Haven
Finishing his shower, made his way to a series of long mirrors hanging above a row of sinks. He wore nothing but a pair of flip-flops and the towel around his neck. He examined his body in the mirror—flexing a little, sure , but more focused on finding anything suspicious.
Focusing on his heightened senses, he concentrated on the dull pain ruminating from the scratch on his back. He moved to the corner, where another mirror hung on the wall adjoining the sinks so he could get the best visual of the scratch. He could still make out the red marks on his skin.
The whole area looked like a stereotypical wolf scratch: four thin, jagged imperfections in his otherwise smooth, alabaster skin. The more he concentrated, the more it seemed to throb. Always a rational man despite his supernatural predisposition, he couldn’t believe his own eyes when it appeared as though something pushed up from a shallow cut in his skin before disappearing underneath a fold of ripped tissue.
“The hell?”
Is something moving in there?
A little grossed out, ’s first instinct was to dig into the shallow cuts. He only managed to pull off the dead skin around the edges. “Impossible,” he scoffed, pulling the skin from his shoulder taut and trying to dig again. The wound was in a spot that he could just reach, but barely. He positioned his body to give himself the best leverage possible, tracing each of the four cuts with his fingernails as though he might grab hold of something.
At the bottom of the last cut, his finger snagged on something. “Ouch,” he hissed as he dug in. At first, it wouldn’t give. I’d probably look mad if someone walked in right now, he thought to himself as he pushed his nails into the flesh wound, sending a sharp pain up and down his back.
“Come on,” he coaxed as the last scratch bled. “Almost there.” Adjusting the angle of his hand ever so slightly, the pressure of his fingers sent what was in between them shooting out into the basin of the nearest sink.
“Gotcha!” quickly grabbed up the material that was lodged in his skin. Expecting a worm or leech of some sort, he was surprised to see that his discovery was a small piece of hard, red material. “What the hell?”
He placed it in the palm of his hand, poking and prodding. “Weird,” he said aloud as he realized what it must be. “ Plastic? Or a broken fingernail? How would that get in there?”
The material wasn’t even an inch long. While bloody from being pulled from ’s scratch, it also appeared to naturally be bright red in color.
’s mind raced like he was rewinding a video cassette tape of the past twenty-four hours. Nothing came to mind. He thought back further, but still nothing. Shaking his head at his own reflection, he positioned his small discovery carefully between his thumb and index finger and headed back to his room.