It was past midnight when I stepped off the last train. The platform was half-lit and echoing with a silence I couldn't explain, the kind that sinks under your skin until you start wondering if you're the only person left in the world. I zipped up my jacket and adjusted the strap of my bag, eyes on the cracked tiles. I was tired—more tired than usual, as if something had been leeching at my energy all week. The station exit opened onto a long, crooked street. Streetlamps flickered like they were about to die.
On my left, a row of old trees pressed against a rusted chain-link fence. And that's when I saw her.
She was standing exactly where the shadows swallowed the sidewalk. Just a girl, at first glance—maybe my age, maybe older. Her hair was long, the color impossible to tell in the half-light. I slowed my steps. I didn't know why.
Maybe because her face was turned toward me in a way that made me feel I'd already been seen before I ever noticed her.
I was nearly past when her eyes shifted, finding mine with a steadiness that turned my stomach cold. I didn't say anything. Couldn't. She didn't smile. Didn't blink.
"Down to the ground," she said, her voice flat. "And don't you look away." It wasn't the words that made me obey. It was the certainty behind them—like she'd already watched every version of this moment in a hundred timelines. I swallowed, my breath fogging in the cold.
"Excuse me.... what?"
"I'm not speaking french, down on the ground."
"Who are you exactly? I don't have anything in my bag, the laptop is refurbished. Who-" I tried to ask, but my throat locked. She tilted her head.
Was I really getting mugged by a fairly attractive lady? I knew this type of stuff happens in other cities but I never expected it to happen here.
"I've been watching you for a year," she cut my thoughts off. "And for about a couple days." Her eyes shifted into something I'd never seen before, a shimmering silver. Her eyes were shifting into the same color as the moon above us—pale, pitiless.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing, elongated claws?
"If you run," she continued, "you'll die before you make it to the corner." I believed her.
"Why? I'm broke. I'm a broke college student. I've got nothing but loans. I don't even have tax dollars. Is this some kind of joke?" I whispered. "I'm just an average college student on the way back from late night classes... I don't have anything on me, I swear. I'm hungry right now." She stepped closer, and I saw then that her pupils were too large, her irises too narrow around them—like an animal trying to mimic a human face.
" Stop the jabbering. I'm not here for useless paper. How about we do a certain trade," she said softly. "You've been so hard to catch alone." Her hand lifted. Not in a threat—more like an invitation. "I've waited; I'm out of time. Tell me boy. Haven't you felt the call of the land as of late? You feel the pain. You know you do. I've seen when you've hung your head when you think no one is watching." My heart stuttered.
She was right. I *did* feel it—the restless ache in my chest that had no name.
"I don't know you, you're a stranger," I tried to rationalize through the long stretch of silence.
Telepathically, shockingly; her voice reached into my brain.
"How many people toil... only often to end up killed by the ones they love? If it's the same destination, why don't you gamble with me? I have something I have ready to show you. If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it by now. There's no one here for miles."
"I control your fate right now."
"Come," she told me. "Into the woods." I don't know why I followed. Maybe because some part of me knew the shape of this moment long before it arrived. Or maybe just because she would have stabbed me to death. It felt as if she had me in a trance. Slow. She moved like she was gliding over the dead leaves, and I moved behind her.
We passed the fence where the trees grew denser, the streetlights receding behind us. Branches scraped at my sleeves. "Why me? I'm just a smite loving loser... I have nothing to offer... Is she after my organs?" I tried to keep my hyperventilating to myself.
The air turned colder, sharper. Then she stopped. She stood in a pool of moonlight so bright it looked like silver poured over the ground.
Slowly, she began to undo the buttons of her coat. I looked away—some instinct telling me I wasn't meant to see. But her voice came again, low and clear: "Watch." I did.
Her coat fell open. Her arms—too long now, stretching as if pulled by invisible hands—were covered in black fur that shimmered only when the moon hit it. Her back arched, bones cracking, reshaping. A growl rippled from her chest—so deep I felt it vibrating in my ribcage. Her head lifted.
A muzzle emerged where her face had been, her jaw splitting wider than any human mouth could. The last of the human shape fell away. She stood before me, ten feet tall, a wolf humanoid outlined by ancient trees. And then— Her eyes opened fully as she lurched forward slightly. They were deep black. Black like a pit with no bottom. Black like they could stare straight through the mask you spent your whole life wearing—past your lies, past your excuses, straight into the brittle place you didn't let anyone see. When those eyes found mine, I forgot how to breathe. The last of the human shape fell away.
She stood before me, ten feet tall, a wolf humanoid framed by ancient trees. And in that instant—some buried part of my memory lurched awake. I thought of the Egyptian murals, of the dozens of continents; of the record keepers whose warnings were dismissed as superstition by those who themselves were on a payroll controlled by the whims of my detestment. I thought of all the stories buried under ridicule—stories that were never stories at all. I thought of all the stories the old civilizations left behind, carved into stone and hidden in libraries the worst types of conquerors strategically burned.
I thought of the professor who once told me: "The faster you catch onto the tangible correlated truths…the faster you see the irrefutable cause and effect. The faster you remember." My legs went weak. Her deep black eyes never wavered.
They were a mirror, a warning, and an invitation all at once. I understood, then, that she was never trying to kill me. She was trying to *wake me up.* And in that moment, I felt the strategy unravel—the strategy the worst of the bad apples never wanted anyone to see: That there were beings older than any empire. That they never left. That they waited in the margins of your perception until the right moment to reclaim remembrance. My breath came ragged. I couldn't move. I couldn't look away. And the moon climbed higher, cold and indifferent, as her silhouette swallowed the last light.