That Unwanted Animal -- WIP

Augustus wakes up crying.

She can feel the sticky trail of tears dripping down her cheeks before almost anything else, but doesn't even have enough time to even feel very confused about it before the rest of reality slams into her all at once, like a bus. Her whole body hurts like it has never hurt before, all the way from her hair to deep down inside of her bones. Making it worse is the realization that it's not just her face that feels sticky and wet, but everything -- an extra layer of unpleasant feedback clinging to her skin like a film, all over her. Her body decides to let out a ragged little wail about it before Augustus realizes her mouth and throat hurt just as bad as the rest of her, and she makes herself stop.

Her heart is jumping like a rabbit in her chest, and Augustus keeps trying to think of what is going on, but her thoughts feel like they're slammed like a cartoon character against a brick wall. Instead of being funny, there's nothing but a black hole of Fear crawling up her throat. She thinks she is on the floor, but doesn't know how she could have gotten there, and she is pretty sure that she's not wearing any clothes and can't remember why, and Augustus knows that she should open her eyes, but feels too scared to. She thinks of an image of her Sonic plushie falling out of her bed at night, but can't seem to believe in it.

Something is terribly wrong, she knows it, but she doesn't know what.

Augustus squeezes her eyes shut tighter and sobs, feeling her muscles ache through her whole body like she is one gigantic, awful bruise. It hurts so bad it makes her feel like she is going to throw up; she's never been this hurt before, and she does not know what to do.

"Dad," she tries to call, but it comes out of her mouth like a rasp, and she coughs when it catches in her throat, her whole body jolting painfully around the pull of it. She most definitely was not loud enough for anyone to hear her; Augustus doesn't know what to do and doesn't know how to figure it out. She wants there to be someone else there to figure it out for her -- she has never been this hurt before -- but even that little noise had hurt her whole body to make. She feels too scared to try again.

She tries to take a deep breath to calm down, but that hurts her too, her exhalation coming out more like a moan that does more to upset her than it does what it's supposed to. Her thoughts still won't put together right, but Augustus decides that opening her eyes will be the thing that hurts the least. It makes sense, she thinks shakily, to start small and then figure out what comes next. Step one: Open Your Eyes.

The basement is still mostly dark, except for the thin sunlight coming in through her little window by the ceiling. Augustus can see enough to know that she is on the floor after all, but she is not close at all to her bed, which means she doesn't know where her glasses are. It also means she did not fall out of bed while she was asleep after all. Something seems wrong about her room, also, but everything is too blurry without her glasses to really figure it out.

But then Augustus glances back down, and what she can see is the slick red smear of blood pooling on the concrete floor under her head, and she feels a new bolt of terror shock through her like lightning.

"Dad!" she shrieks, all the way at the top of her lungs, the panic pushing her past the sharp pain of it; her voice cracks with the strain, but Augustus doesn't have the room left in her head to care. Her body pushes itself up on run-terror instinct, and something in her hip pops noisily with the movement, but she almost can't even hear it under the broken groaning-scream that comes out of her when the raw way all of her muscles ask to stop moving catches up with her -- it hurts it hurts it hurts, she has never been this hurt before. Augustus should not be moving, she should not be moving at all, probably, she has never been this hurt before -- but her body keeps trying to push itself back away from the mess all around her anyway on scared panic instinct. She does not want to be here anymore. Something is really, really wrong, and she does not know what to do.

The door at the top of the stairs slams open fast, like her dad had been right there by it already when he heard her call for him. Augustus can't think about that for very long either before the kitchen light cuts down to illuminate her surroundings, and she feels herself make a startled shriek at the sight it lets her see.

She tries to cover her eyes with her hands, so she won't have to look at it any longer, but she's already seen too much of it to forget. Augustus is covered with blood, all over her body and all over the floor, more than she's ever seen before in her whole life, clumped strangely around matted chunks of what might be hair. Her throat vibrates with mindless distressed noise as her limbs tangle in the conflicting impulses to get up and run, or cover her eyes, or try to wipe the blood off of her. She can feel it everywhere, sticky and viscous and awful, and her hand lands on the floor to try to push herself backwards, only to flinch back at the feeling of something fragmented and sharp pressing up under her palm.

