Eddy Laughter

Winner — Editor’s Spotlight Award in Fiction

---

From Dust and Storage 

When the house was quiet and the boy was alone, he pushed his fingers against the worn wooden door and pushed his face into his father’s workroom. The wolf’s pelt had been cleaned and stretched. It hung from a hook on the wall, stretching to the ground like ivy. Hello, little one. 

What was left of the face was a wrinkled husk—eyeless, toothless, motionless, mouthless. Yet the boy was sure that it was the skin that spoke. 

The boy’s father was a man of hobbies. He had built their family home and every piece of furniture within it. His busy hands spun from task to task, working diligently, in perfect rhythm with the secluded woodlands winds. Taxidermy had been a long-running project, one that popped up again and again like a thoughtful friend. His workshop cradled curved knives for wood carving and the dipping heads of leather groovers. Gathering dust from clay, wood, and stone, the small room bore a heavy must, sweetened by years of sweat and care. The boy only came in when he was invited, but whenever he was, awe sprouted throughout his chest as he watched rays of wisping light wander over his father’s hand-made workbench. The wood paneling glowed with a warmth the boy believed could only come from skin. 

The wolf had been killed a day or two ago. His father had triumphed into the room, hoisting the dead animal over his shoulder and bubbling with pride. To the boy, his father looked like a mythical cross between a viking, a lion, and a bear. His black hair and scruff melted into his skin like the tufts of an animal’s pelt. His broad shoulders never so much as bent beneath the wolf’s weight. 

Within a moment, the boy too was in his father’s arms, as both he and the slain beast were spun into his father’s dance. The boy laughed, forgetting that only two bodies within the embrace were still breathing.  

Eventually, the woodsman released the boy from his arms and repositioned the wolf into his massive hands, holding it under the armpits like a fresh puppy. 

“What shall we do with him, eh? A rug? A new coat? Or perhaps just another fellow for around the house!” 

The boy giggled at his father, and his eyes fell on the wolf, whom he could now see had crusted over with rigor mortis and patches of its fur shone a dusted, bloody maroon. Its face was frozen in a distortion of growl and shock, and then from its immovable lips rose a question.

What do you want me to be, little one? 

The smile hardened on the boy’s face, and his spine tingled like a worm on wet gravel. Yet, his father was still joyous and waiting for his answer, far away from the dead wolf’s voice. The wolf, of course, was not the first animal brought through the heavy wooden door into their world within the cabin. There was a deer’s head above the kitchen door, a raccoon by the coat closet, a badger in the bathroom, and even a heron in the boy’s room. Being so close to their preserved shapes for much of his life, the boy thought of them more like passive statues than remade corpses. The boy grew up playing games with his father, dressing up the animals with one another’s clothes, wrapping the bodies close to them, as if reaching into their past lives and making pets of their feral forms. The wolf was the first one to ever reply. So the boy crept to the workshop when his father was out gathering firewood. Unable to free his thoughts from the rasping, crisping voice, curiosity tugged him forward, and embarrassment kept him alone. For many nights, the boy had fallen asleep feeling soaked with the wolf-skin’s question: What do you want me to be? 

The boy did not have an answer. He did not know why he needed one, nor why his father’s ears had failed to register the question. He was haunted by the deep melody of the wolf-skin’s voice and the isolation it brought him. Never before had he felt so far away from his father, but never before had his heart beat so fast. If it was true, if the wolf-skin really spoke to him, it would be the first secret the boy had ever possessed. 

A wondrous day for visitors, said the wolf-skin as the heavy door brushed a wave of dust into the air. If it isn’t too much trouble, my friend, could you please help me down? This is quite an uncomfortable position for a wolf, you know. 

The boy did what he was told, as he was a child fond of praise. He reached up on his tiptoes to pull the wolf’s snout off its hook. Eager to release the animal’s peeled face from his hands, he spread the skin across the worktable, dropping it in more of a hurry than he had intended. The skin was hard to look at, but the boy had no desire to pull himself completely away. 

