Death's Alleyway

The sun retakes the pale blue stage outshining any other source of light; it is crowned with the few clouds in the sky.

A long buzz jolts Mayan awake. She runs to the door, revealing an eighteen-year-old brown-skinned woman puffing her afro.

"Aren't you supposed to be at work?" Harmony doesn't comment on Mayan's swollen eyes surrounded by dark circles, the patches of dirt forming on her pyjamas, the missing fifth and fourth button or holes on her right sleeve, armpit, and near her stomach.

"What's the time?" Mayan asks, squinting her eyes at the brightness of the morning.

Harmony checks her phone. "8:40."

Mayan sprints up the stairs, shuffles her trousers off, and scrambles around for a decent tracksuit. She calls for her son, once again, but there's no reply.

Mayan comes to the realisation that her son is missing. Panic fuels her dash out the door, barefoot and in her nightwear. She calls out to L.J, following his scent while Harmony runs inside to collect Mayan's shoes before chasing after her. They're led to an elongated alley reeking of wee, used condoms and werewolf blood.

Mayan could never prepare herself for the horror of seeing her son's half transformed small frame. His mouth and eyes open, the agony stapled on his face."I warned him not to go out at night. I told him the hunter's still out there. He never takes me seriously," she wails by his side.

Also, in the scene is another werewolf's remains, its height far exceeding L.J's. Harmony's eyes grow wide. She moves to the second body. Recognising her scent she calls out, "Wila?" But her deceased friend can no longer reply.

***

Aylin lay waiting in her metal den through the night, it looked like polished charcoal with rolled up tainted windows; and two deep paw-shaped cavities on the front, spread out between both slender headlights of her car. Although one headlight has been forced out of place and is left swinging like a kentama.

The two women lost in sorrow couldn't hear her heels as she strides in, gun by her side.

"Would greatly appreciate you explaining to me how you know the pieces of trash lying on the ground?" Aylin's request is a provocative mutation of politeness and malice.

***

Harmony takes a deep breath, wipes her tears away and focuses her senses on the traffic nearby, calming the earthquake in her heart. She denies being affiliated with the lifeless werewolves knowing the risk attached.

Insulting the remains of her son and friend is like a declaration of war. A desire to see the blonde's tongue ripped out pushes Mayan to transform, her clothes shred and fur grows instantly, like a gigantified human with the head of a wolf. She charges at the hunter mindlessly, but falls in a few steps, her ash fur drowns in her blood.

The roaring of cars, beeping, and people chatting can't mute the gunshot which took Mayan's life. The scent of petrol, tires, and years of urine can't mask death's odour contaminating the alley. Harmony closes her eyes.

"Are you one of them too?" Aylin takes a few steps forward.

"I'm not." Harmony whimpers.

"Then why are you crying." Her left arm rests on Harmony's shoulder, her gun loose on her fingers.

Terror leaves her unable to wipe her tears. A noose around her neck; she's stunned by the terror of knowing that her next words carry the weight of her future. She stutters, "wouldn't you cry if you saw someone you care about..."

A sudden burning pain ignites across her body, she wants to scream till her vocal cords tear but holds it in with desperation. Blue liquid surges through her veins from the needle. After minutes of anticipation.

Aylin moves her hand away, returns her gun to her side, and walks away, "since you're not a beast I won't hunt you but I suggest you abandon your sympathy for those monsters." With those final words, Aylin becomes an apparition Harmony was sure she had conjured, however; the lingering pain from the aqua fluid calls her out on her wishful thinking.

She's the lone tree in a forest recently ravaged by a wildfire, rooted firmly to the ground, layered in the blood of her brethren.

The hairs on her body wanting to flee, poke out; goose bumps emerge while she quivers out of the alley, her first few steps squelching and meshing as she lifts her feet out of the crimson pool surrounding her. The bloody footprints stalking her, its daunting smell responded to with a cascade of tears. Mayan's eyes still watching.

Almost an hour of walking leads her to an Estate: three brick buildings of three floors forming a circle round the park at the core, their skin of paint peeling off, mold invading along the walls and pushing towards the pipes along the sides.

The park is guided by a wooden rail with square tops and flaky white paint, hammered together by two parallel wooden bars.

The roofed entrance of Alpha building as it is called became home to several spiders over the years, with webs like lianas stretching from corner to corner, the unbothered residents of Alpha building welcoming every one of their eight-legged neighbours.

