GHOST STORY
She’d always said it wasn’t a fairy tale.
She’d been right. It was a ghost story.
There was a once a beautiful little girl, who stumbled upon a vicious wolf in the woods. She ignored his sharp teeth and dirty pelt. Her eyes didn’t linger on the bloodstained fur or pile of bones scattered around him. His deepest growl and most menacing glare didn’t send her running.
She only saw how dark the woods were, how lonely the wolf was — alone with only the shadows for company.
She didn’t run away, as everyone who’d come before her had done.
She pulled him out. Tugged on his paws and claws until he’d left the wild behind.
She knew a wolf could never become a pet dog. He was feral, ferocious.
She didn’t seem to mind.
She claimed him as her own, bound him inside the cage of her heart.
She loved the savage creature and tried to teach him how to exist outside the isolation of the forest.
She didn’t see that living in the wilderness wasn’t what made him wild.
The wild was inside him.
So, though the girl wrapped him tight in her embrace, though she bathed him in the warm glow of her soul…
He couldn’t help himself. It was in his nature, in the marrow of his bones, in his very blood.
There was no redemption, for a wolf.
Eventually, as he’d always known he would, he turned on the girl who’d been his salvation.
He killed her.
She became a ghost.
And he went back to the dark.