Thank you, my friend. You have no idea how much better that feels. The sentence felt good against the boy’s chest; the wolf-skin was so polite, so kind, and so approachable, that the boy slowly, but surely, lightened himself of the fear of it. He stopped noticing that its mouth never moved, and his gaze fogged over the bloodstained membrane prickling out from under bits of its skin. The more the wolf-skin spoke, the less the boy questioned.  

“I imagine all of this must be very uncomfortable for you,” the boy found himself saying. His eyes raced across the sunken beast’s body and imagined what the wolf must have looked like full. He had never seen a wolf outside a picture book, and he had never intended to do otherwise. The boy was not like his father and found the forest frightening. Once, when he was small, he watched a squirrel get taken by a hawk. The boy bore witness to it all, how the squirrel went from a small, light, playful thing and then morphed into something loud and shrieking, crying in a voice he could have never dreamt of. And then, the squirrel fell so limp and so heavy. That night, the boy decided that as long as he could help it, he would avoid the dark places of the forest where any animal was vulnerable enough to transform into prey. 

He decided to keep the property, to his father and their stuffed creatures, to where bodies were intact and he knew what to expect. The boy grew exceptionally good at ignoring the baying coyotes and the crying raptors. He kept his face down, passing the time by watching bugs in the garden and listening for the wings of passing songbirds. Of course the boy knew that his father was a hawk. He understood that their cabin’s food and decoration came from his father hunting, but he chose to think of that process like words on a page, removed of texture and smell. 

Oh yes, unfortunately yes, said the wolf-skin. Although I’ve heard of wolves living rather good lives as carpets and coats, it’s not really what I would’ve chosen for myself. “I’m sorry about that,” the boy said, his throat suddenly sticky and slow. He shifted his face away, towards the dusty workshop window. The trees looked beautiful in the afternoon sun. What happens, happens. The wolf-skin’s tone worked to shrug off the question. This sentiment did not sit right with the boy, but before he could finish sifting for the proper reply, he heard the front door scratch open and his father bellowing out in welcome. A sudden bundle of nerves landed on the boy’s chest, and he sprang to the door, barely remembering to say goodbye. 

“I’ll come back again.” 

And so, I will wait. 

# 

That night, the boy picked at his skin before falling asleep. A hangnail on his finger had ribboned the edges of his cuticle, leaving a mess at the tip of his hand. Over and over, he felt at the spot where his skin stopped being him and imagined what it would be like to exist as a pelt of himself. 

Surely he would be more shaken than the wolf appeared to be. If the boy lost his insides, he would never again play in the garden or watch the deer gallop by. He would never again laugh with his father or discover the things he could create without the woodsman’s help. He would be stunted, forever small and fragile. 

Wanting to help the wolf-skin in whatever way he could, the boy made it his duty to visit it every moment that he was alone and able. By now, the woodsman had rebuilt most of the wolf’s features, recreating the skull with an armature and filling out the eye sockets with soft, yellow glass. His replacement teeth and whiskers were in the process of being sewn, and the woodsman had gone out to get more wire. 

“Is that better?” 

In a way, yes. The wolf-skin’s new mouth was wide, but not yet fierce. The sculpted maw was missing most of its teeth and all the color on its resin tongue. Your father did a wonderful thing and left me some of my real teeth. The rest are in that drawer. 

“Can you tell the difference?” The boy asked, stepping close to the wolf-skin’s face, stopping at what he felt was a polite distance. 

Of course I can. The front canines are mine; the rest are false. Too clean. The wolf-skin said, sounding proud. 

Now that the wolf had mentioned it, the boy could make out a slight sheen of grime on the sharpest fangs: a slight pinkish, brown shadow. The tattooed memory of animal blood. The boy must have grimaced into the wolf’s maw, for the pelt caught him with a calming tone. Don’t worry, little one. These are only for deer and rabbits. You, my friend, are neither. Your eyes face forward when you run, just as mine do. 

