“And if you follow me out there, I will shit a live ANIMAL!”

Mike Murray slams the crooked screen door so hard it boings back open. Nothing quite like a failed door slam to further bend a man. Torn between slamming it again and stomping off, Mike opts for stomp. Fuck her, he thinks, if Master Piggles slips in the dog door and tears shit up, her problem not mine.

His wife Sheila has that infrequent, yet persistent, bee in her bonnet this morning. That bee is named jealousy, and in Sheila’s case, it’s more like a hornet.

Sheila believes men are dogs that would fuck a snake, given an extra hand to hold its mouth open. There is no misandry involved in this belief, if you can get your head around that. She doesn’t hate men in the slightest. A cheating man is simply a man with an opportunity, a natural law of the universe, unavoidable as death and gravity. In Sheila’s world, busty blondes forever throw themselves at her husband’s feet and he, only a weak male, is powerless to resist. It’s her job to fend off the barbarians at the gate, keep her man pure.

He might actually sign up for that gig if he could get it, but middle-aged white guys, even with factory original teeth and hair, aren’t in that sort of demand unless said guy is loaded. Michael R. Murray is not loaded. Always a faithful man, old hound dog faithful, the accusations cut deep. If he’s going to be accused of dipping his wick in strange pussy, he might as well get some strange pussy. It’s just not fair.

The seed that grew today’s go round was a text message.

“HEY YOU! What’s up? Want to meet up tonight?” Either a wrong number or a scam, Mike doesn’t care. But Sheila cares. Sheila cares very much.

“Who is this person? Ha! Who will you meet? Ha!” She always throws that Filipino “ha!” when she’s bent. Today she’s well past bent, she’s positively corkscrewed.

“Hell I know babe, someone probably fat fingered their text.”

“I want to know who this is! Ha!”

“Then call the damned number and ask! I dare you! I’m out!”

Mike chunks his rifle case in the F150’s rusty bed, yanks his camo hat down tight and gives the key a vicious twist. I’ve got to calm my happy ass down or I’m getting pulled over before I get there, he thinks. He’s only had four Keystones, barely a buzz for an old soldier like Mike, but maybe just enough buzz to ride out the weekend in a freezing cell, both watched over by, and bunking with, Santa Rosa County’s finest.

“Maybe I’ll get hammered out there, spend the night. Bitch thinks she’s mad now…” But that’s no good and he knows it. An hour after sundown she would come marching down the trail, hunting those ever elusive bimbos, stripping Mike’s very last reserve of cool. There won’t be any bimbos, and they both know it, but the forms must be followed in these sorts of things.

It’s a cool, breezy October day in the Year of our Lord 2024, Saturday, 19 past 2 o’ the clock, poofy cumulus graze an otherwise clear blue sky and he’s headed for their camp in the boonies. Camp is Mike’s little slice of redneck heaven.

Turning the corner just past where the road peters out into forest, visitors are greeted with a flag strung between two pines, “Welcome to Swinebrook! A place to camp, kayak, canoe, throw lead and other redneck business!” Centered between the text on a brown nylon background is a stylized pink pig, giving the viewer a porcine side-eye. As with the other signs, tree trimmings and miscellaneous obstructions, it’s hung to clear a 5’8” man. Swinebrook is a bit inhospitable for tall folk, and that suits him just dandy. After all, it is his place. OK, their place since he married Sheila, but he’s got 8 inches on her. The talls have enough advantages in life, they can duck now and again if they want to visit.

Swinebrook sits on 5 acres of prime Northwest Florida swampland. When his inheritance landed at the credit union (grandma having gone starkers with Alzheimer’s), he figured a land purchase was a now or never kind of deal. Knowing he would eventually nickel and dime the money away if he didn’t make a play, he found the perfect getaway spot. Just off I-10, buried far back in the forests on a dead-end private road (damned near impassible if the neighbors haven’t plowed the sand lately), Swinebrook is the sort of place no one stumbles into. Who would go back there and for god’s sake why? Guests often make a crack about banjo music. Yeah, that one never gets old, such sublime wit. But he’s not too annoyed. After all, if city people find the area sketchy, good, keeps ‘em out. Hailing from across the Pond, Sheila’s friend Nancy had come for a visit, and she is just such a city person.