Harmony's hand presses the number 24 on the push plate, first second and third time, and creating a dent on the fourth. Frustrated with the dial's lack of cooperation she falls into herself, Mayan's shoes pinched together and her arms folded around her face.

A few minutes of crying passes, Harmony stands ready by the door, pulls herself back, then slams against it, a bang signalling her entrance. Before she got up the second flight of stairs, Dylan, a nine-teen-year-old guy with smooth tar-black hair contrasting his celeste blue eyes, lands a jump from the second floor.

"You know how much it's gonna cost to get that door fixed?" He stops at the sight of a broken Harmony and scent of blood "What happened?"

Trapped in the eternal visions of a massacre, Harmony is unresponsive.

He levels his face with hers, connecting their foreheads, "whatever it is you can trust me."

Compelled by the sanctuary of his warmth, Harmony leans into him, tying her arms around his waist, "little Joe was missing, Mayan and I tracked his scent to an alley." She gathers herself, "but he was already gone, lying next to Wila. A hunter came, she shot Mayan and likely Joe and Wila too." Her voice becomes muffled by her despair.

"Where's the alley?" constrained rage seeps through Dylan's voice.

"You can't go. It's a trap." Her grip on Dylan tightens.

"Their bodies are still there right? I'm not leaving them like that." He rises to his height of a hundred-and-ninety centre meters. Harmony yanks his arm back down.

"Dylan, I can't lose you too."

"Dylan Wait." A deep husky voice resounds through the building fixing Dylan in place, the source; a man in his forties with greying black hair and stubble, thick muscles and a stern expression, his feet slam the ground as he lands from the highest floor. "Harmony, I'm sorry you had to witness what you did, but can you remember anything else?"

She draws a breath, her mind shoots past her haunting memories as she exhales, "I didn't turn around, so I couldn't see her face. But she injected me with something, it burned from within like my skin wanted to rip apart, I think that's what she uses to identify werewolves. And little Joe, his body was in mid-transformation, fur and skin mixed together. He looked like he was screaming, the pain on his face..." Harmony's body trembles. She holds herself tighter in hopes of subsiding the shaking.

"Dad that's enough!" Dylan returns to Harmony's side.

"You're forbidden from going near that alley." Raymond orders.

"You're just gonna leave them? They deserve a proper burial!" Dylan opposes as he jolts up.

The two men now face to face. Dylan though taller than his father is shrunken by his dominance, suffocating him to submission; however, his determination strengthens his legs from weakening against his father's aura.

"Are you challenging me?" At The Alpha's call, two men appear, "escort my son to the cellar."

"Is that really necessary?" Dylan protests.

"For the safety of the pack." Raymond answers.

***

A bared damp box exiled from daylight, stone floor incapable of alluring heat's warmth, and an intruding breeze. Dylan's arms are chained to the wall and legs to the ground where he sits, his waist strapped down by thick wide leather while Harmony lays beside him free of constraints. The passing wind slays their silence, Harmony is trapped in the rewind of deaths playing in her mind.

Dylan attempts to disrupt her visions. "you should go home, ain't no point both of us get punished."

She pulls her legs in, tying them with her arms. "I shouldn't have just left." Harmony leans on his chest, reverting to infancy as she bawls. "If I stood by Mayan, would she still be here?"

Disapproval urges Dylan to scold Harmony's cowardice, however; when his eyes fall on her anguish and regret, and her beating heart in resonance with his own reaches his ears, he holds her tighter, cursing at himself for not being satisfied with her safe return.

"You can't ever find out stuff like that, all you can do is move on and respect the fact that in that situation you lived." He advises.

"I can't move on from things like this, " she wipes her never ending tears.

"That's why you've got me, and the pack." He reassures her.

Harmony's voice is as soft as cotton, "when they find out they'll wish I took Mayan's place."

"Dad will explain it to them, and if that don't work, I'll get them to understand."

A light chuckle slips out from Harmony, "You're more likely to make it worse."

He pets her with words of comfort and nostalgia until several hours run by, heavy steps trample on the peace Dylan spent hours layering around' Harmony's heart.

Her concerns reawaken.

Alvita, a titan of a woman armoured with thick muscles showcased by her lilac singlet, and deep red dreadlocks takes her last bulldozing step by the gate. Brown and black stains fade from the top of her white boots. Her intimidating figure makes proud the title 'Strongest woman in the pack'.