Purgatory, West Virginia
January 19
After a morning spent dodging Maybelle’s questions as he cleaned her gutters and an afternoon of replacing the broken windows at The Gingerbread House, Finn was exhausted. He wiped down the rickety chair and the cracked glass table on the screened-in porch. “Screened-in” being a relative term. Large pieces were torn and hanging from the frames, and one section was missing entirely. Wearing a down coat and beanie, he returned to the kitchen to retrieve the mug of soup he had heated. In the array of doomsday food items, something had caught his eye, a can of his childhood favorite chicken noodle soup. He opened it with his multitool, relieved to discover it still appeared edible. He’d eaten worse.
The night was cold and quiet. The yard was flat and lifeless, ghosts of the past evident in the old swing set and rotting treehouse. A dumpster sat in the back corner of the yard, still full from the clean-up efforts of Venable’s children. Beside it, a disintegrating cardboard cutout of Elvis Presley sat bent and leaning against the metal side. Finn imagined Venable dressing as The King for Halloween and giving out treats. Finn grew solemn; the past and the present a bleak juxtaposition.
A ribbon of steam drifted from the mug of soup. Normally Finn hated silence. Ever since his capture, he had experienced an unexplained ringing in his ears; between that and the pernicious thoughts on a constant loop, outside noise was essential. Finn sat back in the chair and stretched out his legs. The knot of rage in his gut had eased a bit. Not much to get pissed about up here. He chuckled. He’d find something. Sure enough, movement in the shrubs at the edge of the clearing caught his eye.
An animal was in the bushes, and he wasn’t small. Perhaps he’d caught a whiff of the soup, or maybe this was just his natural hunting ground. Finn didn’t care either way. He pulled his Sig from its holster, took aim at the bushes, and waited.
A minute or two later, the same wolf poked his head through the branches sniffing the dirt. Finn waited for a clear shot. When the animal’s body was out in the open, Finn shifted and moved his finger to the trigger. The slight movement alerted the creature, and he lifted his head to Finn.
He was a gorgeous animal with yellow eyes and a silver-gray coat that seemed iridescent in the moonlight. The wolf stared at his hunter as a gust of wind rattled the bare branches.
Maybelle’s scolding echoed in his head. Do you walk into people’s homes and shoot them? The painful answer was yes. He fired a warning. The bullet disrupted the dirt at the animal’s feet, but the beast didn’t move. He remained still in the darkness, golden eyes locked on Finn. A moment later, the wolf dropped his head, turned, and prowled back into the woods. Finn thought if an animal were capable of expressing disappointment, that’s what it would look like. He shook off the pathetic line of thought, holstered his sidearm, and grabbed his now cold soup. He was disappointed too.
Next time he wouldn’t miss.