I hope you enjoy.----------------
A Flutter in the Night
A noise. It had only been a light noise, barely louder than a whisper. None-the-less, it had awoken me from my sleep. I heard it again, but my tired ears couldn’t make any sense of it. Was it the sound of papers that had been blow down the street through the night, or had I just rolled over and woken myself up with the rustling of my navy blue sheets? No, it couldn’t have been either of those, those events had occurred before, I’m sure of it. Then as if on cue, right after I had gotten comfortable again, the noise flew through the air. A fluttering, as that of a bird, reached my ears.
After I had rubbed my eyes, I glanced over to my alarm clock. Midnight? How quaint. I sat up in my bed and looked around and nothing seemed to be out of place. Again with the fluttering! As I looked back at the alarm clock, I noticed something I hadn’t the first time. The clock was flashing as if there had been a power surge, or a brownout at the least, in the middle of the night. With a shake of the head, I slowly stepped out of bed and shuffled myself over towards my bathroom.
I grabbed the clear plastic cup next to my sink and, as the thinly-plated gold handles turned, crystal clear water jetted out of a similarly colored faucet. I stared groggily into the mirror until a sudden chill rushed over my hands; as I quickly turned off the faucet, a much more surprising event occurred. A loud, earth-shattering crash sounded from the downstairs patio. To say the least, the cup became quick friends with the cold tiled floor, and the water, friends of the grout. I, myself, made a slight thundering noise as I ran down the stairs and through the house.
I pulled open the curtains to reveal a large cloud of dust beginning to settle. As more and more of the dirt began to subside, I could barely make out a wide, but shallow, crater in my back yard where my freshly laid patio used to reside. Millions of explanations flew through my head, each growing more ridiculous; yet at the same time, growing more appealing. A plane? A meteor? One of the meteors with gold inside? Before my mind had a chance to dissuade the rest of my body, the patio door opened and I, still in my silky, deep blue pajamas, bolted out in an attempt to find this “golden meteor.”
I found no golden meteor. I didn’t even find a golden coin or even a gold flake at the least. What I did find was something much, much larger then a meteor; before I had even taken three steps away from the house, a large beast lunged at me from the depths of the debris. Fur. Fur with a set of wings. It was an odd combination, yet, at the same time, this being seemed to wear its coat well. The animal had the head of a wolf, and was lunging towards me with the mouth wide open to reveal a line of very sharp and very long teeth. Even the beast’s premolars looked as though they were slightly longer and sharper than normal, and its canines seemed to be half the size of my hand with razor edges to match. The animal had deep and dark brown eyes, eyes that looked dedicated and fixed as if he had one priority in this animalistic life of his.
I wanted to close my eyes; I wanted to run. Nothing would respond, even my lungs seemed to halt in sheer terror. As this animal, this demon, slowly lunging through the air, I noticed that the cloud had dissipated and another being was slowly standing in the rubble. It was different though, this other being was distinctly human; I could see a face, a nose, ears, eyes, and a mouth. With much more calming wings of pale blue, as opposed to the dark grey wings of the other, this being, surely a guardian angel, was as a lantern is in a dark abyss. The next thing I knew, this robed angelic being was in the air, in an attempt to come straight down onto the demon, an epic battle of good versus evil. I could feel my heart drop as the wolf-beast glanced up and somehow pulled a barrel roll. Without missing a step, the humanoid gracefully followed the beast as it flew up the side of my house.
The angel reached out, grabbed the wolf’s left leg, and pulled himself up towards the beast’s body. It was beautiful. Two winged beings fighting in the air above my backyard. While I was watching with serious dedication, my naïve mind was lost as to who was getting the upper hand on whom. I felt like I was a tank Major watching a dogfight above him. I could watch the blows being exchanged, but was none the wiser on the exact damage being dealt. With a punch to the left side of the wolf’s face, and a claw to the humanoid’s chest, the pair seemed to be equally matched. Dancing up in the air, both were hesitant to disengage for fear of exposing a vital area, the spiral of death became tighter as they flew on.
Suddenly, the wolf kicked off the humanoid’s body and flapped one way from the little soiree while the angel flew the other, reeling from the unexpected stunt. It may have been my imagination, but I could have sworn there was a smirk on the demon’s face. I tried to call out, to warn the angel, but no words came from my lips. My mouth was suddenly dry, for all that was emitted was a raspy cough. The wolf circled around and came at the angel from below, his razor claws at the ready to turn his nemesis into minced meat. I slammed my eyes shut, not wanting to view this atrocity that was happening before me.