One morning of her brief stay at chez Murray, Nancy came scrambling back in the house, having been enjoying her coffee on the front porch.
“Forgot I was in Florida and there might be alligators roaming about! What was I thinking?! Ha ha!”

“No worries!”, Mike soothed, “We’re in town, far enough from water that they’re not walking overland. Besides, they’re lazy ambush predators, not going to chase anyone.”
He didn’t have the heart to tell Nancy that a gator big enough to take on a woman her size would be a rare one indeed. Americans keep monsters of that caliber stored deep in the Louisiana bayous where they belong, and in any case, Mike doubted Nancy could run from much of anything.

The Murrays, having gushed about Swinebrook, took Nancy out on her last night. Figuring it highly improbable she had ever seen an AR-15 in the London burbs, he thought she might get a kick putting some lead downrange, a crazy American tale to share over mulled wine (or whatever the hell they do) with the blokes back home. “My goodness Nancy, tell us you are pulling our leg! How very exciting! Does he carry it to market and is it true that Stateside visitors are issued loaner pistols? How many brigands has he gunned down?”

They never get as far as popping off a few. Nancy was getting visibly nervous as the sun went down. Truth be told, she was damned near twitching in fear. “Looks like it is getting dark! (big smiles) We should probably be going back, yes? Ha ha! But I really like your place and it’s been great, great fun!” Turns out, Nancy had never been in the woods before, was probably keeping her eye out for rabid leopards and toothy baboons. Mike is soon to find Nancy’s fear quite reasonable. There are far worse things lurking in the swamp than common reptiles.

Today he was pretty much ready to roll out, which was fortunate, as scrambling into clothes, filling the cooler, and loading the truck, all while trying to pitch a meaningful conniption, kind of takes the wind out of the old sails. Even were it not God’s perfect day, Swinebrook would still be the place to get badly needed peace.
Mike has the routine down pat. After all, he’s done it 100 times.

Unzip the tent porch and peg the flaps back through the nylon loops, open the main room, grab some targets, tape and headphones, hang the paper on the range. Next, unlock the raggedy storage shed, fill a couple of glass ashtrays with today’s chosen caliber, maybe a box of shells if that’s what we’re doing. Back to the tent porch, twist the cooler spigot, and dunk the fresh ice and beer while last week’s water runs out the drain hose. Walk to the big table by the fire ring, set the beer down, have a seat, good to go, and… back to the tent, because he has forgotten to snag a koozie, inevitable as death and gravity.

If it were summer, he would grab the sun umbrella out of the shed, but it’s not that kind of day. It’s the kind of day for breeze in your hair and sun on your face and Mike is here for it. He is going to follow the usual plan, drink a beer and revel in the silence. And when that gets boring, he’ll crank Spotify’s country list and shatter that silence with his Colt .45 or shotgun of choice. That paper ain’t gonna put holes in itself. Today’s choice is the new-to-him coach gun, two barrels of old-school, 12-gauge fury. He’s pretty sure he’s got it working smooth, if only the new sight doesn’t fly off. Again.

He pulls the half rotten beach chair off the storage hook and unfolds it. Probably fair to say, Mike has no ass, or as first wife always said, he suffers a medical condition doctors refer to as “noassatall”. Lacking stature and padding, a couple of porch pillows lining the sprung seat is a must. The plan is to spend 20 or 30 minutes sipping beer and simply looking around, never know what might pop up.

Last month an osprey landed high up at the far end of the range, polite enough to let him watch through his scope for a few minutes. Two weeks ago he got his first up close and personal look at a pileated woodpecker. Those are some big mama jammas! Absolutely stoked, he ran straight to Dollar General and bought a feeder and pair of suet blocks. So far, no repeat performance, but Mike’s a hopeful guy.

