Unspecified Rage

Little Red

It was more than a little uncomfortable that weekend. Julia sat with her family and listened as they described her real mother. Maggie Shaw. Youngest of three, Maggie had been rebellious from birth. Anything the boys would do, she had to try, and if anyone ever made hte mistake of telling her there was something she couldn't do, she'd go out and do it twice jsut to rub their face in it. Despite her hell raising attitude, she was also a sweet heart, and would do impossibly stupid things to help her friends and family out because she loved them and wanted them to be happy. The curious thing about Maggie was that her moods were always infectious. If she were happy, inevitably even the biggest sourpuss would have a smile after beimng near her. However if she were sad, people would go out of their way to make ehr happy because they would be sad until she was smiling again.

Julia looked a little like her mother, they both shared the delicate details in features and bone structure. But Julia looked springy and whiplash tough whereas Maggie had just looked fragile. And Julia had taking her father's darker hair and eye colour instead of her mother's blonde and blue combination. When Maggie had been in school, like Julia, she had acted out and gotten a lot of bad attention, only her parents had thought that strict discipline and rigid rules would help reign her in. Instead, she starting to purposefully act out by dressing provocatively, getting involved in drugs and hanging around an older group of boys that were in the first year of college. Almost inevitably, at age 16, Maggie was pregnant and terrified. Julia's grandparents said it was one of those topics they couldn't discuss, but there was something about Julia's father that Maggie had discovered and was horrified by. But part of her still loved him and was drawn to him. So despite herself, she told him about the pregnancy and surprisingly enough he proposed to her. It was possible that impending fatherhood was provoking him to reform his ways as it had already done to Maggie.

It was the 80's and Maggie's situation was not a completely unheard of situation. Young, unmarried and pregnant, but no engaged. She had to leave school, and her fiancee, Julia's father James, had family living in the countryside where Julia's family sent her to be out of the judgemental sight of the city. But almost 9 months into the pregnancy, Maggie had come home covered in bruises, with evidence of an animal attack. She was wracked with fever, delirious and went into premature labour. JuWhile in labour, Maggie kept raving on about how James was a monster and attacked her. So after Julia was born, the entire Shaw family moved to a new town, hoping to leave James behind and start a new life.

At first things settled down to as normal as they could expect. Maggie was moody but a tender mother, but was becoming more and more prone to violent and erratic outburts. And her moods were still able to affect those around her. Until Julia was about 6 months old, Maggie kept herself well behaved and had stayed off drugs. But after half a year of careful motherhood, Maggie started slipping out of the house at nights, then all weekend. She would be broguht home by police officers while high on some subtance or while too drunk to walk. And then one day she just never came back. They searched for her, and they had hte police looking for her as well. But there was no sign of Maggie Shaw. By that time though, it was obvious to her family, that she had become mentally unstable and it was quite likely that she had died on one of her adventure seeking expiditions, quite probably from a drug overdose. So after Julia turned 2, her family once again moved cities and decided that it would be less painful for everyone to assume that she was their child, born late in life. And there was always the worry that James would hunt them down and try to take Julia from them. Something they clearly did not want.

After the explanations and crying were over, Julia asked her family to give her time to think and adjust. It was the end of october, the leaves were in thier Autumn glory and the air was crisp, cool and inviting. So Julia bundled up and went for a walk outside in hte sunlight. She took her time, but ended up walking to the shopping center and wandered around aimlessly, wanting to have people around without having to be actively social. If she didn't hurt so much physically, the emotional pain would probably be easier to cope with, but the two combined had Julia pretty depressed. So she decided to distract herself and walked into one of the stores offering costumes.

Browsing the racks of of movie character costumes, Ju wandered past them and headed down to the more elaborate mask department. She could be lion, tiger or bear, oh my! Vampire, were wolf, cat woman, boring, blah, garbage, slutty. There were no real good costumes she wanted. Halloween was supposed to be the one time of the year when you could go as something your not. But that was assuming you knew what you WERE. And lately Julia had felt like she had no real clue who she was or what she wanted to be. She just knew it was NOT the trampy vampire costume popular this year. But she was planning on wearing the costume to the dance where the mysterious Guess Who would be dancing with her, and she was just girly enough to want to look good for that. Alright, do what WOULD you like to be? she asked herself, going back amongst the costumes on the rack. And then she saw a piece of one costume and an idea came to her. Perfect, she smiled to herself. Not quite one thing, and not how people expect of the other.

She grabbed the pieces of costume that had inspired her, suddenly eager for Halloween to arrive. Julia paid for the almost random seeming selections and headed out, oblivious to the eyes that were no longer quite human watching her. If she had known her legacy as a were wolf, she would have known to pay attention to her instincts telling her there was a predator near by. She would have known to use her nose to catch the scent of the person following her, and she could have used her inhuman speed to loose them in the crowds. But thinking herself a relatively normal, if pain haunted human, Julia did none of these things while Mat followed along behind her.

He stalked her like wild game, blood thirst tickling hte back of his throat, but he supressed the growl. She had cost him everything. His status in the Pack, his community and he was convinced, his brother's life. The human police said a wild animal had ravaged his brother. But she was like him, could change into a wild animal and get revenge on his baby brother and the police didn't know that. She deserved to pay, to suffer and beg for death.

How dare she shop and walk along, happy and content with her life while his brother's body was prepared for a funeral. She was unaffected by his death, but not for much longer. Soon she would reap the consequences. As she left the more populated area and headed towards home, the safety of the crowd fell away and they started to walk near the small woods. It would be so easy to overwhelm her, drag her into the woods and take his justice. In fact, he tensed to do just that when another predator tore him from the path and slammed him hard against a giant tree.

"Stay the hell away from my mate." the other were wolf growled low. The madness barely held at bay flickered red in his eyes. Long sickle claws slide out of human hands and dug into the tree around Matt's head, and despite his anger, he whimpered in fear. Julia walked on home, oblivious to the monsters in the forest around her.

####

Class was every kind of awkward on Monday. News had gotten around that Julia had found the dead body and students were either looking at her with pity, asking too many interested questions about it, or acted like she carried hte pall of death with her. And every single one of the teachers, all week, kept offering to talk to her about it if she needed, or help her find counselling or some other sympathtic garbage that just made her want to scream at them. It bothered her how LITTLE finding his body torn to shreds bothered her. She had to put on this act of traumatized agony or people would think she was some kind of sociopath. But Julia was never any good at pretending to be something she was not. So instead she would leave class and go sit on her bench, alone and smoking a joint to just GET AWAY from it all.

Her friends were a little bit better, even if Graham and Enrique were snipeing at each other more and more until one day she finally told them to kiss and make up or drop hteir pants and measure already. The looks on both their faces at that caused the rest of the group to fall into paroxyms of laughter. That was one of hte few good parts of the week, and everyone was eagerly awaiting Halloween Friday. By Wednesday, even the teachers were getting caught up in the excitement of wearing goofy clothes and having a chance to be silly. Every class wanted to hold a costume contest, there were Halloween themes for every class' projects and generally all the usual kitch.

Thursday crawled by, agonizingly slow. Julia's temper was frayed because even thoguh she wasn't on stage, the big performance was tomorrow night. Then she'd meet and find out who Guess Who was. Excitement, terror, expectation and frustration all circled around her head driving her from giddy, councy happiness to nail biting annoyance. Her emotional state was so volatile that she even forgot about hte pain occassionally.  

And then it was Friday. The big day. In more ways than Julia could ever guess.