WARNING : THIS STORY CONTAINS VIOLENT THEMES AND COARSE LANGUAGE. DO NOT READ IF YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF TOO SENSITIVE.

DISCLAIMER : I don't own nor the characters, neither the canon of the story (only the twisted stuff you can read is mine xp)

Chapter 2 . Mind the doors

Katy looked down at her bleeding calf. Her white socks, now turning a lovely wine red, was soaking the blood like a sponge would, until it's so full that its pores would start spitting back the liquid. She folded it down a bit, and saw the purple marks on her legs. The wolf had bitten deep. Deep, deep, deep. Deeper than what she felt when it bit her. Though she didn't remembered that much of how everything started. Everything happened not even ten minutes before, yet she only recalled a few blurry scenes, which were playing over and over in head. Foreward and backward, like with a good old video recorder. As if she could roll back in time, go back to when she saw the open kitchen window and the big ass dog tearing off the second lone blue curtain from the left bay window and then turning back to her and then oh shit well too bad I'm screwed.

Mainly she remembered sounds. A loud cacophony mixing screams with growls, footsteps with thumps on the wooden floor. Cries, perhaps ? Probably, given the circumstances. "Katy ! Run ! Run !" She hesitated between running towards the door entrance or try to leave by the kitchen windows, still wide open. But if she could get out, what would happen ? Would the animal chase her ? Or maybe she could reach the car, but then what ? She didn't have no key. Shawn grabbed her wrist and pull her back. She quickly shot a glance at the staircase ; Maya was dragging a dizzy Riley upstairs. Immediatly, she made a quick calculation in her head : how long before this son-of-a-bitch-wolf reaches my daughter ? A gruesome picture crossed her mind when the sad but honest answer came to her. Ten. Maybe fifteen seconds.

They all made their way to the room upstairs, which could appear as a silly idea since it was no issue, if not a trap. But they had no other choice, the wolf was here, then there ; the wolf was everywhere. Topanga dashed upstairs with Auggie in her arms, and grabbed Maya's arm on the way. Weirdly, she seemed to be handling the situation in a more serene way then anybody else. Cory was desperately trying to get his axe back, just to swing it in the little bastard's head. In vain.

It seem like the wolf was enjoying the situation. It would bounce on the sofa and growl a bit, then jump down and tour in the room. Carefully, the animal made sure to disable any access to the outside world, with a very strange, but quite clever method : with its teeth and paws, the wolf wisely put one curtain down the bay windows and the other one near the doorstep. Everytime anybody stepped on the curtains to get out of this soon-to-be nuthouse, the wolf would pull the cloth with his fangs and drag the person on it along. Soon, it became a dead zone, and the sound of heads hitting the ground in loud stump became part of the scenery. So, indeed, going upstairs was not the most brilliant idea, but it sounded better then being toyed with by a 170 pound nightmare.

Katy was the last one in the stairs. The wolf, would had been quite a gentle doggy until then, decided it was time to step into the game. In the blink of an eye, it jumped over the couch and up in the air, and came to grab her leg between its teeth. And while all the others were already in the bedroom, she saw herself being dragged down the steps. A keen shriek resonated into the house, almost as keen as the pain which came with the wolf's fangs, and Maya felt her heart stop for a second. Her mother was out there. And while she didn't think a wolf would appear as a such a threat on normal standards, she knew the rule wasn't, for whatever reason, applying to that situation. She rushed to the door, her mind blanked by the horrible sound she had just heard -because she knew that if she were actually thinking, she wouldn't go because she would be paralysed by fear- and came across Topanga, who stopped her in her race. "You can't go !" Topanga commanded. She looked at her with an outraged expression. 'But my mother is out there !' she wanted to reply. And she tried to go past her, because she was fierce, and careless, and fearless... but she knew her 5"2' tiny self couldn't help, as much as she hated it. She knew that if she got out, she would have as much grasp of the situation as a blind person trying to figure out what the colour red looks like. She knew she was useless.

"Don't worry, Maya, I'll get your mom !" Shawn said, and ran out the room.

