The first two years of my life were spent somewhere distant, somewhere far away from Rolling Hills and the sprawling greenery of Paradise, somewhere unknown and existed in my head in the form of tangible scents and faint words. Sometimes I tried to think about those years, tried to reach out and grab the smells of ivory, buttermilk, and fizzy ether leaves that made my nose scrunch up in protest. Sometimes I tried to grab the words as they appeared in the back of my mind, appearing for the briefest of moments only to disappear with the very thing that'd brought it on.

I reach for distant scents and words as I climb the wooden steps up to the beautiful, teal house, lights shining in the windows like a child running to greet a parent after a long day of work. I can smell buttermilk as I get to the door, the warm, friendly, inviting door that gloatingly shields the lie that lays behind it. The smell of buttermilk fills me up, up, up, and up until it transforms into nostalgia itself and for a moment, I almost feel like I have a past.

A past of ivory fragrance, 90s rock music, someone swaying to the radio, identical ash brown hair falling like a curtain over a face as the same set of hazel-and-green heterochromia as mine crinkle up into a smile. A past of buttermilk, hand drawn stars, inaudible cooing, goofy animations. A past of yelling, screaming, empty spaces, small spaces, white lines across a warm, wooden coffee table, and lullabies. Not the kind that were shown in the movies, soft and compelling, the kind of lullabies that made eyelids grow heavy with blissful slumber. The lullabies I remembered are the faint words in the back of my mind, scratchy and out of tune, sometimes somber and sometimes buoyant. Like sunrise peeking through thin curtains on a Summer morning or a blazing, unforgiving sun that burns bare skin and digs into flesh with startling urgency.

Elizabeth said I was given up. That someone that swayed to 90s rock music, baked with buttermilk, and sang lullabies had decided one of us wasn't up to par and handed me off. "Lucky, it's okay to come from a troubled home," She'd assured. "There are many kids like you out there and you know what, you're one of the lucky ones. Some kids never get rescued from troubled homes, let alone being lucky enough to have someone who can admit they can't take of their children. What matters is you're safe now, okay? Now have you taken your pills?"

I can't help but wonder what would that someone with ash brown hair and mismatched eyes think if they knew where I am now. Would they think I'm safe here in Paradise? Would they think The Wolf was taking much better care of me than they could have ever had? 

Or would they regret the decision to give me up in the first place?

I know I'll never know the answers to why. Why that someone gave me up. It's a question not many kids like me get to decipher and usually, it doesn't end very well. I know I'll never know the answers but the monsters rear their heads anyway, circling around me like a cat stalking a rodent.

Maybe the answer was directly in front of me. 'You're not even worth it,' The Orc had snarled and I realize that I'm bleeding from the wounds marred on my face, the Orc's deadly venom corrupting streams and veins until I can't think about the past anymore, the only years that didn't seem tainted. Not tainted by Paradise but tainted by the system, the only years of life I got to keep.

The Wolf is setting a fresh plate of cookies on the hickory wooden dining table when I enter the teal house, except they aren't chocolate chip, but creamy vanilla buttermilk; the culprit of nostalgia and the woes of sweet tooths.

"Lucky, you're back, feeling hungry? I made some cookies." He chirps, his soprano voice as polished as his thin-framed glasses and navy blue sweater. His fur has recoiled itself into his skin and his sharp, canine teeth are tucked into the very enamel of his molars but his lips, pulled back into a devastatingly perfect grin, are a dark red, stained from the blood of a soul.

Whether the blood is of my soul or his, I'm not sure.

I shake my head to the cookies and head for the stairs but Elizabeth is coming down at that moment, smoothing the wrinkles of her tweed skirt and wiping off remnants of dark red on her own lips.

Her eyes turn into round saucers when she sees me, the faint blood a splotch of paint on a grey canvas, bleeding into thin paper until it seeps into ripped holes.

She diverts her eyes and pulls out my fresh refill of "happy pills", hands trembling and eyes rigid. "I was just stopping by to make sure you got these, Lucky. Make sure you take them, okay? I better be going now."

"No, stay, stay!" The Wolf pleads. "I have some red devil cake in the oven and it's almost finished. We should have a sugary brunch!"

"Oh, that's very nice but I can't, I-I'm on a diet-" Elizabeth stammers but The Wolf's claws tear into flesh, whisking her to the table.

