you're too young & eager to love

Edit: Hahaha. It's been so long since I've written anything creative that I didn't even notice when I switched from third to second person. Whoops.

I attempted to write some Elie and Reese, but it didn't work out well. I was hoping that Anne Rice's new werewolf novel would inspire me - it did, but it's inspired me to write some type of hyena lycanthrope instead. My plan backfire.

Here are the few teeny tiny bits I managed.

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Close Encounters of the Third Kind was on the television, Reese remembers. (Richard Dreyfuss inspecting shaving cream in his palm and Elie’s soft breathing while she slept, her arm thrown lazily across his half of the bed, her fingers rough on the inside of his elbow.) He heard the police before he smelled them, the way their heavy boots snapped against the gravel in the motel parking lot, their thick heartbeats. Elie awoke within seconds, her eyes lazy with sleep and a sense of the inevitable thickening the way she stretched. Her knee cracked when she stood, and Reese opened the rear window.

“Run.” He told her once she had hoisted herself up, and she had laughed at his seriousness.

-

They are close to equals as beasts. Elie is swifter, but Reese can track her no matter how fast she runs, slipping through the trees like the night wind. Reese is stronger, and he forgets this until they tumble into each other, jaws snapping, and he grabs her by the throat as though she were a rabbit he could feed off of. Elie makes a sharp wounded sound.

She would not have made that noise in any other form. She almost takes his ear off as retribution.

He stalks further into the night, fueled more by the wolf’s blood than his own. It’s hard to distinguish the difference when he spends too much time in this shape, when howling feels more communicative than words, and he wants to spill blood.

Later, Elie washes her hair in the bathroom sink of a truck stop. She has the sly-eyed look of cruelty, her mouth in a thin line, and she watches Reese watching her. Her small neck is red, and Reese feels a pang of guilt at seeing it. “You know, I think you’re starting to get a problem. I think you’re starting to like it.”

“Yeah, you’d like that.” He says, chewing on his bottom lip.

-

Reese buys Elie a necklace, silver and beaded. It’s plain, and he tosses it into her lap unceremoniously. Elie squints at it, arching an eyebrow, slurping her coffee loudly although it must be burning her lips. “What’s this?”

“It’s silver.”

He laughs till his knees feel weak. Elie rolls her eyes, annoyed, and leaves the necklace on the diner table as a tip for their waitress.

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