The moment he stepped outside, he knew that from then on, nothing could get better. He saw Katy was desperately trying to rid herself of the wolf's canines. She held tight to the banister rail, while the animal was pulling on her leg. It was so painful she prayed to God it wouldn't rip her foot apart, but paradoxically she also wished the wolf would tear it and finally let go of her. She could already picture her foot in its maw, gushing blood everywhere. That thought made her leg hurt even more ; she screamed in pain and closed her eyes. Somehow, not seeing it made the pain a bit more bearable. Not enough to make her stop screaming, but a little. Kind of like when she feigned to not see the bills pilling up in the mailbox : she knew it was here, but avoiding it made her feel like she was in control. Slowly, her sweaty palms slid across the ramp, and she felt her body going down the steps again. Shawn ran down the stairs, swung his leg and shot a kick in the wolf's muzzle.

Bad idea. Terrible idea.

The grip on her calf grew even tighter. 'AS IF it could be worse', she thought ironically. She let go of the ramp, hopelessly. In a last attempt, Shawn gave an other kick, but this time aiming at the eye.

And finally, the wolf let go.

It felt like God was in the room. At last.

Shawn took Katy bridal style (unfortunately, not for the occasion she expected) and ran back up to the room. The door was slightly ajar, and Shawn could see Maya's eyes peeking through. He could guess the fear painting her face white, and the tears washing it down. "Open the door !" he shouted. And so they did. Shawn pushed away Maya when he entered. "Quick, shut it !" he ordered. The last thing everybody wanted, is to see there last escape being narrowed down again, this time to the corner of the room, or the freaking balcony.

But the worst worsened again. As the door was about to be shut, the wolf stuck his muzzle through the frame, its teeth greeting everybody with a large, heartwarming smile. Topanga gasped. She pushed the door harder, and Cory joined to help her, and Maya, and Riley. Together, they were able to shut it down, but it didn't stop the wolf from banging on the the door. There wasn't any door lock, but they had to find a way to secure things a bit more. Topanga looked for a hint, sweeping her eyes across the room, then yelled, "The cupboard ! Cory, you need to drag it here to block the door !" she said in a hurry, but still with an honorable sense of self-control. Cory let go of the door to get the cupboard. Suddenly, the banging felt a lot harder. Shawn helped Cory carry the piece of furniture and they blocked the door with it.

Everybody took a step back.

And Katy looked down on her bleeding calf. Shawn had put her down on one of the beds in the room, already arboring a bright stain on its green blanket. Maya ran to her to see the damages. "You alright ?" she asked in a shaky voice. But just by the look on her face she could tell she was not. Her tears were still flowing, but she had her brave face on. Though she didn't dare even glancing on her mother's wound, because it was certainly going to bring a sharp brain around her heart area. She grabbed her mother's hand, trying to ignore the blood on it. Topanga came and sit on the edge of the bed. Maya glared at her. She was still a bit offended by her making her rescue attempt a vain and naive frivolity. She looked at Katy's injury. Maya could swear she saw her grimacing. But Topanga try to remain as neutral as possible, to reassure the kids, probably.

"Is she gonna be okay ?" Riley asked.

"I don't know, Riley," Topanga looked at Maya, knowing that she should be extremely careful with the words she was about to use, "... it doesn't look so good. I'm no doctor but... this looks like it must be taken care of right away. Cory, call an ambulance. Also if you could tell them there's a wolf in our living-room, you'd be a sweetheart."

"I don't have my cell-phone." he replied.

Shawn added, "Me neither, it's downstairs in the pockets of my coat."

She looked around and realized she saw the same expression on every faces. Of course, Riley and Maya didn't have their phones, it was in their room. So was Topanga's. All of a sudden, she didn't feel so much in control anymore. It made her nauseaous.

"I have mine," said Katy, between two cries, "it's in my purse."

Topanga sighed, in relief. She almost broke a smile, actually. Shawn grabbed Katy's handbag and looked for her mobile. If the situation wasn't so bad, Riley would have laughed at the redondant aspect of the scene ; it reminded her of how they hurried Shawn to look through Katy's purse at Maya's birthday. Such good memories succeeded to calm her a little bit.

"Here," he said has he handed Cory the phone, "I don't know how fast they can intervene, though..."

He looked at the windows. The snow was pouring again and he could hear the wind whistle. He didn't dare saying it but deep inside him he thought, 'what if they arrive to late ?' Katy was loosing a lot of blood, and it didn't seem to be slowing down. Cory dialed 911, and waited.

