kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"HuntingSquirrelsOnHalloween.0"

words

Remus went squirrel hunting on the night when the barrier twixt here and there was weakest. He didn't think much of it but his buddies all had plans. Their kids. Their wives. His wife and kids had plans, too, but she was an ex, and they were as good as. They weren't none of his. Little ghosts of some other guy, it would do them right to crawl around with the goblins, hobs. Squirrels, though. You could trust the squirrels.

Remus didn't notice the mist drift in because his eyes were mid-canopy, his ears perked for the chittering of agitated tree-rodents. His shotgun clacked against his back as he trod. It wasn't until his shin near-dislodged itself from his leg--a split moment of excruciating pain followed by a burning cold, a bright exclamation, and silence--that he realized the ground was hard to see. Salt in his eyes and salt in his nose, a sign of the pain and the cold. He wiped both with his sleeve, then tried to feel out what he'd done his leg on.

At first touch it seemed like flesh, because it was warm--warmer than him, at least, and that meant much warmer than ambient. But it was tough like granite, and chipped like it, too. About as malleable.

Then it moved--Remus jumped back, swinging his shotgun fore.

A voice of gravel traveled more through the ground, the very earth, and through his leg, than through the air around him. "I grant you three wishes, mortal."

Remus peered forward, leading with his nose, leading with the shotgun, finger in the trigger. "What beast are you?" he whispered, afraid to break the night. He tipped the brim of his baseball cap in careful consideration.

"Three wishes offered--three wishes taken or forsaken."

Remus looked around, then, wondering where the camera crews were, and how they were getting a good picture of him in the darkness.

"I'll take your soul regardless, so you're better just taking my boon," the creature rumbled.

That settled things in Remus's mind. He jerked, not squeezed, the trigger. Close range it didn't matter and he was imagining breaking the foul thing's neck with his bare hands. Close range the shrapnel whipped back at him, and he was sure he heard a demon's death rattle fade into the night--Remus knew his clothes and flesh were torn and bleeding but he stood there until the fog was gone.

He found his eyes blinking with the sun reflecting in them. A shiver shook his flesh, nearly making him stumble from the wave of pain that echoed back, and back, and back. He stretched gingerly, pushing just past where it hurt trying to see if the pain would fade or if he needed to find a doc. Then he took stock.

His fatigues were torn to hell and caked with blood, but so far as he could tell there wasn't anything in him. The demon had disappeared like ice in the warming dawn, and all he had to show for it was looking like a grizzly'd chased him through a blackberry patch. No squirrels, no trophies. Perhaps some perspective. Or at least a tale good for a round of Stella. His wife, the ex, her and the kids. They deserved each other, and he deserved the woods. He could handle the dangers out here, at least.