Chapter 2: A New Morning

It was the chirping of birds that woke him up from his slumber. He remembered having been bitten by a big wolf that attacked him while he was trying to help the dog. He looked at his right hand to see the injury in daylight.

‘Shock’ wasn’t enough of a word to describe his reaction when he saw the hand was completely normal, with just a bit of redness where the wound should have been.

He was confused. He looked at his bedroom floor, which had bloodstains. After musing for a few minutes, he decided to get out of the house and start the day.

‘Maybe I was lucky that the wolf might not have been able to sink its teeth enough.’

He looked out of the window. The Sun rose from the horizon.

‘The weather prediction seemed to be right; the atmosphere was normal.’

He searched in the house for the dog to feed him and see if it was injured but the dog was nowhere to be found.

‘Guess he went out there,’ he thought. He wondered what kind of abuse he must have suffered that he still chose the forest over humans.

Erik used to work in a small restaurant in town which was owned by his grandfather’s friend, but he stopped after his grandfather’s death and decided to solely focus on his college degree. Still, he often went to the restaurant to help the old man and longtime friend of his grandfather.

After freshening up, he closed his house, checking all the windows and doors twice just to make sure. After the experience last night, there was no logic in taking risks. It was a close call. There have been many cases of packs of wolves causing heavy injury or killing humans. In his case, it would have been the latter.

‘I was lucky, I guess.’ With that thought, he closed the main door and the doorknob was in his hand, ripped apart from the door. ‘I think I should fix this and try to find the dead body of that wolf and the knife.’

That knife was special. It was a family treasure. No normal human would call it a treasure though; it had a handle made of stone and the metal blade had been rusting. But it was special because his grandfather had given it to him.

He started to walk toward the town, which was more than a three-mile walk. He had his grandfather’s old pickup truck but he preferred walking when he was not in any hurry.

After the blizzard, it was a busy day at the restaurant. Still, he was back home after afternoon rush hour. It was a busy day but he didn’t feel tired at all, which was odd to him. Even odder were the few headaches he had during his time at the restaurant.

Though he had great sleep last night, he still suffered a few instances of heavy pain hitting his skull now and again.

He realized it was the first good night’s sleep he’d had since his grandfather’s death. Again, everything became gloomy for him at the thought of his grandfather’s death. He started to fix his house to distract himself from those thoughts. His grandfather was a jack of all trades and had taught him all his tricks.

When you live so close to a forest like this, clashes with a wild predator were bound to happen. Last night wasn’t his first encounter with a wolf, but this wolf was different. It was like it had a great deal of hunting experience.

‘Now that I think about it, it could have easily reached in the tree trunk; instead, it seemed to be playing with the dog, humiliating it. It’s not something new. It’s normal for their race to play those kinds of games to show who is in control.’