Augustus makes the big mistake of looking to try to see what it is, and finds that it is teeth -- broken and stained with red. Frantic, she shoves her fingers into her mouth and is almost too confused and scared to be relieved when she finds her teeth all still in her mouth, even if they do feel kind of sore and loose.

She can't stop crying. She doesn't understand.

"Augustus," her dad is saying, coming down the stairs at his own frantic pase to reach her, just in time for all of everything to crest into each other to a peak so overwhelming that Augustus ducks forward and vomits with the shock of it. The heaving pulls the muscles in her body so sharp and sudden that Augustus almost chokes on it, and then starts to cry harder. She doesn't want to look, but it is already too late; her vomit is dark like dirt and filled with clumps of soaking red stuffing, and Augustus doesn't understand.

Distantly, she can feel herself wailing, and the sensation of her dad trying to help pull her away from the mess filters in like a series of snapshot photographs. Her body finally catches up to the direction her dad is pulling her in, and twists to hide against his chest because she doesn't want to be here or have to look at anything or anything else anymore. She cannot catch her breath and she feels like she is going to vomit again but she's scared to let it happen because she doesn't know what else might come out of her and she does not want to find out. Augustus shrieks again when he hugs his arms around her and it feels like slamming into a very bad bruise, but she doesn't try to make him let go. The pressure hurts but it is better than the slick slime of the blood she is covered in, awful and stinking in her nose, and the fact that Augustus doesn't know where it is coming from feels like the scariest thing she has ever felt in her life, but at least someone else is there.

"G-d, you're alright," her dad is saying against the top of her head, even though Augustus can't make out anything but the noise of his voice buzzing senselessly in her ears. "You're alright, we'll figure it out. You're alright."

Augustus just buries her sticky-wet face into her stomach, and screams.

She feels the time start passing in confusing little snapshots, like a jumbled up box of puzzle pieces -- disorienting and disjointed: Being pulled up to her feet, upset hurt noises at the sore pain tugging through her muscles and bones, the rattling noise of her shower curtain, the smell of her shampoo undercut by the overwhelming stink of blood.

If she closes her eyes and holds very still, eventually she can almost make herself pretend that this is just normal routine, like it was when she was little. At least until a bottle of soap falls and the noise startles her, and Augustus' eyes open and she sees all the red-brown water splattered against the sides of the tub, running down towards the drain. After that, she covers her ears and presses her eyes shut as hard as she can and ignores the careful way her dad tries to tug her hair free to wash it and pretends she doesn't notice anything strange or upsetting at all, which would work better if she could stop crying.

After a while, her dad turns off the water to cover her up with a towel, but he doesn't try to make her get up again. Augustus presses the terrycloth against her sore cheek and finally cracks her eyes open, staring stubbornly up at the seam at the top of the bathroom door and not anywhere near the smeared up stains left on the front of her dad's shirt.

"What is happening?" she manages, her voice still cracking with the terror that's still lurking heavy in her chest like a spider, ready to pounce; Augustus almost feels dizzy with it.

"Honey," her dad says, his voice soft in a way she doesn't usually hear it. Like he's being careful, like he has to think about what he wants to say almost as much as she always does, and something about it makes her shoulders get all raised and round with the anticipation. "Are you sure it was a dog that bit you last month?"

"Yes," Augustus says, firm, on automatic, pulling the towel tight over her shoulders, only for her stomach to sink all the way down into the floor when it clicks in her brain what he means. "No," she snaps then, voice loud. Her hand smacks against the floor hard enough that her shoulder jolts with a wet clicking sound, which she ignores. She slams her hand down again. "No. No! That wasn't-, I'm not-,"

The words catch in her throat with an ugly choking noise, but she keeps shaking her head. Keeps shaking her head. "No," her mouth tries to say again, but it doesn't work, doesn't work because what her dad implied makes a sickening amount of sense, but Augustus doesn't want it to.

Augustus can't be a werewolf. She doesn't want to be one.

The heel of her palm strikes against the side of her head before she can stop it, the terror tearing up the inside of her body like a wave until she's drowning from it. Her hand hits out again, on desperate instinct, and she's too sore to hit very hard, but the soreness hurts worse than the hitting ever has, and Augustus howls with it and feels her get another hit in just from the outrage of thinking the word, because Augustus doesn't want to be a werewolf, she doesn't.

But what else could it be?