David's Last Straw
Imported from SF2 with no description provided.
Hey guys, very long time no see. Sorry for no new stories I've had no new inspiration or motivation, and been busy with irl stuff. Nothing bad irl, just vey busy. But Lately I've gotten the inspiration to write out stuff for my upcoming Werewolf: The Forsaken tabletop game that I'll be playing with my DnD group in the next few months after we're done with our current DnD campaign. With the heavy focus on story telling in W: TF, I hope to write out our game sessions into stories for everyone else to experience along with me.
I have to give a strong heads up to the graphic, violent nature of the story ahead (and with future stories) cause of the very grim dark nature of Werewolf: The Forsaken. So if extreme violence and gore isn't your thing, please don't read. You've been warned.
David picked up the baseball from dry, overgrown yellow grass. How long had it been there? Ten? Fifteen years? All that time in the Nevadan weather. The leather was dry and cracked. The cotton stitching, once red, was now a sun bleached pink, and broken in the places it endured the most sun, letting the cowhide cover to peel away slightly away from the seam.
He brushed away dirt and dust sticking to the underside, seeing the stitching was still red there. Albeit dirty. He remembered how he and Michael would toss the ball to each other. He remembered one day, when David was younger. Eight, he thought he was. When Michael refused to throw the ball. So David threw the baseball at his older brother, nailing him right in the forehead. Michael got so mad. Chasing David down to hit him back. Their respective screams caught their father’s attention, who tore the brothers apart and smacked both upside the head.
David’s vision blurred with tears, but he couldn’t help but let out a sobbing laugh at the memory. What he’d give to throw the ball with his older brother one last time.
He saw the peeling leather jitter in the wind. No. Not the wind. There wasn’t any wind today. It was his hand… He remembered the last day he and his older brother threw the ball to each other. They were throwing the ball to each other like every other day. To and fro. Catching the ball each time, despite how far they threw it in their yard, trying to catch each other out. Michael threw to David, but David didn’t catch it. It sailed right past him, as he stood rooted in place, pupils constricted to pinpricks in fear of what stood behind his older brother.
His psychiatrists, during each of his multiple stints in asylums, told him the mind and the memories they form was a fragile thing. That what David remembered wasn’t what really happened. What he saw was something else. A lunatic on drugs, a mountain lion, or even possibly a bear. Anything but what he saw. What he insisted he saw before he stopped insisting and started lying when the doctors started threatening electroshocks. But he knew what he saw. What he saw was a great monstrous wolf. It towered behind Michael and stood two legs, covered in fur so black it looked like a void in the shape of a bipedal wolf.
Tears streamed down David’s face, dropping the baseball as he remembered what happened. His breath hitched with erratic, hyperventilating sobs.
Michael saw his younger brother’s fear, but didn’t even get a word out before he dropped to his knees and slumped to his side. Seizing, the entirety of the back of his skull missing. What remained of his brains spilling out onto the hot dry grass. His eyes still fixed on his younger brother.
David dropped to his knees, his hands tearing at his hair. He wanted to tear his eyes away from what he was remembering. Hide away. To wail and scream. But all he could let out were hard, choking sobs.
The wolf stepped over Michael’s seizing body, stalking toward the frozen David. But a crazed screech tore at the air, making the wolf’s head snap toward the screeching; David and Michael’s mother. It dashed out of David’s sight towards his mother. There was a crash of shattered glass and the screeching was cut off with a sickening, wet crunch. Soon after was another scream. A scream of fear and rage. From a man this time, David’s father, followed by a gunshot. Then another gunshot, followed by another sickening, wet crunch. There was a loud, gurgling sound. Then another wet crunch. Then another. Then another.
All David could hear was the roaring of his blood. He tore at his hair so hard that blood ran down his face from furrows left from his nails. He could still see his older brother on the ground, missing the back of his head. Brains spread across the grass. He was still moving, twitching and seizing. For so long. For so very long. His eyes still locked on his younger brother.
He could still feel the paralyzing fear. The shame of not doing anything to warn anyone. The guilt of being the only one left. But under all that was something else. Deep, deep down and splitting the seams of its container. A blood boiling _ RAGE _. A rage that could find only one outlet. Making David choke as he fought so desperately to keep it down. But despite all his efforts it burst out. First as a mournful, keening wail before growing into a roar of sorrow and rage. His upper and lower canines sharpening and lengthening.