The boy found himself smiling, and without thinking, he brought his hand to the wolf’s cleaned snout. He scratched at its remolded forehead, its plastic whiskers, just as he would that of a breathing dog. 

# 

Perhaps the boy was not a rabbit. Perhaps he could be hawk-like. The idea was less nauseating in the mouth of the wolf-skin; it was a fact, not a tragedy. 

#

Transformed into a long, flat swath of fabric, the wolf-skin lay across the boy’s bedroom floor, its head and limbs stretching out from the blanket of its torso. The boy had scattered his toys around him and was playing with a set of wooden boats long ago carved by his father. They melted into the sea of the wolf’s stretched back, fighting to stay above the waves of its fur. 

The boy’s head rested atop the wolf’s, with its new foam skull, and he made sure to keep his hair out of the skin’s glassy eyes. 

“I bet you miss being a wolf.” 

My friend, I still am a wolf. 

The boy sat up and picked up a wooden sailboat, the one with its hull painted a splendid green. Days ago, he had pocketed the extra wolf teeth from the workshop and kept them with him ever since. He fished out a molar, his fingers brushing its mountainous shape in awe. He placed it down on the wolf’s back, standing it upright like a rock in a bay or the fin of a shark. “I would miss it.” 

He moved the small green boat around the tooth, sliding it closer and closer until the wood ground against the molar’s edge. With a hint more of pressure, the tooth peeled against the miniature hull, eating away at the paint in an imperfect, wobbly line. 

“What was it like? What do you remember? I want to imagine it, imagine you being real. A real living wolf, I mean.” 

I remember waiting and wanting. Being hungry and being full. Sleeping and running. Breathing fresh air. 

The boy’s hands twitched against his toys, feeling impatient. “But those are all things I do.” 

What is it like being a boy in a cabin? 

The boy crashed the tooth into another ship, breaking the mast with a splintering bite. The brilliant white sail snapped off and wilted into the furry sea. What could he tell the wolf? The boy had no idea; his life was boring, nothing of note. It was nothing like running through trees without a second thought or panting unafraid in the shadowy night. 

The more he reached for an answer, the more anger melted into a hard rock within his chest. The boy’s life was warm, dry, and limited. He roamed the house, the yard, and the boundaries of what his father had created. It was beautiful, but it was not his, and he was not his father. He was not strong enough to swing an axe nor brave enough to enter the maw of the woods. What could a wolf know of wanting? With his frightful mouth and beastly fur? The boy was a stale shadow of a woodsman, while a wolf was expansive and clear. I can show you, if you’d like. 

# 

The boy followed every one of the wolf-skin’s instructions. 

Its body was entirely devoid of blood and muscle, yet it was hard to carry. The boy was sure to cradle the head and curve its forelimbs into his grasp, but the wolf-skin drooped heavy and long across his small chest. Dust snagged between the wolf-skin’s plastic claws, as its hind legs dragged on the stairs, overflowing from the boy’s arms. The pelt felt awkward and extended, as if it was built to cover the musculature of an entire pack of beasts. 

The boy had waited until his father was asleep. He checked three separate times that the woodsman’s snores were loud, steady, and uninterrupted before the boy was ready to even consider the stairs. Now that he had made it to the ground, the boy’s neck was thrumming with a nervous urgency. He pushed forward with the wolf-skin, pressing the top of its body close to his chest so that the tip of its ear brushed his lower lip. He checked his pockets for the teeth and stared around the darkness of his house, the fear of being caught and questioned heavy in his throat. Without the gentle, flower-petal warmth of the sun, the living room had become cavernous. It was now a shapeless tangle of wood, peppered only slightly by the light of the stars. Knife. 

The reminder stung action into his feet and the boy, too nervous to put down the pelt, balanced his way into the kitchen, only able to reach his father’s knife block by leaning far across the counter in an uncomfortable stretch that left a cramping line beneath his ribs. 