He has just crushed his second Keystone Light and is headed to the tent for another when two local pups come tear-assing up the trail from the nearest pond, blowing right by without so much as a “Howdy do!” You know the sort of country puppy; big, excitable, friendly, dumber than a sack of hammers. These two doorknobs typically creep up on visitors, silent as ninjas. Mike has about jumped out of his skin a time or three, looking down and BAM, there they are, right at his knee, patiently waiting for a head rub. They are not waiting around today.

Nothing rustling out there, nothing giving chase, the hell? Still, Mike’s plenty damned spooked, this not being a normal event on a sunny Saturday afternoon. They wouldn’t run from a human, unless it was beating their asses, and even then, they would stop for him, hoping for succor. Black bears are around, and though they occasionally tump out the trash cans by the highway, he has never seen evidence of them close to camp. A Florida panther might be worrisome, especially a female trailing a pair of cubs, but they’re far rarer than black bears. He has only ever spied a single male, a hulking beast on a lonely creek far from here. Besides, if there was one back there it would probably have given a scream, and that distinctive woman-being-ax-murdered sound carries.

Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, and promptly getting it ass backwards, he gets it right on the second try. He wears his rifle like all the cool kids, high and tight across the chest. Having studied a GunTube video presenting a pair of mercs taking R&R from killing Russians, he thinks he’s finally got the sling right. At least it hangs comfortably, is quick to sight and he doesn’t get whacked in the dick every time he bends over.

Our man is not the shoot first, excitable sort. Mike thinks that particular brand of asshole deserves a Darwin Award, and they often get one. Still, he has his rifle pointed low but ready in case something murderous comes crashing out of the palmettos. Not taking his eye off the path, he finds himself both indecisive and torn with curiosity. Maybe an angry squirrel rattled them? They’re only puppies after all, might be running from a scary looking bug. On the other hand, if there’s a black bear or panther back there, he doesn’t want to put himself in the position of having to shoot it. Excepting wild pigs, Mike doesn’t have the heart to kill unless it’s a mercy thing, and those few times, though necessary, have stuck to him, every death a clear memory. He may be a gun shooter, but he’ll never be a gunslinger.

He stands there a full minute, mouth slightly open, listening, head swiveling on a short arc.

“OK Mike, get your shit together and calm the fuck down.”

Hearing his own voice helps, though it didn’t come out as loudly as expected. Still nothing. He pats his left kidney for the third time, yep, pistol still there, loose in its holster, ready.

“Oh god damnit, grow a pair and just walk down there. Even if it’s a big animal, a shot or two will scare the shit out of it.”

Having got his pecker up, Mike sets off, not quite creeping, nor in any rush. 150-feet down he turns left into Sheila’s personal site, Brookside. Brookside has its own cute flag: “Sit a spell, relax and unwind, watch the sun go down.” Same statant pig, yellow on a blue background this time, a perfect Pantone match for Ukraine’s national colors. Mike is a big fan of both Ukrainians and vexillology, though he can only pronounce the former.

Gaily decorated, yet tasteful, Brookside rests at peace. Minnows pop just under the swampy water, all the action there is to see. Maybe a low splash down trail? Turtle falling off a log no doubt. Happens all the time, too skittish to ever let him get a peek. Country animals are not city animals, country cousins run at a pin drop.
Pointing south, the trail widens into a boulevard flanked by the shallow ponds that make up a good chunk of Swinebrook. Rue Royal the sign says, très Vieux Carré. Mike being a drunk, and Sheila, born and raised a big-city Manila girl, are right at home in the French Quarter. The next campsite down the rue is the Garden District and you can just bet it has its own cutesy flag. (Green pig on that one.)

Mike lowers his rifle, rests his arms a minute, listens. Nada.

“In for a penny I guess. Let’s just walk to the end, see what we see.”

Feeling a little bolder, having sensed nothing in the wide open space, he sets off again with a little more spring in his step. Down at the Garden District camp, he hears another, closer splash. And was that a grunt?