"911, what is your emergency ?"

Riley watched her father prattling out all the story to the phone. She was holding Auggie in her arms. She kept saying 'it's okay', 'shhhhh, it's okay', but she knew it was not. Plus, her tears didn't help.

"Sir, we're sending an ambulance right away. Could you tell me how bad is the injury ?" the woman one the phone asked in a very calming tone.

"Very bad. Why ?"

"In all honesty, your location doesn't simplify the intervention, sir. A storm is threatening to blanken the area, and as you know the blizzard will make it harder for the ambulance to arrive."

"Can't you send a helicopter, or something ?" he asked, "she's really bleeding a lot."

"Not in those conditions, sir," the lady with the soothing voice answered, "but don't worry ; an ambulance is on its way. Aswell as the Animal Control Center. Meanwhile, I'm going to stay tuned and give you all the advices you need."

"How long before the ambulance arrives ?"

"I don't know, sir. You mustn't worry-

"HOW LONG ?"

The woman paused for a while, then repeated : "I don't know, sir."

Cory sighed. He looked at Katy, with a sorry look. As if she was doomed and nobody could do anything about it. He frowned at the sight of the red stain under her calf. It finally calmed down a bit though, because Shawn had tight his belt around her calf.

"...ster ? Are you still there ?" the woman called on the phone.

Cory sighed again, "Yes. I'm still there."

"You need to apply a tourniquet to-"

"We've done that already."

"Good, normally she's not gonna keep bleeding that much. Now you must be very careful and look for all the abnormal things happening to the injured. It might be a sign that the animal that bit her was infected with some disease, it could be very dangerous if it had passed it on to her. Symptoms such as fevers, swelling of the wounded area, pale skin-"

Cory cut her roughly, "What if she's pale because she's bleeding to death ?"

The d-word made everybody jolt. Even Cory himself was shocked he had actually said that. It was burning is throat a bit, though.

"No sir, I don't think so. Do not crowd yourself with negative thoughts. Please can I talk to the injured person ?"

He shook his head, clearing his head from every gruesome images he had on his mind, "'f course." He handed the phone to the blond-haired woman, and her hand communicated a bold shiver to Cory's. He let go in a flash, feeling his fingers being almost electrocuted. For a second, he thought he could feel her pain which had travelled from her body all the way through his. He soon crossed the odd thought off is mind, already shaken by the two strange encounters he had had today. The fresh memories were still neatly displayed in front of his unconscious self ; the storm and the wolf, then the axe in the eye ; the wolf and the kick, then the storm coming back. It was like a bizzare, reversed pattern, interwining ironically the cold stinging blizzard with the apparition of the hot-blooded animal.

He had never being so scared in his life. Sure, he could remember that time when he fell into a llama habitat* during a school field trip, proving again how bad is level of clumsiness was. There again, Shawn was there to give him a hand, and helped him get out of this ultimate jam (thought not the last one... obviously). But there, it was different : there were no claws, no fangs (!), and no creepy smile coming straight from a slightly twisted and very gory horror movie. It was a situation anybody was laughing about a couple of years later. In no way he could compare this ludicrous scene to the one he's been confronted with only an hour before. Additionally, the wolf was curently threading candidly in the living-room – or wherever else in the house, really ; who knew ? - and visiting the place while the mother of his daughter's best friend was watching her leg slowly bleeding out, waiting patiently for somebody to come and do something. But thinking this way wasn't getting him anywhere.

'Ramblings. Too much ramblings.'

He could actually hear the dull sounds of paws on the parquet floor.

'Is he actually wandering in the house ?' he asked himself. Then he thought of the wolf patroling in front of the bedroom door, on the lookout for every other soul who would even dare steping if only one toe out of the room. It freaked him out.

