Puppy Love

All of the pigs were dead.
Through the slats of the twisted oak fence, I could make out their lifeless forms lying in the mud. It couldn’t have been the creeping winter chill that cut through them because the bite marks they harbored were more brutish and cruel, something only a beast could be capable of.
My wife clung to my arm, her gaze frozen with mine on the pigs. Without them, we couldn’t have our annual feast, where we had first met. Her crestfallen expression stabbed at my heart, reminding me of how much she looked forward to it. I couldn’t forgive the cause of her despair.
I traced my hand over the mangled fence, a river of red spilling down the yellowed grass and into the cedar grove.
Anger clawed up my throat.
I would find this beast.
I would find this beast and kill it.
Clasping her hands in mine, we walked towards our manor, sycamore trees obscuring it and the setting sun. Once in the parlor, I tugged on my wool coat and adorned a red hunting cap.
I grabbed my axe.
I would make this quick.
The sun barely illuminated the sky when I left, though I only realized this as I descended upon the grove without a lantern. It was foolish, but I couldn’t turn back now, I had to kill this beast.
I followed the stench of blood through the dark grove. Birds didn’t coo, crickets wouldn’t chirp, and I moved in a fearful silence. The trail I followed, I followed almost blind. The thickening trail of blood glistened in the moonlight, my only light in the darkness.
A twig snapped. An animal scurried. Something was there.
I stumbled into a sea of blood, mangled bodies of numerous animals adrift in the pool. Animals I could barely recognize, skeletons so broken I couldn’t tell what they used to be.
What kind of a beast could do this…
Fear ripped through me, now not only for the feast, but for my life.
Hearing a deep growl, I fell backwards and into a tree, hitting my head and dropping my axe. When I regained focus, my wife lay over me, her drooping hair obscuring her face.
I reached out and clung to her desperately. I was afraid, but she was there! Like an angel in the darkness, like she had been ever since we met. I embraced her and smiled wearily, my vision blurred with tears.
Then, I heard a snap.
It came from me.
A clawed hand plunged inside of me, attached to the body of my wife.
Skin punctured, muscles tore, and the woman before me was no longer the one I had known.
With her snout and her claws, as she tore deep into my chest, and as she breathed her dog breath into my face, I still loved her.
And with a couple more curls of her claws,
-the love of my life had stolen my heart once again.

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