23rd PAWW’s story

I’m moving to another city next week, and it’s one of the reasons that writing is so hard for me. Anxiety is a bitch, and there’s a lot of stuff going on, so focusing is difficult. I tried my best, however, and I hope you’ll enjoy this PAWW. It actually was inspired by a Canadian-French folklore tale.

The day was dark and gloomy, rain pouring on them like a cow pissing on a flat rock. The black umbrellas were making half a circle around the grave above the hole in the grass through the alignment of gravestones.

The priest was saying some nonsense about her husband that Ingrid had no care for. Her mind was numb and swollen with the tears she’s been shedding. Ingrid barely listened to the people, in fact she returned home in a maze, the only thought swirling in her head was that she wouldn’t see her husband ever again. He’d been killed by a bear while he was hunting up north, his body badly wounded when she had to recognize it. Anyway, bears weren’t even living around his hunting location, this made no sense.

Ingrid thought she was hallucinating on the way back home – her empty home – when she noticed a dark mass a little further down the road. She frowned. It wasn’t moving, even as the lights illuminated it. It was a bear.

She cursed and stopped the car. The bear wasn’t moving and kept staring at her. Could it see her with the lights in its face? Probably not, but she still became scared when it meant to walk towards her. She accelerated and drove the car around it to get away as fast as possible.

Ingrid quickly forgot about the whole event soon after, focused on her mourning as she was. She had lots of work to do, papers to fill with her husband’s death. Time flew by, and soon, it was a month after the funerals. She was nursing a glass of red wine on her patio, a notepad opened on the table. Writing down her thoughts usually helped, but tonight was no use.

It was the rustling of bushes nearby that startled her. There was no wind that night, and she would had expected a wild animal if the rustling hadn’t been this insistent.

It was coming closer. She tensed, fingers closing around her glass. She couldn’t do much with it, perhaps create a diversion by throwing it at whatever it was. She waited, fear gripping her heart when a tall, dark form emerged from the trees. It was a bear, the same one than back on the road, but this time only a few meters were separating them.

She half rose, intending to run to the door which seemed way too far from her position. The bear was slowly coming towards her, blinking huge eyes at her. She gasped. His eyes were green, like…

“Richard?”

The bear stopped and sat down. It was only a few steps away from her, but did no other move than to make a small noise in the back of its throat, and she couldn’t believe what she was witnessing. Ingrid remembered a folklore tale she once heard as a child, about the devil coming to take your soul and placing it into a bear’s body. Richard’s soul now belonged to the devil.

She knelled before him, tears running down her face at the notion he’d found her again despite his situation. He placed a large paw on her knee, and a sob escaped Ingrid.

The PAWW Project