Red Riding Hood

The fire. I watched them dance about the fire and feast at tables of stone. Another time I burned a wolf alive as it leapt to taste my flesh. The time I am thinking of is now, when I run through the darkness towards the fire's distant glimmer, hammer in hand.
There was a time before now when I was the mother, when I was the Grandmother, and each time I have also been a daughter and that comes before as well. When the world ended there was still life, still fire, still iron and steel, but time was no more.
I remember being daughter running through the ruins, my breath burning in my lungs as the wolf followed. Being hunted then, a girl no more than 9 or 10, as boney as the starving beast that followed.
Running, I flung a pail full of stinking petrol upon my snarling assailant. The bucket clattered upon the concrete as the wolf made an angry sound, slowed only a little.
Through the doorways whose doors had burned out at the end of time, into the kitchen, and climbing up the heavy wire shelving to the very top where I tuck my legs close to my body and fumble open the match box and strike. Teeth gnashing the air as the canine leaps towards me. That hiss as the match catches and I flick it at the dark body rising towards me, twisting airborne and suddenly igniting with a whoosh.
Is it really silent then in Grandmother's kitchen upon the top shelf of the rack watching a wolf burn alive? Or was it a noise too terrible to remember?
It was my mother who killed that first wolf with a bucket of petrol and a match. It was my daughter. It was myself. It was only a little wolf, but I was only a little girl. A girl who ran not away from, but towards wolves ever after.
I watched their fires from a distance. Who am I? Mother. Daughter. Grandmother. Their fires burn against the black and I see them dancing, casting long shadows against the wall. I watch them eat at stone tables built before the end of time. The heat can almost reach me, even from so far.
Just the sight of distant flame can be hearth to me for one moment as my soul reaches cold hands towards the light. It reminds me of civilization, Grandmother’s house, mother's heart beat, father's beard.
But I turn away from it eventually, as I must. Their halls are not mine, and people can be worse than wolves.
That was another time. Now I am thinking about now, the moment before the end of time, the fires that scorch the world and send people into holes like rabbits. The fire that burns in our bones and makes us sick even after the light is gone. The fire that will twist through generations of wolves making them taller and  mightier. It will run its fingers through our minds even when it seems to have forgotten our bodies, the fire that burns deep, kissing the center of creation.
Sometimes I remember being a star, great, great, Grandmother. Sometimes I stare at the alpha through crosshairs, holding my breath, squeezing the trigger. My footprints dot the snowy plains. I dye their white coats red and make a heavy hooded cloak. They know me among the ruins. Word has spread of the wolf killer.
Many of these people don’t remember the time before the end of time. This is the world as it has always been to them. Sometimes I wear the red cloak of fur made by my mother and track the wolf that killed her. Sometimes I am the fire at the end of the world swallowing itself.
The fire. I watched them dance about the fire and feast at tables of stone. Another time I burned a wolf alive as it leapt to taste my flesh. The time I am thinking of is now, when I run through the darkness towards the fire's distant glimmer, hammer in hand. This is the weapon that is left to me after I met with the wolves who were men.
I am running ahead, daughters, mothers, Grandmothers left behind me. I am running towards the fires that may be the end of the world. I am running towards the wolves.