I stood on the landing with a fifth of whiskey clenched in my paw, raved down at my father and the assembly of security guards, the chief butler and the chief maid, my sister and the chamberlain.
"Fools," I frothed, one claw sinking into the wooden rail so I could keep standing. "You're idiots, the lot of you."
My father scowled, touched my sister's shoulder. "Help your brother to bed," he said quietly.
I bared my fangs. "I don't need fucking bed, I-"
She was beside me, hugged me tight. "James," she whispered. "Let's go."
We went.
-
The room was dark and sweetly cool and dreadfully spinning. I tore my shirt off and fell into the silken embrace of a four poster, panting heavily. My heart was pounding and briefly I forgot where I was.
Allyson kissed my forhead, put a finger to my contorted lips as I whined and writhed.
"Why?" she asked.
The laugh shook me, deep and ugly. "Why not?"
After that she held me for a while, and after that while the spin began to slow and the throbbing in my head turned from sledgehammer to slow throb. At long last I blacked out.
-
Morning light lanced through the voluminous velvet curtains. I clawed in vain at sunbeams and swirling dust, bared my fangs at shadows whose cores were burning brightness. I became aware that I was whispering a mantra of sorts. I was saying the word 'fuck' over and over.
I curled into a ball, bit my lip. Hot tears coursed down my face.
Sleep, something said. I faded away.
-
She touches my cheek and offers me a rose. It's a red so deep it seems to drink in the world, a red so rich it makes blood look pale. So soft, so beautiful, every petal a glowing memory to treasure and revere.
"Do you like it James?" my mother asks, her smile angelic, her silver fur shining and sun stroked.
I nod and reach for it, so happy. "It's beautiful mother!"
"Yes," she says, one ear flicking back and her tail swishing through the long the grass in the ghost of a wag. "It is, isn't it?"
Yet as she gives it to me I realize that the green long stem is spiked, so full of vicious thorns it's impossible to grasp it without being stabbed. As my paw closes around it several sink in, and I can feel those barbs injecting poison.
I try to drop it yet I can't, the thorns are hooked and cruel and I'm losing blood and-
"Silly boy," she laughs. "Don't you know that if you want to live something else has to die?"
I didn't scream. When I woke I merely wept.