Wolffyn's tail.. um, tale.

[Wolffyn]

Was she still high? Or was this a nightmare? She didn’t know. She didn't have much experience in either experience. Everything was foggy and a jumble after she woke up, soaking wet in an empty warehouse. She had wandered for hours before she found herself in the sewers and without thinking about it, she grabbed a fat rat and drank it’s blood. She threw the lifeless furry body far from herself and sank to her knees. Was this real? What was happening? What the hell was she on?

When she woke up the next time, she still wasn’t sure if what had happened the night before was real or just a dream but she felt hunger gnawing at her insides like it was clawing her apart. Finding her way back out of the sewers was actually a lot easier than she had expected it to be and before she knew it, she had picked some guy’s pocket.

Looking down at the money, she just stared at it in disbelief. She had never stolen before… as far as she could remember… but it had come so naturally. Like she had been doing it all of her life. However long that had been…

The waitress at the Café’ brought her a hot cup of decafe and a doughnut along with a dirty look but softened once the money was put down on the table. Seconds later, the food and drink had been wolfed down but didn’t seem to want to stay down. A mad dash to the bathroom brought up new questions. Like why was she feeling so sick to her stomach that the stall got painted with a Technicolor yawn, and why the hell couldn’t she see her own reflection?

Back Story:

She had been born Gwynn Morgan, to an average Irish-American family on Halloween in 1991. Her parents had been hard working, middle class (back when there was still a middle class), and good people. Gwynn had been the middle child, with an older brother and a younger sister, and had been a studious, well behaved, young lady. For the most part.

After the power plant her Father had worked at closed, the shop her Mother had owned went out of business and the bank foreclosed on the tiny house Gwynn had lived in her entire life. She still managed to finish high school with a decent GPA but didn’t qualify for any scholarships. She couldn’t get any grants either, after they calculated her family’s income and for some stupid reason she didn’t qualify.

So Gwynn got a student loan and went to the closest community collage, staying with her family in the trailer park they had chosen to move into. Seemed like almost everyone Gwynn knew were living in one of St. Helens many trailer parks these days. Times were hard, so she had gotten a part time job as a waitress in a Northwest Portland bar. The bar had karaoke nights there three times a week. This was a bit hard for Gwynn to deal with, because of her love of music, hearing so many customers butcher great songs almost brought tears to her eyes some nights.

On one such night, a customer caught Gwynn rolling her eyes. She felt bad about it and apologized but the bartender had been listening in and wouldn’t let it go. She laughed at Gwynn and dared her to do better. At first Gwynn tried to refuse, pointing out that her shift had just started and customers were waiting to be served. Then the manager stepped in, telling her that she had better get up there or just go home. Seems her previous eye-rolls hadn’t been as discreet as Gwynn had thought them to be…

She picked one of her favorite Evanescence songs and, simply put, blew them away.

After her shift ended, her manager told her that a couple were waiting to speak with her and pointed out the table. Gwynn looked up at him, curious but he just grinned and told her she had really “nailed it.”
She thanked him and went over to the well dressed couple who invited her to sit.

It turned out they were from Toronto, Canada and in town visiting their daughter. Their daughter was putting together her own band but hadn’t found the right voice for the lead singer. She wanted an all girl group, doing their own music. Could Gwynn write music? Yes, she could but lots of great singers could… why her? Because of her red hair and blue-green eyes, it seemed. The band was forming up with a modern Celtic feel and Gwynn voice and looks matched perfectly with what their daughter, Willow, had said she was going for.

Willow actually was going to Portland State University’s School of Fine & Performing Arts, the same school that Gwynn had hoped to attend once. Gwynn had liked it for being close to home while Willow chose it for the opposite reason. Willow's Dad had already sent a video clip of Gwynn’s performance to her cell phone. She had called back to ask her parents to please try and arrange a meeting between herself and Gwynn. And Gwynn agreed. Afterall, what did she have to lose?

