1

"Gina, Rita, it's very important that you two listen to me. The werewolves are closing in and it could be a close one this time. You know what to do when they come, right?" "

Yes Dad!" me and my older sister echoed the desired answer my father wanted to hear.

"We should hide and if the beasts discover us, try to escape or end our lives, since there is no good life among the werewolves." Rita added the answer and was rewarded by our father with a benevolent smile

. That's right my darling. We will never surrender our lives to the werewolves. We and our ancestors have eluded them for centuries and we will all die free just as we are born free."

We both nodded. Our father gave us this moral sermon almost every day.

But we both understood why it was so important to our father.

Most of the people left alive in the world had been enslaved by cruel werewolves.

We were the only people we knew who were still free.

And we also knew that if these beasts discovered us, a terrible fate would await us all.

The werewolves were disgusting slavers who will torture us to the death and we would never let that happen to us. We were free and we would stay free!

An eerie growl sounded through the trees from all directions. Rita and I looked at each other, completely frozen. The beasts had found us.

***

I opened my eyes, disoriented.

It was damn bright and I had to squint right away. It took me a while to get used to the brightness around me.

I wanted to look around, but every little movement was terribly exhausting.

My first realization was that I was in a room. That was more than unusual for me. My family and I had very rarely slept in old abandoned houses. The risk that the beasts could find us right there was just too high.

But to my surprise, it didn't look as run down here as in the few other ruins we were in.

Only now did I realize that I was even lying in a clean bed.

Now that really confused me. The beds in the Ruin were mostly hardly existent and no longer on which to sleep, due to the long time in which the houses were uninhabited.

Could it be that this house wasn't uninhabited after all?

Confused, I wanted to move, but I just didn't have the strength to.

I was starting to get scared though. Where were mom and dad? Where was Rita?

Only now did I hear the soft beeping, which somehow got faster and faster. I looked across the room in confusion. There was a machine there that was making this noise. A cable ran from the machine and ended in some sort of clip that hung from my finger.

I struggled to get this thing off my finger. But it took me a few minutes to do it.

However, my relief at finally getting rid of this part was quickly clouded. The machine began to sound an alarm with a kind of siren. I stared at it in horror and didn't know what to do.

The door to this room swung open. I stared in panic at the strange man standing in the doorway. Even over the noise of the machine, I could hear the three words he said, "You're awake."

It didn't take a second before I realized who or what I was looking at. A werewolf, a monster, a beast...

He was too big for a human, too muscular; his gaze too penetrating.

I cried out in panic.

The werewolf started cursing and first walked towards the machine. He pressed a few keys and the alarm went silent. I looked at him anxiously, but luckily he didn't come any closer. Unfortunately, he didn't leave me alone either.

So he stayed where he was while I stared at him like a rabbit at a maggot.

The werewolf eyed me and didn't really seem to know what to do next.

Since I still couldn't move again, I had no choice but to lie there in fear and not let the werewolf out of my sight.

But if I was honest with myself, I knew that this beast could do anything to me right now and I probably wouldn't be able to resist it in the slightest.

I could feel the tears in my eyes. Where were my parents? Where was Rita?

While I couldn't take my eyes off the monster, I heard quick footsteps approaching. The door opened a second time and the exact same werewolf stood in the door?

He stared at me wide-eyed, growling something I couldn't understand in my panic.

In a second, the werewolf charged at me and, still paralyzed, I couldn't do anything but scream. Scream, scream and scream.