Nightmare

Three years ago -

Like a saw, the rope cuts through Harmony's wrist the more she struggled, her blood oiled the tight knots.

Her pain comforted her misery as she cried out to her father while two massive werewolves chewed on his arms, his body torn and shredded, his stomach was an empty, red, hole.

A grey werewolf griped Harmony's face, squeezing her skull. Its black eyes dragged her into a pit of terror.

Everything was gone in the womb of darkness.

"Harmony!" A voice yells.

Her eyes opened. Her body trembled. Pieces of her mind still in a dream state, Harmony pulled away from Dylan. The cold walls of her room were like the touch of a stranger. Her pupils, lost in the sudden light, searched her room, clothes pilled on the wardrobe door, boxes of food and wrappers like weeds on the floor

After finding Dylan's face within her confusion, Harmony swung her arms around him. She pressed her flushed cheek against his bare chest, and her heartbeat began to steady as it mimicked his own.

An accumulation of tears blurred the world around her.

"It's okay," he held her head lightly while patting Harmony's back. Buried in his sweet scent, her muscles eventually relaxed.

Hand in hand, they made their way to the bathroom where Harmony washed her face and blew her nose. "Do werewolves eat people?" She asked frightened of the answer.

"Have you ever seen us eat a human?" Dylan questioned in return.

Harmony shook her head.

"Dad said we were made to protect humans," he handed Harmony a face towel then leaned on the wall by the sink.

"From what?" Her curiosity blanketed her nightmare for a while.

"Vampires or something, but no one's ever seen one," Dylan responded.

___________________

Upon opening the door, Harmony and Nina are greeted by a wolf's skull hanging on the wall. Miss Denys guides the two nervous students past the brown, leather sofas with rounded edges, and leaves them with the headteacher, who is sat behind his desk. Above him is a gold-framed landscape painting of a stone building surrounded by trees.

Harmony's question, as to why Mr. Bates is in his office in the middle of the night, remains locked in her mind.

The wrinkles on Mr bate's forehead hang over one another like curtains. His eyebrows slant towards his nose bridge, casting a shadow around his eyes. His breathing sinks slowly and heavily before rising again as he shifts his stare between Nina and Harmony.

Crushed by the silence, Nina blurts out, "I'm sorry Sir."

"what for?" His dark narrow glare sits on Nina.

She hesitates, looks at Harmony for a while, then confesses, "despite being nearby, I failed to detect the werewolf."

"Do you know why that boy is in our school or not?" He inquires sharply, cutting past any stalling or irrelevance.

"No sir," Nina averts her gaze.

Immediately, Harmony inserts, "he's a friend of mine." She pauses before continuing in his silence, "he delivered something to me, I didn't know we couldn't bring people into the school."

The headteacher relaxes "Now that you know, don't let it happen again."

When he returns to Nina, a scowl snaps back onto his face, "you've been a great disappointment today Nina, do not let this behaviour continue." After instructing Nina to leave, the headteacher turns to Harmony.

The half wolf's mind, momentarily lost in questions, shifts back to Mr. Bates.

"First I would like to express my gratitude for keeping the school safe," although his expression has softened, his voice remains croaky and unsympathetic.

"Thank you Sir," she replies anxiously.

"Since you are eighteen, we do not require you're parents' signature for your admission, however for your safety, we would need an emergency contact number."

Even if anyone at the estate owned a phone, providing a werewolf's contact information to the headteacher of a werewolf hunting school would likely be catastrophic. She thought for a while before explaining that she has no one.

Accepting her story, Mr. Bates releases Harmony.

Upon opening her room door, the bed has been taken over by Nina's outstretched body like a plastic bag on the surface of the ocean.

"You can borrow my spare bed sheet and lay it on the floor," Nina notices Harmony's displeasure at her suggestion, "just be grateful I'm lending you anything at all."

An insult to her pride, Harmony refuses to give up the bed to Nina, "as far as I know this is my room now, maybe you should go back and speak to the head." She keeps the disrespect in her tone on a leash.

In a gush of fury, Nina sits up "this was my room first, this is my bed, these are my things and I'm going to find out where the fuck you hid the rest of my stuff."

The shock of the accusation makes Harmony forget to breath."I didn't touch anything of yours. I didn't even know this room belonged to anyone," Harmony defends herself. A bubbling concoction of irritation and anger spurring in her stomach.