"You look fine, Elizabeth, come on sit down! You too, Lucky!"

The brunch is as sugary as The Wolf promised; cakes, cookies, sweet banana bread. This wasn't what wolves eat. Wolves eat flesh, screams, and heartbeats. But yet The Wolf smiles enthusiastically as he tells us about his favorite recipes, how his obsession with cuisine started when he was a young boy on a rural farm in Georgia, about the Culinary Arts college courses he'd taken, only to drop out for the love of his life.

They were stories he told everyone in Paradise, stories that blessed him with beautiful adjectives that melted on tongues like chocolates and caramel; charming, talented, caring, handsome.

Wolves weren't any of these things but The Wolf was everything and more.

And the 'more' was kept in drawers, cabinets, dens, and...me.

Maybe that's why Elizabeth can rest her head on her palms as if she's a teenage schoolgirl, worship in her eyes as she says, "And what happened to her?"

The Wolf cocks his head to the side. "What do you mean?"

"The love of your life that pulled you out of college. Where is she now?"

The Wolf swallows hard and I see him cowering into a ball of blood and tears in the den. "She died."

Elizabeth backs away from her half-eaten cake and bows her head. "Oh, I'm sorry," She says quietly but it doesn't hide her satisfaction. "How, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Childbirth," The Wolf answers smoothly and his blue eyes flicker to me. "We were expecting a baby boy. I like to think it wasn't God's plan for me to have a family of my own, he wanted me to help someone find a family instead." He rests a hand on mine, his hands blazingly hot, sending heat waves through limbs and finger tips and suddenly I am just disintegrating debris in a lake of fire.

Burning and burning and burning...

Elizabeth sighs in adoration. "You are truly an inspiration," and then to me, "Lucky, you are very lucky to have someone like him, remember that."

Words that feel like boiling lava rise up my throat like bile but, "I know," comes out instead.

The brunch ends quickly, Elizabeth standing up and smoothing the hem of her skirt down as she always does as she explains her commitments; a visit with a violent boy who knocked out his own teeth when the system denied his request to leave his group home. She describes this all to The Wolf with a small eye roll and a giggly sigh, continuously picking up a red velvet cupcake and setting it back down on the plate.

I've made it to the top of the stairs, burning and burning and burning, when The Wolf scratches her cheek with his claw and bruises her lips. The sweets hadn't been enough because wolves don't eat cakes, cookies, and sweet banana bread. He devours her words, her skin, her soul, and I cautiously walk across the creaky floorboards until I get to my room.

I flop down on my bed and stare up at the pale white ceiling but there are no mesmerizing police lights to dance across the smooth marble, just the last dying light of a sunset shedding over the Paradise sky. I pretend I'm somewhere else, floating over Paradise like the curved dying light until I'm in Arizona, on a bed of funky sheets that smells like buttermilk and ivory fragrances. Instead of creaky floorboards and the sound of The Wolf devouring his meal, I pretend I can hear that saccharine sound of rock music, swirling around me like squiggly lines on a blank sheet of paper. It consumes me, wraps around me like a blanket, and wards away the monsters that linger in the distance.

And then the rock music dies.

Because that someone that swayed to the radio and baked with buttermilk has turned it off to sing a lullaby.

I know I'm insane. I imagine things that aren't real, things that don't exist in the realm of Paradise. I imagine people; like the sun girl, like the foreign car dealership guy, like...that someone. And even if they are tangible, even if they are real, they will always be mere fantasies. Like chasing a car that never slowed down.

Because I can't leave Paradise and sometimes, I couldn't even leave the beautiful, teal house.

Maybe God hadn't meant for The Wolf to give me a family, maybe it had been the other way around. Maybe I am here, weighed down by an elastic band trapped under a house, to be the timer of The Wolf's very existence. To be what gave him the illusion of navy sweaters, khaki pants, and charming smiles by day...and weather the claws, fur, and deafening roars at night.

To be what he'd lost.

Thus, there is no escaping Paradise. Not when I have a purpose, not when I didn't exist outside of it.

The monsters close in now, the facade of sweet singing having fallen to the wayside, leaving me bare and impotent.

I sit up and feel around the bed for my sketchbook because there was one way of escape, a temporary one that only existed in pages and pencils. A temporary escape that'd keep the monsters away because I was too tired to wield a sword.

