Both heads had longish hair, with deathly blank, almost ferine looking, golden eyes. The way the flesh appeared clean-cut yet somehow butchered at the same time with the spinal cord brutally snapped, made it obvious that they had been decapitated with a hunting knife or something of the sort. Blood soaked their ghastly faces, painting them in macabre streaks of scarlet. One seemed to be staring straight at me as if its soul was still trapped inside and screaming out for redemption. 

I covered my mouth in shock, muffling my own scream, as I fell to my knees in utter distress. I honestly couldn't believe my eyes, and yet, everyone except Bunica and Becca was cheering in celebration? Bunica looked pissed as hell, and Becca's mouth was stuck agape in horror.

Bogdan looked at me and smiled. "Fret not my sweet little swain. They may look human, but I assure you, these are just the heads of filthy wolves." He kicked one of the heads with his winklepicker boot, causing it to roll into some random guy's regular boot.

"You fool!" Bunica spat. "Are you trying to make our town a target!? Have you forgotten that tonight is the full moon!?" She quickly glanced at Becca and I, then continued to angrily scold him in Romanian. Oddly enough, the weirdo townies were seemingly trying to defend him like a bunch of whacked-out psychopaths.

My breathing became rapid and my head began to spin. I wanted to go home, leave halfway through the work exchange, and never return. These people were nutterbutter nutcases! Downright crazy! And murderous! One thing was certain, I had to get the living fuck out of here before they went all 'The Hills Have Eyes' on my poor defenseless ass! ...And then a very frightening reality hit me.

Oh fuck... How the hell am I even going to leave? 

There was limited communication to the outside world, and I had no means of transportation. I had to figure something out, and fast! 

I quickly got up and grabbed Becca by the arm. "Follow me!" I urgently whispered. She squawked as I forcefully dragged her back over to the oak tree like a determined cheetah dragging off a pathetic bleating gazelle. 

"Ow, careful, I bruise easily!" She complained while stumbling through the puddles, firmly held in my iron shackle-like grip. "Just what do you think you're doing, anyway?"

I swiftly pulled her behind the tree where no one could see us. "Lookit!" I hissed, while aggressively pointing a 'what-I'm-about-to-say-is-important-shit-so-you'd-better-fucking-listen-up' finger directly in her face. "It's obvious that I don't like you, and you don't like me." I firmly whispered.

"Well, duh. You're a bitch." She apathetically stated with an eyeroll.

I grabbed both of her upper arms and shook her a bit while peering into her eyes with a crazed maniacal expression. "Whatever! What-the-fuck-ever! Maybe I am a bitch, or maybe we're both just bitches who are equally too bitchy to realize that we're bitches! Who knows!? But the fact is that both of our bitch asses are stuck here, in the middle of bumfuck nowhere Moldovia, with a bunch of delusional maniacs!" I dramatically waved my hand in the direction of all the murderous commotion. "I mean just look at them!" We both peeked around the trunk, seeing the joy that the severed heads brought to those barbarous bumpkins. "Bogdan and those two boneheaded bastards just murdered two people, claiming them to be wolves, and everyone's celebrating!? Like honestly, what the fuck!?"

Becca shook her head with her hand on her forehead. "Alright, alright, I get it." She looked at me with apprehension in her sparkling blue eyes. "But what are we even supposed to do? We can't just up and leave! There's no way out without a car, and we can't exactly call a cab. Besides, these people are clearly crazy. What if they don't take kindly to us trying to break the work exchange agreement?" Her face was scrunched up with concern as she spoke.

I cautiously peered over at Bogdan, who was drinking wine straight from the bottle and seemingly continuing on with his vainglorious victory speech. "I don't know, but we have to figure something out!" I looked back into Becca's eyes. "These people may be dangerous, they're also extremely superstitious. From what I've gathered, everyone locks themselves inside on the night of the full moon. And that's tonight!" I grabbed her shoulder. "We should try to make an escape! Wolves be damned!" 