He looked down and caught his daughter's frightenend stare. She was sitting on the floor, stroking her little brother's brown curls. He came to her and sat next to her, feeling a bit ashamed ; for all this time, he had let her and his son alone. When they needed him more then ever, he was else where, mostly zooming out. In a way, he was kind of avoiding her (but NEVER he would have admitted it to himself), afraid of how sensitive she was, and how hard it would be for her deal with the situation and for him to help her cope. Riley was never one to moderate her emotions. She was unpredictable and easily overwhelmed, that was no secret. But this time when he saw her... when he saw her dried tears on her cheeks, her over-protective look covering Auggie with a true determination, Riley didn't appear the same anymore. She wasn't crying anymore. She wasn't shaking anymore. At that moment, she was over with all that. Fear would no longer bring her down. And that thanks to only one thing ; she was commited to make her little brother stop crying. That was all that mattered, that he was safe. So she took him, and held him, and she knew that if she cried, he would cry too. So she ceased crying. 'It's all gonna be okay', she'd whispered. 'It's all gonna be okay.'

She watched her father as he sat down near by her. She suddenly felt a bit warmer.

'Everything had started out so great...' she thought, while a haze of sadness envelopped her mind. Everything was going great, indeed, until her father and uncle came home. Maya, Auggie and her had wandered in the house, opening every doors of every room and every cupboard they came upon. They inspected every corners of the chalet and observed every speck of dust the were to see. Auggie was looking for the best hidding spots, because he was planning on forcing Riley and Maya to play hide-and-seek with him. He was aware that both girls were a bit too old for those kind of games, but who could resist an adorable 6 year old shedding waterfull of tears and a wise 'pleeeeaaaase Riley, you'we my favowite sister !' ? Obviously, not Riley. So Auggie kept looking for the sneakiest spot -the one where from which you could see anybody passing by, but nobody passing by could see you in. His height was convenient too, because he could fit places nobody else could. That made him happy. However he couldn't find any spot sneaky enough.

Until he came in that one room.

It was the room Topanga had choosen to sleep in, with Cory. It was smaller then the other bedrooms, perhaps even the smallest, but it was cosy and she liked it. It was the second room from the right, and it didn't have any balcony, unlike Katy's (the one everybody had found shelter in at the very moment) but the windows were still very huge and offered a mesmerizing view of the pine forest downhill. It had basic wooden furniture, a beautiful full-lenght mirror in its right wall, and a large bed in the middle. Auggie found the room cute, but there weren't any fun places to hide in. He got bored of this little visit. He leaned against the mirror and grimaced. Maybe he could hide into one of the hundred kabillion cupboards in this house. Unoriginal, but eh, still something.

He heard a little click.

He stood back up, and noticed the mirror was pushed in. Out of curiousity, he gave another little push to the door, and it opened wide in an acute creak. His eyeballs almost buldged out of his face. He felt like a pirate finding a forgotten treasure out of pure luck. For a second, he was Perceval and, yet drowned in a terrible period of darkness and doubts, he had found the Holy Grail ! Without even looking for it !

"Girls ! Look, I found a secret door !"

They both looked at him, intrigued, and their jaws dropped down. Maya rushed to his side to take a closer look to the secret passage. She frowned, "It only opens on my mom's room. It's stupid, why would anybody put a door here in the first place ? It doesn't lead nowhere special..." she said.

"Don't be such a kill-joy, Maya," Riley replied, "that's awesome ! Maybe that means that there are other secret doors hidding somewhere in the house !"

Auggie squeaked at the idea. Honestly, everything was becoming to amazing to handle. A secret door. Maybe several secret doors ? That was too cool to be ignored. Finally, Riley closed it, and told him "Don't tell no one else. That will be our little secret, and it shall remain between us three forever, okay ?" she said solemnly.

"Okay."

...

The words resonated in his head. Auggie got his head up his sister's lap and looked at the mirror. It looked exactly like the one in Topanga's room. Because it was the same one, actually. One push and they were in Topanga's room. One push.

He closed his eyes. Because, in the back of his head, he knew that this door, if 'tickled' by a certain doggy, would lead to a lot of trouble. It could be two things : one, a new way out for them. Two, a new way in for the wolf.

* True fact (I think so...)

Please don't think I'm obsessed with hurting animals ! I'm not BTW, but by the way the story is going, I know I can only seem like a twisted-minded freak... u.u

But anyway, I decided to not give up on one of my creations for once so, voilà. I don't know if it's worth it though. I think this story will only be about five chapters long, and by the size of the chapters you can tell how short it's gonna be. But it just my first fanfiction so please be kind and have mercy, I know the plot is weird, but have mercy T^T And hey, "unleash your imagination", right ?

Thanks for reading,

Lucy full of loooooooooooooove !