FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 10 - Loss

-H-

The sun warmed my face and began to cast across my eyelids as it moved higher through my window. I squinted my already closed eyes, sleepily shielding myself from it, not wanting to wake.. but the sun was endlessly persistent. That was something I was thankful for, a natural alarm clock that wasn't going to let me waste the day away in bed. My lips parted in a wide yawn, arms stretching out, reaching for nothing in particular. I felt something crusty on my sheets, making a face, a little bit of heat flooding my cheeks. My dreams hadn't been 'that' exciting, what.. I froze. Blood. All over my sheets.

A groan escaped my lips, and I sighed heavily, making a face. My damn hand, the bandage must have soaked through. Blood was going to be so hard to get out of white sheets. My eyes opened again, looking at my bandaged hand and seeing.. very little blood on it. It looked slightly splattered, not soaked through. Confusion welled in me.

"What the hell..?" I mumbled out to no one in particular, slowly moving around the blood soaked parts of my sheets and stepping off the bed.

There was a soft crunch and I felt fur under my foot, quickly jerking back and apologizing out loud, "Shit, sorry Sawyer"

My eyes dropped down as I pulled back, expecting to hear a hiss or yowl or something for stepping in her tail, but nothing came. My heart sunk back in my chest and my face contorted, eyes wide. Blood. More blood. Soaking the floor, soaking her pretty white fur. A deep, sickening sorrow flooded through my body. Confusion right beside it. Fear. How? What happened? I didn't understand. I didn't understand how she could suddenly be dead there on my floor . Torn apart. It was a gruesome sight.

Tears welled heavily in my eyes as I scrambled back, unable to tear my eyes away. My heart raced, my mind raced. Sawyer.. She was an antisocial, rarely affectionate little troublemaker with an ego bigger than she was but.. she didn't deserve this. This sudden, horrific death. I felt sick, my stomach twisted up, I dry heaved.. expecting to vomit but nothing came up. Time passed as I tried to wrap my head around the brutal scene I had woken to. It took longer than it should have for my sleep addled mind to put the pieces together, to connect what had happened.

The Wolf.

He had killed her. He killed Sawyer. He tore her apart and left her carcass on my floor. Why? Was it a warning? Something had gotten too close to me and he had killed her.. So many possible scenarios ran through my head. What could I do? If he wanted to, he could easily kill me too. I couldn't fight him.. could I? How do you fight something that is a part of you.. I could wait till he came out and stab him with a knife.. would that do anything? Would that even work? What if he just disappeared back inside of me.. What if he turned ghostly or whatever he did when he melded with me and the blade went right through him?

I didn't understand him well enough to know, but I kept picturing that big kitchen knife on the cutting block. I would need to have it ready to defend myself, whatever that meant. The scene had left me shocked, left my adrenaline pumping and ready for a fight.. a fight that scared me to my core. Part of me tickled at my mind that he didn't seem to want to hurt me, maybe I would be safe from him. Another part argued that that was the same internal logical jumps abusive relationships took to continue. The little thoughts waged war back and forth as I stared at the carnage, trying to make sense of everything.

My poor cat.. I needed to clean up. Clean her up.. I couldn't just leave her there on the floor. There were old towels I had in the closet that I could use. I went to get some cleaner from under the sink, grabbing towels and anything I could think of to help me deal with the tragic mess waiting for me back in my room. I grabbed the kitchen knife to keep with me.. just in case. Once more, like the previous day, I felt numb and automated as I walked around and went into cleaning mode. Inside my chest my heart ached, my stomach ached. I was on autopilot again, I had to be.. it was the only way I could deal with another loss. Another. So soon right after the first. Both devastating in different ways.

