Saturday's Storyteller: "My daughter woke me up saying the wolves in her tummy were angry."

by Belinda Roddie

My daughter woke me up saying the wolves in her tummy were angry. I tried to roll over and go back to sleep, but she grabbed my left shoulder and shook it, hard. "They're desperate," she said.

"It's seven in the morning on the Sunday," I griped, wishing I could completely sink into my mattress like submerging myself in a swimming pool. "Can you wait an hour?"

"Uh-uh. They're hungry. Now."

I sighed and pushed the reluctant comforter off of me, my distended stomach bare, save for the coarse black hair, in the sparse light coming from the slightly cracked window blinds. At the sight of my grumbling movement, my daughter bounded down the stairs to the kitchen, beaming from ear to ear.

Celia loved wolves. It did not help that she went to Lobos Elementary, where murals of gray, spiky-haired canines lined the mosaic walls of the buildings, and someone who decided he was fine looking like a furry occasionally bounded around the gym in the school's mascot costume. It wasn't until recently, however, that my daughter "leveled up," as it were, from merely owning over a dozen stuffed wolves and hanging posters of the animals howling at full moons on her bedroom walls. Now wolves had to live inside of her. They slept in the caves of her brain when it was cold, growled loudly when her heart was beating too fast after running on the playground, and yes, curled up into hairy balls in her stomach until her next meal was offered. Celia wasn't just an admirer of the creatures - no, now she had some living in her body. 

When I got down the kitchen, having put on a shirt, I saw Celia sitting at the table, tapping her fingers repetitively on the scratched wood. She liked to stick knives between her fingers and slash at the surface, to make the effect of claw marks. At this point, I was wondering if she'd soon be asking for cosmetic surgery so she could actually be a wolf.

"What do you want, sweetie?" I asked her, trying to keep the grogginess out of my voice as I opened the cupboard.

I knew she was shaking her head without even looking at her. "I don't want anything."

"No?"

"No."

I sighed. "Okay, then what do the wolves want, hon?"

"Um..." She had to think about it for a bit. Then: "French toast."

I raised an eyebrow. "French toast, huh? They don't want raw meat or little animals or anything?"

"Nope. These are vegetarian wolves."

"But you're not vegetarian."

"I know. I eat meat when I'm hungry."

It was hard to keep up with Celia's self-approved logic, but I decided not to think about and focused on getting the bread out instead. Already, I could hear my own stomach growling. It was sort of weird, actually. My stomach did growl when I was hungry, but then almost sounded like snarling. Almost animalistic. I knew I was letting Celia's commentary go to my head, so I pulled out the eggs and milk and started the mixture.

This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.