The girls met after classes at a halfway point and got along great right away. Willow was not only the song writer of the group, she was the drummer. Two friends who attended classes with her were also in the group; Olivia, who played any instrument you could name but preferred strings… especially the guitar or the violin. And Fiona, who according to Willow was the most gifted of them all and could play anything by ear either on any wind instrument or anything that had a keyboard from a piano to the bagpipes.

All of them could sing but none of them had an extraordinary voice. Willow said Gwynn did. Gwynn liked Willow so well; she went back to the small house that all the girls shared in Beaverton. It was 3am before Gwynn left, having had the best time in a long time.

The band became a local hit as soon as they started getting people to give them a chance, school parties at first were all they found but as word got out… job offers came in. Willow, Olivia, Fiona and Gwynn started to feel like they might really have a shot at success.

One such job was for one of Willow’s high school classmates, who was going to be getting married in her fiance's hometown of Harper’s Rock which was in Canada but close to the U.S. border. She was from a well to do family that would pay all the expenses besides the normal compensation and who Willow knew had contacts in Toronto that may be able to help them get a big break someday. But it would be a bit long of a drive so they all agreed to pile into Fiona’s van and make a vacation out of it.

Fiona and Olivia’s boyfriends came along. And they brought beer and pot. Gwynn had tired both before… and it was almost her birthday, the Wedding being on a Sunday and the next day would be Halloween. So she joined her friends in celebrating their “jig” once everyone had left the reception, which was well after midnight.

But after she smoked one of the joints with everyone, she felt really strange. She asked if there had been anything in it but the guys just laughed and told her to try and guess. Gwynn and Willow got ticked off and made them admit that the joints had been laced with something but the jerks still refused to say with what. So Willow and Gwynn both left the van going out to take a walk and hopefully come down. They were careful to stay off the roads, sticking to the parks since they knew they were high and didn’t want to risk getting hit by a car on a holiday weekend.

Gwynn couldn’t tell you what the girls went through after that, for when she wakes up she not only has no idea what has happened, or where she is, she also doesn’t even know who she is. Everything is just a disjointed and confusing mess in her head and although she does know somehow that she was or perhaps still is high she doesn’t know how she got that way or that she was with Willow, who is now missing.

A necklace she wears says “Wolffyn” (which was the name of her band.) But as far as Gwynn knows, that’s her name.

[Wolffyn]

Wolffyn had started to get used to her new existence, settling into a nightly routine of waking up in the now comforting sewers and munching on a few rats, then making her way up onto the streets to steal whatever she could.

At first that was simply to pick a few pockets but soon she moved up to the more exciting challenge of breaking and entering. After that began to also bore her, she started to explore.

One night the sewer system led her to a part of town that was completely new to her and it was the most ruined and run down place she had ever seen. It was surrounded on three sides by high walls that seemed unbreachable, and a wide, deep river on the fourth. There were some of the others like her there, but very few humans. She couldn’t blame them for staying away and soon understood there was a very frightening reason why…

There were undead creatures there that she recognized as Zombies. Apparently they were no more fiction than vampires were… a label she still had trouble accepting as hers but couldn’t deny. The first Zombie she saw made her skin crawl and she almost ran away. But something about the vile monster not only disgusted and disquieted her, It also seemed to enrage her somehow. So she attacked it.

It was a lot easier to kill than in the movies and the feeling of accomplishment that Wolffyn felt brought the first smile to her face that she could remember. It felt great and gave her a huge rush.

After that, it was the only thing Wolffyn wanted to do and she spent as much time hunting zombies as the night and her energy would allow, making her new resting place in the closest sewers and never straying too far so she could have as much time as possible killing the vile abominations.

She still tried to avoid contact with the “others” but found herself less wary of them as before and much more curious. A few gave off almost a scent of familiarity, although Wolffyn had no idea why… only that some of them seemed almost “approachable”, if she could only summon up the nerve... and had any clue about what to say…