The Rabbit and the Wolf

The cursor blinks accusingly blue. Nathaniel Jay Howard the Fourth juggles insufficient phrases. It was nice too see you. No, It was great to see you. It's too weak to encompass all that happened between them, but spelling it out is terrifying. What if he misinterpreted it all?

Nathaniel sets down his phone and puts his head in his hands. "So fucking dumb," he mutters. He starts when the phone chimes. It takes him a few tries to understand, because the words don't make sense.

Sorry I couldn't be there, Hana's text reads. I hope you had fun without me.

Is it a joke? Should he be laughing? He's reading to much into it. It's definitely a joke.

Haha, he writes. The moment he sends it he feels exponentially more idiotic. Haha? An MFA in English literature and that's the best he can come up with?

He watches the dots bubble up on the screen. Her reply is a lone question mark.

His heart beats triple time and his lip trembles. Shit. Now he's made it awkward and he's not even sure how. Was she even there? Did he dream it?

He reaches into his pocket. His fingers brush the rough edges of the ticket stub. That part wasn't a dream at least. He looks wildly around the room for some evidence of her.

The door creaks open and his heart leaps to stick in his throat.

She glows in the morning light, her eyes shining greener, her hair a warmer shade of black, her skin dappled in gold.

"I forgot my thong," she says with a predatory grin.

Nathaniel's heart reverses its course to plunge into his guts. Hana's eyes are brown, not green. He should know. He wrote a poem about their Grade B maple syrup sweetness.

Not-Hana tilts her head. "Cat got your tongue?"

Nathaniel clears his throat. "Ah, no?" he says. How did he not notice it last night? Her nose is too sharp, her smile too wide. The hours he'd spent scrolling through Hana's Instagram, meager though it was. He knew her face better than anyone's. How could he ever mistake this woman for Hana?

Not-Hana walks towards him, and the movement too fluid to be human.

"Whatever's the matter, darling?" Her voice is cloying, floating syrupy and deadly through the too still air.

"You're not Hana," he gasps.

She stills and raises an overly-arched eyebrow. "Am I not?"

Nathaniel shrinks, a rabbit before a wolf. "No," he whispers.

She throws back her head and laughs. "Come dance with me, my rabbit," she says, holding out a long-fingered hand. The fingernails look pointier than they did last night.

Nathaniel trembles. His legs twitch with the instinct to run but his muscles refuse to obey his nervous system.

Her eyes narrow. "I said, come dance with me."

Nathaniel's mind thrashes as his body gets up and walks toward her.

The woman who is not a woman wraps a hand around his wrist. Her claws pierce his skin. The sharp copper tang of blood fills the air. She licks her lips.

Nathaniel screams silently as she drags him away.