Her wary gaze shifted over towards Bogdan, then back to me. "But what about all our stuff? And where would we even go?" 

I cackled like I was losing my goddamn mind. "We'll just have to pack lightly and take the main road. It might take us a few days, but we'll eventually reach real civilization." I dreaded the thought of doing such a thing with someone like her, but then again, the guy we were staying with just kicked a severed head like it was a soccer ball.  

She looked at me blankly for a second. "No, that's ridiculous, and a downright bad idea. I'm not doing that." Her head shook back and forth causing her coppery red curls to bounce around her pale face.

"Oh, come on!" I hissed. "You'd seriously rather stay here, with a murderer!?" 

She shrugged. "It's better than getting lost in a foreign country or being eaten by wolves. There has to be a better way." She reasoned.

She did have a good point. A really good point. "Okay, how about this, you and I sneak out tonight and break into the library? We'll use the phone and internet to contact the outside world for help. And then, we'll give them the slip!" I made a fist and determinedly pounded it into my other hand with a stern look on my face.

"I like that plan a lot better. Let's do it!" She agreed with a slight smile. 

"Excellent!" I held my hand out for her to shake.

She crossed her arms and sneered at my hand like it belonged to an insect. "I still don't like you."

-: ✧ :-✧-: ✧ :-

The sun was setting over the land, painting the western skyline in shades of crimson and gold. The wind rustled through the clanking and creaking trees, and it seemed as though every creature of the forest had retired early tonight, silently hiding away from the dangers lurking in the growing darkness. 

Bunica had insisted that Becca and I go to bed early, claiming that we would have a long day tomorrow and would need extra sleep. While Bogdan had seemed restless, not once putting his trumpet barrel rifle down. I swear he even showered with the damn thing. Not that I could blame him though. I suppose I'd be paranoid too if I had just freaking murdered two people. 

An ominous atmosphere settled across the land, and I couldn't quite shake the feeling that something really bad was going to happen. I warily watched with dread pooling in the pit of my stomach as Bunica locked around ten or so silver locks across the front door, then softly smiled at me.

"You'd best be going to bed. We've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow." She handed me a glass of wine from the coffee table. "Drink this. It will help you sleep." Her other hand waved to shoo me further up the creaky wooden stairs

"Alright, I suppose I will." I smiled back at her, though it wasn't genuine. "I do love your special wine." That was completely true. The stuff was practically ambrosia. 

My bare feet pattered down the wooden floorboards of the narrow hallway, while I chugged the wine to calm my nerves. I turned into the bedroom and placed the empty glass on the antique nightstand as I slipped beneath the homemade floral quilt. The full moon eerily beamed through the copious amounts of wolfsbane stuffed into the window, filling my soul with an unexplainable mixture of apprehension and excitement. 

"Are you ready?" I asked Becca, who was already in bed, not taking my eyes off of the window.

"Yeah." She softly replied. There was an awkward silence between us before she spoke again. "Isabelle?"

"Yes." The moonlight glistened onto my face as I whispered back.

"Do you think there are drugs in the wine? And that's why everyone was acting so casual about those two dead guys?"

I finally turned to face her with scrunched brows, and could practically see the day's events replaying in her head. It wasn't a bad guess. I had seen Bunica adding drops of something to it before. 

"I don't know." I honestly replied, now slightly regretting guzzling down that glass. "It doesn't matter though, because we're getting out of here. Once everyone is asleep, we're calling for help." I reassured both of us.

"Right." She apathetically responded, then turned away from me.

I stared at the back of her curly-haired head for a few minutes, then turned to face the window again. The harrowing sound of a wolf's howl came from somewhere deep within the forest, starling me and sending a shiver up my spine. It was honestly one of the most chilling things I'd ever heard. There was just something so unnaturally haunting about it, like the beast was out for blood, making me reconsider the plan to sneak out.

No, we have to stick to the plan!  

...Wolves be damned...