A spine numbing scream pierced the cold night air. As fast as my eyes had closed seconds before, they shot open to see a lone blue wing, plastered with the crimson blood of the angel, plummeting to the earth. I quickly glanced up to see my hero slowly falling, spiraling downward, flapping his lone wing with a look of terror painted across his face. But it wasn’t over. The demon returned, this time grabbing the angel by his neck and pulling him up into the dark night. Without any remorse or sympathy, the angel’s second wing was torn off and sent to meet with the other for one last reunion. By this point, a noticeable stream of blood was trickling down from the angel, splattering upon a few feathers with striking contrast.
I felt a cold wetness upon my cheek and found myself slightly crying as the wolf let the angel fall to the ground. With the sickening crunch of splintering bones, the angel hit the ground, and I forced myself to run over to the being. I knelt near him, bone protruding from his legs and chest. He gave me an unexplainable greedy look and reached out for my hands. Slowly complying, my eyes were locked to his. As he touched my hands I was shocked to be feeling my strength slowly fade away from me. A grin crept onto the angel’s face as a look of terror found itself upon mine.
Shock and terror made it virtually impossible for me to unlatch my hands from this being’s, while his grip made the physical separation a chore in its own right. To jumble my thoughts even further, the wolf flew in, separating the lock that the angel and I had. The now-wingless being’s hand jerked out of mine as he was pushed away by the beast across the crater. The two didn’t stop until the wolf slammed the humanoid into my shed, causing a metallic ring to echo out into the morning. The robed being was now bleeding from more pores then not and it made me wonder how much blood these angelic beings needed in their body.
The feeble push that the human was able to must up was hardly strong enough to keep the wolf’s jaws from clamping around his neck. I winced as blood spurted out of the hole that now existed in the humanoid’s throat. It gave one last whimper and then his head fell to his chest as the light faded away from his eyes. The wolf-man stood up and looked over the lifeless body before it started walking toward me. An odd feeling passed over me; I could move freely, run if I so wished it, but had no urge to flee from the scene. The wolf-man stopped a little less than a yard away from me and stared into my eyes. I looked into his and felt a true calming feeling creep into my mind, as if a burden was lifted. I smiled at the being and it returned to me a bow.
With an abrupt turn, it started walking away from me. Crouching momentarily, the being flew up into the air and disappeared somewhere into the clouds as the sun peeked over the houses in the far distance. I walked over to the pile of pale blue feathers and something caught my eye; amidst the dark crimson blood and pale blue feathers laid a single dark grey feather. As I picked it up, the rest of the feathers started to disintegrate into grey sand and be blown away with the morning wind. I glanced back at my shed where the corpse was to find that it was following suit.
As I stood there looking at the disintegrating scene around me, I realized the disintegrating wasn’t sticking solely to the wings. My shed started slowly at first, then my house caught on, and before I knew it, the entire area around me was turning into the sickening grey sand, even the sky. I found myself slowly sliding into the ground, only to start falling when a huge gust of wind blew everything away. My deep blue pajamas flapped in the wind and terror once again crept into my mind. Then the grey slowly started shifting colors. It was slowly growing darker, into a dark blue.
I sat up with a cold sweat and looked around. I looked around only to find my room. I glanced over at my alarm clock. Six thirty. I shook my head as I walked over to my bathroom, the dream still quite vivid in my mind. I grabbed at the cup next to the sink as I reached out to the thinly-plated gold handles, but my feet slid slightly on the wet tile. With eyes widening, I rushed down the stairs to glance out into my backyard. The curtains ripped slightly from the force that I pulled them with, but opened none-the-less. My heart fell as I opened the door and walked out into my backyard. It was the same as every other morning, as every other day.
I stood out to roughly the spot that I remembered from my dream and looked around. A fluttering, followed by a faint howl, sounded and I turned around to be equally disappointed as earlier. I hung my head as if in defeat, and saw a feather out of the corner of my eye. As I picked it up every image in my dream was intensified and the same calming feeling as I looked into the wolf-man’s eyes came back to me. Smiling, I looked up to the sky, and then headed into my house in order to get ready for the day ahead.
