiling. He yells- words garbled and angry and so loud her ears feel like they're about to explode.

The house is dark and tangling and endless around her. No matter how fast she runs or how many corners she turns she always ends up back in the same room. Tables rise far above her head when she tries to hide underneath them, chairs disappear when she dodges behind them.

His hands are rough and hairy when he grips hers, fingertips hard like hooves. He slams her hand down onto the table. He holds her wrist still, strong- stronger than she'll ever be. He breaks each of her fingers with the heel of one of his shoes. She screams and screams and screams because she knows that's why people took her away. People only ever help her if she's loud enough that they can't ignore her.

His breath smells like beer and he laughs, mouth open in a bare toothed grin- snarling at her- and she-

---

Rachel's voice is raw when she wakes up, her heart pounding, her entire body sweating under the layers of blankets and coats and shirts she has on. Her back twinges sharply from the awkward position she had to force herself into to fit in the ruined back seat of the abandoned car. She feels hot and greasy. Her hair is getting too long again and she has to pull some of it out with her bare hands because it's gotten caught on the rusted edge of the cars door.

She sits still and looks at the plants poking through the floor of the car. She breathes carefully.

Once she feels less like she's going to jump at the slightest sound she starts to move again. She packs away her blankets- Bonnie made her fold her clothes over and over again until she could do it perfectly. She doesn't like doing it, she hates that bitch, but it does leave her more room in her bag.

She takes off her bad smelling coat and wraps the sleeves around her waist like a belt. She carefully unwraps and eats a bit of the stale jerky she took from the dead guy. It's not enough, she's still so fucking hungry, but she can't afford to eat more.

She needs to steal food today. Boots too, if she can find them- hers are too small for her- her toes pinch and bleed and are sore all night long. She doesn't mind being dirty or sweaty most of the time, but she stands out too much if she doesn't clean herself up every once and awhile, so she needs to do that too.

She also has to find somewhere to sleep before it gets cold and dark and drunk adults start wandering around.

She hauls her backpack on and crawls cautiously out of the car. The lot surrounding her is mostly stiff grass and deflated tires. There's a bit of cracked pavement closer to the big building. It doesn't look abandoned, but Rachel doesn't think people use it a lot either. It still makes her nervous that she slept so close to somewhere where people go.

The grass is dry and yellow and cracks when she steps through it. The sky is a mix of blue, yellow and purple as the sun rises. Crows call loudly to each other from leaning telephone poles. It's nice.

Rachel tries to stay behind buildings- at the edges between the town and the wilderness. She doesn't see very many people- it's too early for them to be out yet.

Rachel is very rarely relaxed- she knows not to let herself by now- but she's definitely less stressed than usual today. It's a relief to have found a source of food and shelter, even if it does mean she has to put up with people again.

She finds a blue scarf with pink flowers on it caught on the branches of a birch tree behind a parking lot. She climbs the tree- it's easy enough to do and she enjoys looking down at things from higher than usual.

The scarf is a bit ripped and dirty but is pretty warm when she wraps it around her neck.

She takes a plastic fork from a graffiti covered bench and puts it in her bag to wash later. She finds a few different coins scattered around the ground as she walks- she's not very good at counting change, so she tucks them away to puzzle over later.

She finds an part of town with houses and lawns, which is what she was looking for. She paces around the area until she hears a car start and follows the noise. She keeps a careful eye on the red-pickup truck that backs up out of a driveway, watching it intently until she can no longer see it. She creeps closer to the house.

Her heart is going fast enough that she can feel it in her hands and mouth, and her stomach squirms. Rachel knows that if she's caught here then they'll bring her to a police station, and then they'll find out what she did to Bonnie and the other kids and the house and they'll lock her up and leave her there forever. She'd rather die than be stuck somewhere with no escape again. She'll make them kill her if they try.

Still. She needs food.

She listens quietly before she climbs over the backyard fence, landing on the muddy grass as silently as she could.

Rachel freezes, listening. After a minute of crouching quietly she gets up. No alarms go off.

The yard is plain, there are no trees, just overgrown grass and an old folding chair and a barbeque half covered by a tarp. No dogs.

Rachel stalks towards the back door, ready to bolt at the slightest disturbance. The lights are dim still.

She crouches close to the door, mouth dry, and cautiously takes off her backpack. There's a pouch on one side that she uses to store small precious objects. She takes out her two bobby-pins.

One is bent at the closed loop end- she sticks it in the lock and puts a slight amount of pressure on it. The other pin is bent at an angle, the small ball at the end already torn off by her teeth and twisted slightly. She inserts it into the lock carefully, still keeping some pressure with the other.

She doesn't remember what the things that she pushes up inside the mechanism are called- the first foster sister she ever had taught her this in-between breaking lamps and shouting at her.

One by one she pushes each part of the lock up, hands shaking and ears pricked for the smallest of sounds.

Eventually the lock opens with a satisfying click.

She opens the door slowly, keeping her wrist turned on the knob and letting it reset itself gradually rather than letting go. She shuts the door lightly- so that it looks closed but can be easily opened just by her pushing.

The house is dark and quiet.

Rachel swallows.

She's in a kitchen, one that she doesn't even get half-way through looking at before she spots them.

Between the wooden legs of two old chairs and underneath the dinner table is a dark shape. Their ears are triangular and pointed up in interest, tail fluffy and extended out with a mix of curiosity and wariness. Their mouth is shut- neither open in a threatened snarl or a happy pant, their body still as they take her in the same way she takes them in. It's too dark to see their colors clearly, but she can tell from what little light does pour through the dirty windows that they are mainly dark with a lighter chest, legs, and muzzle.

They weren't expecting her but they're not too alarmed- they are not a guard dog, not trained to see an intruder as a threat. She's young too- which helps- they clearly are familiar with children. They're still alert enough that if she were to move too quickly or act aggressive they might bark.

Seeing them Rachel is filled with a relief so sharp and so warm that she can barely handle it. It feels like breathing air again after being strangled, except she hadn't known she was dying until just now.

She knows exactly what they're feeling and why. There's no confusion, no anxiety- no secrets or motives she can't understand or words she'll never comprehend. They are not trying to hide anything from her- not lying or tricking her or waiting until her guard is down to hurt her.

They're just a creature trying to survive comfortably, just like her.

Rachel discards the notion of creeping around this goddamn house timidly collecting food entirely- she'll do that later.

Right now, she has a dog to befriend- and hopefully- one that will want to come with her.