and howls all night long.
***
In the morning, her tracks trace a half-moon in the snow around my cabin. Her trail begins and ends with that half-moon; she came from nowhere, and she went nowhere.
And her prints aren’t paws. They’re bare human feet.
***
She never comes before nightfall. As long as sun on snow blinds me, I’m free of her–I know I’m free of her.
A few dead daylight hours. And then the sun sets, invisible here among the pines.
***
Full darkness. I hide in my firelit cabin.
She doesn’t come.
I wait.
She doesn’t come.
I fall asleep.
***
Deep in the night, I wake to her howls creeping in through the cracks in the cabin walls. I want—I need—to hear anything other than that. I feed the fire until it gorges and growls, I mumble to myself, I shout, I scream, I shriek, I howl.
Isaac Fox is a student at Lebanon Valley College, where he majors in English and creative writing. When he’s not reading or writing something assigned, he’s probably reading or writing something unassigned. His work has previously appeared in Tiny Molecules, Rejection Letters, and several other publications. You can find him on Twitter at @isaac_k_fox.