Book Five, Chapter 85: Last-call Return

~Antoine~

The forest was endless, but I ran anyway.

The trees bent and swayed unnaturally, their shadows clawing at me like they were alive. My paws tore at the ground, but no matter how far I went, the air clung to me, thick and heavy.

The wolf snarled in the back of my mind, restless and wild, but I forced it down, forcing myself forward.

Forward to where? I didn’t know.

I had messed up; I had ruined everything. They had talked about shame, heck, I had talked about a young wolf’s shame, and I knew best. It took everything I had not to wring myself into a knot just thinking about my shame.

I was cursed. I was a monster. I was broken.

It was my fault.

No, the wolf said in my mind. Just let me take over. It will all blow away. I can run fast. I can run faster than the shame.

I fought the urge to just let it win. It felt like I was fighting gravity. Eventually, gravity wins. Always.

I still ran. My mind was weary, but my legs were not.

The world twisted as I went along. Was I losing my mind, or was it losing me?

The trees began to shimmer, their bark sliding into the shape of smooth wooden beams.

Hallucinations. Just like old times.

The underbrush curled and darkened, becoming carpet underfoot. The scents of dirt and pine dissolved into something sharper—lemon cleaner and old upholstery. A sound broke through the woods, a faint ringing, high-pitched and insistent. My ears twitched toward it.

What is that?

The wolf didn’t know.

I stopped running. I stopped fighting. I needed to see this.

The ringing grew louder, sharper, joined by the flickering of light. Between the trees, shapes began to emerge—solid shapes, angular and familiar. A chair appeared first, then a couch. Beyond it, the static glow of a television flickered.

The wolf growled, uneasy, but I pushed it down and stumbled closer.

This was the place I went in my mind when I really wanted to hate myself.

On-Screen.

No! Not On-Screen. Don’t show the audience this. Don’t show… Riley.

As I approached, the ringing turned into the unmistakable chime of a phone. A corded house phone. The shapes solidified, snapping into place, and there it was: my living room. Not just any living room. My living room. The one I hadn’t seen in years but knew in every detail.

The scuffed coffee table my mom had “resurfaced,” the well-worn leather couch with the cigarette burn in the arm that my dad insisted was there to let the air out of the cushions when you sat down, the little television perched precariously on the old TV stand.

It shouldn’t have been here. Not in the woods. Not ever again.

The air shimmered; there were no walls, no ceiling. The furniture stood alone, surrounded by trees that crept impossibly close, as if the forest were trying to consume the scene but couldn’t.

The wolf stirred inside me, pacing, growling low and uncertain. This scared him more than silver.

The phone rang again. It sat on the coffee table, old and beige, the cord coiled like a snake. My fur bristled as I took another step forward.

I had to watch. This was my punishment.

The sound of muffled crying broke the tension. My head snapped toward the couch. Two figures were there now. My mother, her face buried in her hands, shoulders shaking. Beside her sat my father, his fists clenched on his knees, his face red and twisted with anger.

It’s not them. I knew it wasn’t. They were NPCs. In the Straggler Forest, it wasn’t like this. There, it was all in my head.

Here, Carousel was reenacting my worst memory with NPCs.

But I couldn’t stop myself from stepping closer, pulled by something deeper than fear.

Farther away, I saw the staircase. It shouldn’t have been there—it had no place in the middle of the woods—but it rose in the distance, dark and familiar. On the steps, half-hidden in shadow was me.

A smaller NPC version of me, fourteen years old, hunched down with wide eyes, peering at the adults below. He didn’t notice me—or couldn’t.

The wolf howled inside me, restless. This isn’t real! it screamed, but its voice was drowned by the sharp ring of the phone.

It is real, you stupid wolf. It is real and everlasting.

My mother reached for the phone, her trembling hand lifting the receiver. Her movements were jerky and mechanical. She put it to her ear and, after a few moments, said, “It’s Christian.” Her voice cracked, thick with tears.

She really did sound like my mother. The look wasn’t far off either.

Christian. The name hit me like a stone, and I stumbled back. The wolf growled, confused, but I couldn’t look away. The scene unfolded as if it had been waiting for me.

It was my memory of the call. The call that changed everything.

The room darkened. The staircase loomed. The figures moved, their voices rising in frantic urgency. The wolf snarled, unsure whether to attack or run, but I couldn’t move. The ringing faded, replaced by a thin voice on the other end of the phone.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I could hear it coming out of the handset because my ears were oh so large.

It was Christian’s voice, but it wasn’t him.

And I knew—I knew—this was wrong. But I kept watching.

The room tilted as I watched, the edges of the furniture blurring and shifting like shadows underwater.

My parents—the knockoff-parents—came into focus.

My mother sat hunched on the couch, the phone pressed tightly to her ear. Her sobs broke the air, jagged and raw. My father paced back and forth, his heavy boots thudding on the floor that shouldn’t exist, his face red with barely contained fury. His voice rose, sharp and accusing, but I couldn’t make out the words. The air rippled, and the room pulsed, like it was breathing.

He was in middle management, but he dressed like a bricklayer on his days off, just like my grandad had.

“Put him on speaker!” he barked, the words suddenly clear.

My mother obeyed, her hands trembling as she pressed a button. The phone’s tinny speaker buzzed, and then I heard it. Christian’s voice. My brother’s voice. But it wasn’t his voice. Not really.

It sure fooled us then though.

“I’m not coming back,” the voice said, hollow and distant. It carried the sound of something else beneath it, something oily and slick that I could almost smell. “I’ve found a new home.”

The words coiled around my chest, squeezing tight. The wolf stirred, uneasy, but I silenced it. Listen, I thought. Just listen.

Why was this On-Screen?

What was Carousel doing?

And then I realized… Carousel was going to take my worst memory and cut it up and make it my character’s backstory.

My character’s brother got himself bitten by a wolf.