"Of course you didn't," Nina lays back down, her attention at the poster on the ceiling of a blond woman standing intimidatingly with a gun, and a decapitated werewolf under her shoe.

Offended, Harmony digs into her pocket and throws the room key on the floor by the bed, "Forget it, keep your room." She leaves the door to slam.

Harmony dwells by the door where she took a werewolf's life. cracks on the wall from their fight now smooth, it's body has already been moved, the rubble cleared and fixed as if it never occurred; however, the pain in her knees, and the lingering sensation of its cracking neck, chains her to a torturous replay. With nowhere to stay, Harmony wonders the girl's dorm, cased in her regret.

She opens the door to the stairwell, a repetitive thumping draws closer at a rapid pace. Harmony turns her head, a bulky werewolf races towards her like a mindless bull; its fur matted, and greased with blood, its mouth foaming and drooling. She rushes down in a panic, jumping huge flights of stairs.

She exists through a door, not sure how far down she's gone. The beast catches up to her. Harmony screams, hoping a teacher would hear; but like before, no one notices the hammering, growls, and chaos.

Harmony pleas, "I don't want to fight ..." Its claw already swinging towards her shoulder, she's thrown across the hallway, her arm torn, her shoulder dislocated, a burning pain pounds at her brain.

Harmony tumbles forward as she gets up. She throws herself out of the way as the werewolf lunges at the wall she was leaning on. A dense stench engulfs the air from an unknown source, like rotting flesh emanating from the building itself.

A fly struggling on a web, Harmony holds her arm in place as she scurries towards a nearby room and yanks the entrance open. Strangely, her shoe lands on a soft, squishy, texture. To her despair, after investigating the thick rope of flesh, Harmony is lead to her father's emptied body, his eyes and stomach gauged out, his limbs chewed on. She turns away immediately.

Her legs quiver, each step forward feeling like a crack in her bones, until she could no longer support herself. Her back against the wall, Harmony lets her body fall to the ground. Her breathing short, sharp, and spaced. "This is just a dream," she persuades herself.

The metallic scent of blood is soon replaced by a familiar sweetness. Dylan's dark hair sinks into Harmony's sight when he sits down, and she releases a huff of air in relief before indulging in his embrace, tearfully. "Did Mike tell you I was here?" she asks, feeling his head nodding above hers. "I'm sorry I left without saying anything."

Her hair falls onto her face with instant heavy wetness, the red liquid dances down her cheek, past her eyes, nose, across her lips, and dripping from her chin. she shuts her lips tightly, not wanting to taste Dylan's blood. A head rolls towards two, large, elongated, hairy feet. Dylan's blue eyes stare at her blankly. Harmony cries out, terrified, sickened, and in tears. She shuts her eyes, screaming without control at the peak of her lungs. It isn't until two hands turn her around that she quietens.

Harmony recognises the tattoo sleeves on the teacher's arms "He... the werewolf.." her words are shattered by fear. Her stomach twists, looping endlessly within itself as if trying to squeeze the horror out of her.

"It's okay," he pulls Harmony into the darkness of his leather jacket, holding her securely by his chest, and obscuring her view as he leads her away. She is wrapped in the scent of gunpowder, werewolf blood, and baby powder.

The solid ground becomes slick, it crunches as they walk together. The air becomes fiercer and Harmony can pick up the hissing of foxes, kissing of leaves, and the distant traffic, her senses heightened again; however, seem like a forgotten friend.

The teacher finally releases her, the warm light of the girl's dorm now only visible through the windows like the few stars in the night sky.

"Why didn't you come sooner? You're supposed to be a hunter, you're supposed to save people," she pushes the teacher away as he tries to comfort her.

He holds her eyes sympathetically, "Listen to me carefully, and understand that none of what you saw was real" he reveals.

Harmony can't doubt the smell of death that contaminated the halls, the sound her father's intestines made under her foot, the pain in her arms. She rolls her shoulder, then examines her injury, now mysteriously gone. Her afro is dry and full of volume, the blood on her face has also vanished.

"No! I know what I saw, Dylan's body felt warm, the werewolf's claws struck my arm," Harmony searches her body again before looking up at the nightmarish building. Through the window she sees some girls getting ready for bed, while some study and others gather together laughing. "What's happening to me?" Her eyes swell in tears, the tattooed teacher catches her in his arms, rubbing her back.