I get up and undo my covers.

I fall down on my knees and feel under the bed.

I scan the room, dig through my closet, even open the backpack full of memories of school.

However, the sketchbook doesn't come up and I don't know why I do but I fall over on to the floor, flat on my back, and squeeze my eyes shut. 

It was lost. Maybe even at the bottom of a 'Go-green' trashcan with Jack Reynold's business card . The card embellished with the fancy Time Roman letters that spelled; Jack Reynolds. Cambridge Talent Scout.

The card he gave with the promise of escape, escape from something he didn't even know. Something I hope he hadn't found in the depths of my irises. 

'There's a way out,' he had said, almost as if there were a hidden question embedded in his words.

I didn't need a shovel to dig them out, however. I already knew; 'There's a way out, but do you want it?'

The right answer was yes but the real answer...

I get up, the monsters eagerly on my heels, as I go to the bathroom and open the mirror cabinet. They taunt me, dance around me as if I were a burning bush, as I unsheathe my sword. Even as I fought them off, I could feel their satisfaction ringing in my ears because even as their blood spilled, adorning my blade, they were winning.

And now that my sketchbook was missing, they were going to start winning a lot more.

-----------------------------------------

Elizabeth doesn't leave until nightfall and I watch her descend the porch steps of the beautiful, teal house with a flushed expression. She knows Paradise is watching as she makes the walk to her blue Escalade. Ms. Gordon is watching from her white shutters whilst Mr. Tanner sneaks conspicuous glances as he makes his nightly rounds around the neighborhood with his beloved dog. Across the street, the Burnsby house is dark and looming, but I can't help but imagine Mrs. Burnsby in the kitchen window, chopping tomatoes and shaking her head as she studies Elizabeth making her walk of shame.

Just as the image of Mrs. Burnsby, dark-haired and eloquent, cuts through my thoughts, the purple floral curtains of the Burnsby's kitchen window moves aimlessly as if someone had pried them open. Maybe Mrs. Burnsby was still here, stuck in Paradise, forced to forever watch the continuous sheltered drama of the suburban neighborhood.

I silently hope she isn't.

I don't come down for dinner despite the succulent smells of rich spaghetti wafting up from the kitchen. I just bury myself in the heavy sheets of my bed and like every other night of every other week of every other month, I imagine that someone has turned off the radio spewing rock legends and is singing faintly in my ear.

They sing buoyantly, warping in and out of scratchy and somber, with my lack of focus. And then the singing turns to silence and sleep guzzles me away.

I don't sleep long though.

The darkness of closed eyelids and nothingness is cut through by the sound of singing, another lullaby ringing softly in my ears like a blanket being thrown gently over my head. The voice is like dipping into a lukewarm bath, the waters warm, airy, and cold all at the same time. I feel myself sinking slowly back into nothingness, easing, sinking, slipping...

And then a touch sends my skin ablaze, jolting me awake.

I lurch upright, heart racing like a rabbit caught between teeth, and look right into the eyes of The Wolf. His eyes are an icy, penetrating blue, bloodshot and frantic as he sings beautifully under his breath. He stops in the middle of his song, a song emitted from the local church choir he sang in every Sunday, to press a finger to his lips and amiably push me back down.

I am burning, burning, and burning as The Wolf curls up beside me, taking domain in the one room that had never been safe.

His claws dig into my skin, like fire licking at broken cliffs, and I try to override his voice, override his sweet, heavenly voice with the faint one from the only memories I get to keep. The only memories that aren't  tainted. But the venom from The Wolf's canine teeth drip on to those memories as he corners them, preparing to devour with a deafening, lovely roar.

With each honeyed syllable, the faint lullaby of that someone dissipates until The Wolf is licking his nails clean of the memory, leaving me with the lilting of his own voice, his own lullaby.

I can't stop the tears that make a river down my face but the darkness shields them. The darkness shields my hands as they mechanically come up to my chest and I do this silly thing called praying.

Maybe it was because I didn't have my sketchbook, because I was too tired to wield a sword, because I had nothing left...

I squeeze my eyes shut and ask the God The Wolf howls to, to change my fate.

To change my purpose.

To take care of Mrs. Burnsby.

To help the Orc.

To save The Wolf.

xxx

A/N: Thank you to anyone reading this! Thoughts are really, really, really welcome <3