04: God Decides to Commit Petty Theft

The morning's chill had disappeared. The hammering of his chest had become a loud tattoo, however.

"Go on, go on!" the wolf howled happily in his ear. "Use The Telleh-Fawn!"

Richard was back inside his apartment. He was not sure why, but the wolf was licking every inch of his exposed skin and what felt like each strand of his hair.

https://i.imgur.com/23ztBhZ.png [https://i.imgur.com/23ztBhZ.png]

He had no idea what was going on, and it was rather difficult to find the bravado to ask when a shape-shifting monster was nibbling on his neck. He could still remember all the blood as it poured out from the deer's mutilated corpse.

"Kyeeeh heh heh!"

The sound seemed to be a favorite of the wolf. Every so often it would fill the apartment with the high-pitched cackle.

"I know all about thy human technology. I know all about The Telleh-Fawn!" the wolf roared in his left ear. "Summon a dozen! No, summon a hundred! Thou wilt be most busy this day, servant!"

It had taken him a little while to understand, but he was fairly confident his hallucination was trying to say telephone. Perhaps it wanted an audience to attend Richard's mental breakdown. He was actually a little surprised the police had not already shown up outside his door. Or rather his broken door. While Richard had only ever seen his neighbor once, he did have a neighbor upstairs.

The wolf stopped its incessant licking. Its good humor disappeared like a mirage. A low growl instead shook the very floor. Richard recognized the noise all too well. It had not frightened him deep in the woods, but he had lost so much of his bravado since yesterday.

"Why do you dally?" the creature asked, each word tinged with violence.

"I... can't?" Richard offered up weakly. He remembered the deer and swallowed nervously.

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"And what do you mean by that?" the monster asked, each word slow and deliberate.

"I can't call anymore," Richard said nervously.

Silence filled the apartment. He glanced over his shoulder and found the wolf staring intently at the back of his neck. Its white fur was still marred red with blood.

"Call?" The wolf sounded confused. "I do not want you to call out to anyone. I want thou to use The Telleh-Fawn to summon more humans."

It took Richard a moment to process the beast's confusion. When he finally understood, a nervous bubble of laughter tickled his lips.

Before he could speak, the same low growl from before filled the room.

"My high priest does not make mock of their god." The fiery furnace of the wolf's breath needled into Richard's thoughts. The bubble of his laughter evaporated in its heat.

"I can't use my phone, my telleh-fawn," Richard said hurriedly. His heart continued to hammer against his chest. "I... I canceled it. A long time ago. I couldn't afford it anymore, so I canceled it. And it doesn't even have a charge. Even if I hadn't canceled it."

The words dribbled out from his mouth and tripped over one another. He felt a little embarrassed by his nervous awkwardness. He was fairly certain he had lost his mind, which meant this hallucination could do him no real harm. But then he remembered the bloodied deer.

The silence that settled over the room was tortuous. If he had a phone, he would have called himself an ambulance. If he had the internet, he would have looked up his symptoms.

"The Telleh-Fawn..." The wolf's voice was slow and uncertain. "It was... cancelled...?"

Richard nodded his head hurriedly.

"I can't make any calls. I can't... can't summon other humans." He did not mention that his phone had only ever had three contacts in the first place. He was not sure how much help Better than Best Chinese Cuisine would have been either.

He glanced over his shoulder in time to watch the wolf nod its blood-speckled head thoughtfully.

"Are... So The Telleh-Fawn... is no more." Richard frowned at the concern in the wolf's voice. "Was this... Did this happen recently? I know I saw a human with The Telleh-Fawn just a decade past..."

He did not understand the wolf at first, but then another bubble popped in the back of his thoughts. He almost laughed, but he quickly remembered the beast's low growl.

"No, no. The Telleh-Fawn is still around," Richard said. "I just canceled my phone. Everyone else's should work just fine."

"Ahhhhh." The wolf loosed a happy noise. Her warm breath tickled the back of his neck pleasantly. "Mmm, mmm. I understand everything now."

The wolf quickly rose and padded away from Richard. The cold raced to fill the void, and he suddenly realized that he had just thought of the wolf as a she.

"Where... are you going?" Richard asked his hallucination as she padded slowly past the bedroom door. He winced at the deer's blood and gore in the other room.

"To find another human's The Telleh-Fawn for you," the wolf said, and she slipped out of the apartment without another word.

Richard chewed on the beast's words and fought back an unhealthy laugh. He had a very bad feeling about this.