The knife wobbled into his hand, and the boy took a deep breath, banishing the thought of his own blood and fragile skin. Folding his arms back into the cradle of his chest, his wrist curled into an unstable twist, balanced between the knife’s edge and the sharpness of the wolf’s mouth. He moved a foot towards the kitchen’s door frame and prepared another slow, calculated step. Quicker, my little friend, quicker. 

The boy obeyed and shifted across the floorboards in a subdued trot. Each shaking, tiptoed step jostled either the knife blade or the wolf-skin’s mouth closer to his skin. Eventually, his free hand scratched awkwardly against the front door, pulling it open just enough to squeeze himself free. 

The night air was neither cold nor warm, but deeply alive. His nose worked to untangle the smells of fresh wind from soil as his eyes struggled to adjust. 

Quicker. 

The world was made of faceless, still shadows and shapes, but the boy did not wish to argue so close to his father’s window and followed the command once again without question. Not out in the open. I need the shelter of trees. 

With pebbles and dirt matting into the edges of the pelt, the boy dragged himself and the wolf-skin across the doorway, across field and forest. 

“How about here?” Asked the boy, his breath beginning to grow shallow under the leathery weight. 

Farther from the house. That place was not built to see this; it wouldn’t be proper. 

“What about by the river?” 

Too loud; it wouldn’t be right. 

Finally, the wolf-skin picked a spot where the trees had grown around a large, cropped stone. Flat and worn at the top, like an oversized stool, the wolf-skin could just fit across the surface of the expansive rock. Once settled, the wolf-skin’s time-frozen maw lay open to the forest, tongue lolling into the shadows. 

The boy brought the knife to the grime-ridden back paws first, his hands small between the blade and the skin’s eroded legs. Without sound, he whispered back the wolf-skin’s words: Cut all of it out. All of it. 

He pressed the blade between the first plastic claw tip. Sinking inwards and twisting, the boy found the end of the inserted piece and cut it free. The nail fell and pressed itself into the earth. It glimmered a faint reflection of the sky. 

Yes, perfect. Now, the others. 

“It didn’t hurt at all, did it?” 

I’m beyond that, little one. Please, the others. 

The boy ran his fingers over the hole he had cut, his thumb following a crack into what was left of the wolf-skin’s padded foot. 

“Your paw—” 

Do the rest.

And the boy listened; he worked quietly as he gutted each limb of his father’s work and littered the ground with its scraps. 

When the face was left, his fingers were sore and tangled from work. Without thinking, he brushed a hand by the wolf-skin’s cheek. His father had reconstructed the wolf’s likeness with an evolutionary precision. He had made the wolf charming and handsome, a beautiful dream of a carnivore. 

The boy looked deep into the wolf’s unmoving eyes; normally a vibrant amber, in the dark they reflected a brilliant gray. 

My real eyes were brown. 

The skin’s voice held a softness that it had never offered before, and the boy nodded. He dropped the knife blade and plunged one of the wolf’s true teeth through its eye socket. The wolf-skin’s proper image was not the shape the woodsman had created, but neither was it the wolf the boy had dreamed about. 

The boy heaved against the armature, digging with the fang and shredding against foam. The eye popped out, and he moved on to the next one. His muscles moved without calculation or concern. 

When he was finished with the eyes, the boy ripped out the replaced teeth with his hands and peeled the preserved skin free from its artificial skeleton, leaving his knuckles bloody and raw with effort. 

Shredded and torn, the wolf-skin lay against the rock, untethered from the touch of humanity. Wind puffed into the empty sheet of its form, filling it like breath until the wolf-skin’s husk moved to stand on its own feet. 

The cave of its face looked back at the boy and nodded. 

Thank you. 

The boy looked back at the living-dead shell and smiled. The wolf-skin tumbled against the wind, its legs blowing into a steady gallop. Soon the boy lost sight of it in the darkness, and he was alone, wolfless, in the forest.

---

---

Banner Art:
John Everett Millais, The Wolf’s Den, 1863, The National Museum of Western Art