The Girl That Was Eaten By Dogs.

A ghastly wind howled down the highway and black whispers echoed in the tumbling leaves. The sky above was pitch black and in the distance a barrage of lightning flashed across the horizon, keeping rhythm with the thunder that boomed on the edges of the imagination. On a lonesome patch of earth, nestled amongst a crop of tall trees, there stood a diner. It was a place of predators. For the things that linger and skulk. Upon the roof a neon sign blinked like an insidious eye, its red umbra unable to penetrate the darkness of the doorway. Its devilish glow spilled onto the tarmac of an empty parking lot, and all the while the wind whistled its terrible dirge as the bard without a voice walked into that reprehensible place.

Inside, the bar was as grisly within as it was without. Three men bent over the bar. Under the languorous fluorescent lights, their skin looked yellow and fetid. They sported long thinning hair, their pocked scalps visible through the cobwebbish strands that clung to their heads. Between them they shared a deck of cards, and each in their turn, flipped over a card and placed it down beside the last. They tapped black nails against the counter and rubbed their dirty hands together. Soothsayers, the bard thought to himself. One was fat. A grotesque toad that sat between the other two. The second was a tall, gangrel creature. The last was an impish thing barely able to reach the bar. The bard ignored them. He knew all too well that trouble followed their kind. He skirted past them, holding his breath through the stink of dirt and mushrooms that hung over their heads.

The bard took a seat at the end of the bar and surveyed the room. Apart from the trio of soothsayers and a lonesome girl beside the window, the diner was empty. The bard considered the melancholic figure of the girl. The neon light flickered through the large pane of glass for a moment, washing over her like a crimson tide. If he still possessed his bardic tongue, he may have written a song about her, but that part of him had been lost, and is of another tale to be told. He chanced a glimpse at the soothsayers. For now, their attention was still drawn to the fortune of the cards before them, but soon their otherworldly prescience would pull their eyes to him, and as if he could tell the future too, they would swoop down and ensnare him in their treacherous portents. Such a prospect was enough compulsion to seek sanctuary in the company of the girl.

She didn’t see him approach. Nor did she hear him clamber through the scattered tables and chairs that waylaid his advance. The bard walked around to face her. At first, she didn’t notice him. The fluorescent light flickered through the window again, and for a breath there was a strange twilight between them. The bard shifted closer. The light blinked, dousing everything in darkness. Only when the flood of light returned through the window, did she look up at him with pale eyes.

“Would you like to sit,” she asked quietly.

The bard nodded and sat across from her.

She turned to look through the window again.

The bard sensed a moat around here. A void of emotion refracting that which the world reflected through her. “What happened to you,” he asked.

She looked at him sideways, not really turning away from the window. She looked cold. Colder than the wind outside, but she did not shiver. Her body was torn and broken, stitched together by rough thread. The bard followed the lines where skin was sown over limb and where delicate knots kept her arms in place by her shoulders. He could see more thread curl around her fingers where they rejoined her hands, and through the tattered remains of her clothes his eyes followed the lines of more crisscrossed stitching.

Her pale eyes carried the weight of all those wounds. “I was eaten by a pack of dogs,” she said without concern for calamity.

The bard looked on as black thread came loose and fell from her hairline like an outlaw strand. She quickly pulled it back behind her ear and tried to offer a smile, but her face was still strange in its new arrangement and her lips too dry to appease the attempt.

The bard could see the expression touch her eyes though, and he smiled too. “Well, it seems like you’ve managed to stitch yourself back together,” he offered.

“I have some wilderness skills,” she defended. “It’s just a pity I don’t have any money. All I have is this ball of black thread. And this needle.” She opened here hand, and lying in the fold of her skin was silver needle.

Although stained with blood and veiled in the dim light, it glittered silver.

She held it out, offering it to him.

The bard took it between his fingers and held it up against the window and waited for the neon light to catch it.

Her voice was soft. Not much more than a whisper. “Be careful with that.” Her pale eyes watched it shimmer in the red glow. “I got that needle from the moon.”

The bard glanced at her.

A tangle of ashen hair hung to the side of her head and the neon light caught the ridges of black thread running across her body before retreating into the night. Despite the darkness, she met the bard with bright eyes. “What, you don’t believe me?”