God. Damn. Despite loving wild animals, and having a pet pig back home, Mike shoots wild boars on sight. Thinking on the possibility of a charging pig, and it won’t be just one, he tightens up. A sounder of only 10 animals would level the main camp in an hour flat, he’s seen them in action. If he finds pigs rooting in the muck, Mike is prepared to kill every last motherfucking one of them. Only question is how many he can nail before they run oft.

Beyond the Garden District, the trail cramps up. Not much down here, he hasn’t cleared his way this far yet. Ducking a fat banana spider’s golden web and twisting past a pair of trees, Mike gets a good look at the far end of the pond and his brain promptly strips gears.

Sixty feet away, just across the water, a centaur is chowing down on a decomposing corpse. Not your Harry Potter centaur, chest muscles rippling, hair flowing, head held high and noble, no, not that sort. One of those would be a mercy compared to this abomination before the Almighty. Filthy and stinking even from this distance, it bends down to tear another chunk of pig flesh. Rather than bringing the rotten meat to its face, it bends at the waist and feeds, arms darting in and out of the corpse like a crab picking over a dead fish. The torso is sweaty slick, the flanks splashed with fetid swamp muck. Its hair, where patches haven’t fallen out (torn out?), is long and greasy, a sickly yellowish gray. Its right eye is a white haze, blind for certain, but Mike’s not seeing details right now. Mike has gone a little blind himself.

He stands mostly frozen, yet vibrating so hard you can almost feel the static rolling off his body. His rifle hangs loose in its sling, dropped to his chest, forgotten. Somewhere along the line, he’s fumbled the laser sight to ON. The dot jitters on the ground to his left like a nerve gassed spider. His arms hang slack at his sides, right hand giving the occasional twitch, mouth loose, eyes jitter bugging in tight arcs. He can’t feel his heart, but it’s hammering and it’s about to choke him out. Though drawing air just fine, his neck walls feel like overinflated inner tubes, carotid pumping in, jugular out, both struggling with the raging blood flow. To an outside observer, his neck pulses like it’s ready to give birth. He did promise his wife a live animal, but that was to come out the other end.

When a person is scared shitless, time doesn’t slow down, just seems that way. Instead, the brain speeds up, starts scrambling for options. My brothers and sisters in Christ, Mike is beyond scared shitless, Mike is bugfuck, brain running wide out on the open highway, hell bent for leather.

Growing up in the sticks, he’s been in a few near-death scrapes, entertainment being different in the boondocks, but he’s avoided the aforementioned Darwin Award. So far. At those times when death was certain, a calm, and mostly unused, part of his brain kicked in and calmly informed him:

“If you don’t do something in the next, oh, 3 or 5 seconds, you are going to die. Right now. Your call my man.”

Before today, he had always found a way out, found that “something”, that ass-saving option. At the moment, no options are bubbling up. His mind has, at least momentarily, jumped ship. “OK Mikey take care love you bye BYE!” His mouth opens and closes twice, lips pressing together and out, maybe trying for a plosive? “Please”? Who he might be begging, and for what, remains an open question.

Hallucination is the idea that begins to get him unstuck.

OK OK OK. This can’t be real. So what did I get in my body to cause this?

A traitorous part of his brain pipes up, “C’mon! You ate your body weight in hallucinogens back in the 90s and never saw a thing that wasn’t there. Perhaps you’ve been on a 4-day meth binge and forgot? Nah. Also, see that pig head sitting on its stump staring back at you? See the flies blacking out it’s eyes and the maggots roiling out its snout? You’re not that imaginative my friend. While we taking a reality check, hear any birds? Even the insects have gone quiet. Suppose they’re all hallucinating right along with us?” OK, I’m still calling this a psychotic break. I have to get out of here, get help.

“No warnings, no precursors, no sleepless night? Not even a twitch? You’re toodling along in the woods and BAM, centaur? Hell, if our brain cooked up a centaur, it wouldn’t be that thing. It’s there, I promise you.”

Whatever I’m seeing or not seeing, I’m out.