How much could a person take? How much pain and loss and stress did it take to break someone? Dulling myself to it all was a coping mechanism, I knew, but I needed it to keep my feet moving. It was too much to deal with all at once, too many difficult things, impossible things. One step at a time. Each foot moving and going where they needed to go. My hands wrapped poor Sawyer up gently in the towels, wrapping her like a baby, careful like I was afraid of hurting her. I bundled her and set to cleaning up the blood. My hands scrubbed and scrubbed, one of them aching from the cut along my palm, a constant reminder of the beast that had caused the waves of stress rocking through me. Compartmentalize that. Compartmentalize the pain in my hand, just finish cleaning. Don't think, just clean.

Just clean.

It was after noon by the time I finished. I wrapped the bundle in the bloody sheets off my bed, there was no saving them.. it all needed to go. I held the densely wrapped bundle tight to me, hugging it, hugging her deep inside at it's core. The wolf had been silent. He hadn't come out.. maybe he wouldn't. I couldn't risk going anywhere near people though. Near anything living. I still needed to deal with Sawyer though... My eyes had been dry through the cleaning, I had numbed myself as much as I could, but all at once heat filled my eyes and tears welled up.

Sawyer. I'm sorry.

I didn't shower, I needed one but this had to come first. Getting into my car I placed the bundle gently in the passenger seat. It just looked like a bundle of white sheets, like I was going to do laundry. No blood was showing, but I knew what lay within. A quick stop to the hardware store to buy a shovel, I lived in an apartment.. I didn't own a shovel. Had no need for one until now. The clerk eyed me a bit, maybe it was just my imagination, but I knew I must look sketchy. Dirty clothes I had tossed on, an old hoodie, a big bandage around my hand. Just buying a shovel and likely looking pale and sickly. Did I have any blood on me? I hoped not..

Where do you bury a pet when you live in an apartment? I guess most people took them to the vet.. Unless you owned land and could bury them yourself, there weren't many options. Going to the vet couldn't happen though, how would I even explain what happened to poor Sawyer? I could lie.. I could say a dog killed her, it wouldn't be far from the truth.. but then there was the risk of going into a place with other pets and other people. Risking their lives too. I couldn't do that. So I drove. Tears welled again as I drove around. Loss hits you in waves. You can get things under control, still yourself, stop crying. You can be fine for an hour. Two hours.. but then a stray thought crosses your mind. Maybe a memory. Maybe just remembering the fact that they are gone. The tiniest thing can make your eyes blurry with tears again. It's a raw wound that can reopen and bleed again without warning. It takes time to scab, to heal, to scar over.

The car rumbled along a dirt road.. I didn't really know who owned the property, I just knew that kids back in highschool would come out to this large stretch of property and it was far enough away that no one seemed to ever be around. It meant kids could drink and make out and sometimes fuck, it's wear I had gone skinny dipping once, I. the little stream that ran through the land. It had not been as deep as everyone had initially thought and it left a lot of us standing there awkwardly thigh deep and shivering, naked. A strange place for me to choose but, it was all I could think of.

Digging a hole is much harder than they make it look on Tv. I dug out the first few inches out in the woods in a little clearing, that went easy.. but that was just topsoil. Then the ground got dense, and I kept hitting rocks. Even small rocks stopped the shovel dead. Then there were the tree roots. I wasn't near a tree, I had given myself plenty of space away from the trees to avoid the roots.. but those things spread out so much further than people think. Tangles of them. The shovel kept stopping suddenly as I hit them, having to either pick somewhere to start digging again or chop through them. I was sweating and exhausted. The hole probably needed to be deeper but I had nothing left in me, it was enough.

I was overly gentle with her, setting the bundle in and staring at it solemnly. I didn't say anything, it was just me out there.. I knew how I felt. It was another loss, even if she wasn't the friendliest pet, I would still miss her. There would still be little moments throughout every day that I'd feel something was missing. No pitter-patter into the kitchen when it was dinner time. No staring at me through the window when I was coming up the steps to the front door. No trying to drink water from the sink while I was washing my hands or brushing my teeth.. Tears bubbled into the corners of my eyes again. I covered her up and made my way back to the car, feeling empty, feeling drained. Feeling the loss.