Mike tries to turn, but his head is in a vice, no way on god’s green Earth can he take his eyes off the horror. The fiend, on the other hand, intent on his rotten pig, hasn’t glanced at him. Apparently decomposing swine makes a toothsome meal.

Maybe it hasn’t noticed me.

“Yeah, right. You know it knows you’re here. He’s just busy noming up his succulent din din. That animal reeks and it’s grown maggots, been dead a week, easy. It probably slaughtered the pig and left it to ripen up in the sun, came back today for harvest. And you’re next.”

Had Mike summoned the courage to look further afield, he might have seen the wisdom in that penultimate phrase, “came back”.

30-feet behind and to the left of the centaur floats a hole in reality. No Dungeons and Dragons sort of portal, surrounded by shrieking dragon heads, promising eternal punishments screaming in the Abyss, only a perfect circle of vegetation, too perfect to be natural. 10 feet wide, it floats just off the forest floor. If he had eyes to see, he might note the quality of light past the circle, see a redder glow, as if the day is further along in that world. Through the looking glass, the vegetation is both darker and greener, listless despite the cool breeze on this side.

He’s screaming at his body to obey, turn, run, anything, just move god damn it. OK, compromise, just back up, slow. He makes it 10 feet until he backs into a tree and his knees melt out from under him. Falling on his ass, the rifle’s assist button pokes him under the solar plexus, hard. Just what the doctor ordered, Mike scrambles to his feet and jerks his weapon level. The strap flies taught, a perfect fit, the red-dot sight dead center on the beast’s torso. He jerks the trigger, no bang, no click, safety is up.
The centaur jolts straight, freezes and stares him in the eye. Black blood and greasy fat flow down its chin, dribbling on its chest. Mike’s soul comes unmoored, but his legs can still pump. He is on autopilot and he is off to the races.

Sun is down, moon is up, and Sheila is positively fucking torqued off. She slams her Toyota to a stop behind Mike’s truck and bounces out, lights on and running, intent on scalping the first floozy she lays hands on. Somebody, maybe two somebodies, is going to be very damned sorry in the next 60 seconds. She has no idea that a few hours ago, Mike was as sorry as he had ever been in his life.

She stamps halfway to the turn which will open onto the main camp before unease sets in. If Mike’s here, and here’s his truck, he should have lights going. Even if he’s out of batteries, there should be a blazing fire visible through the trees.

She calls out in a voice meant to project authority, meant to declare, “I am here on business and my business is you.” Starting off with steely command, her voice trails down meekly.

“Michael! Where are you? HA! Why don’t you answer your phone Michael?! … Who is here?! Michael?”

Silence.

“Mike?”

Turning the corner, sure enough, the camp is cold and dead. Sheila can’t put her finger on it, can’t quite articulate what is off, going by the slim moonlight. She fumbles her iPhone flashlight and shines it from side to side. Nothing is closed or put away properly, like he simply up and left. And even if he wandered off, and there aren’t many places to wander, most of the land being impassable muck, he sure as hell wouldn’t have left his prize 12-gauge hanging on the rack.

Now she is positively spinning in circles, sweeping her meager light around and around. She has completely forgotten the key chain light her husband gave her. It’s tiny, but it outshines a lousy phone LED all day (night) long. She inches over to the table looking for clues. Maybe she’ll luck out and he brought her pink pistol to play with. It’s the only handgun she’s comfortable with, and while it might take her a minute to get it in operation, it would sure as hell beat a sharp stick, which she doesn’t have either.

Shuffling along the edge of the table, she kicks something soft, partially hidden. She doesn’t look, assuming it’s some of the crap he stores under there spilling out as it always does. Her lack of attention may be a temporary mercy because she’s pushed an old combat boot back under the table, a combat boot with the owner’s foot inside.

Weeping and nearing dead panic, Sheila flails out the Stations of the Cross, also known as the Way of Sorrows, and starts muttering a Hail Mary. She is feeling the need for all the Grace she can summon this evening.

“Oh, Jesus help me…” She pronounces it “jee-sous”. Mike always found that kind of cute.

And was that a grunt?!