Christmas at Donner Lake

Breakfast

C

all me old-fashioned, but Christmas is still my favorite time of year. Out of the other 364 spent looking out for number one, one day you have to think about somebody else. You actually have to share with your fellow men. I reckon that's where the appeal is. Deep down, I need to share. I've also been through a lot of pain. That’s what I like to share the most. Come to think of it, that's what got me out here in the first place. Sometimes I get too enthusiastic about my job, like those postmen who send their co-workers to the dead letter office in the sky. When you think about it, they're just bitter and lonely like the rest of us. Lonely, extroverted suicides with mail pouches, Mace, and flat feet.

But the Grinch and Charlie Brown Christmas Specials usually take the curse off that.

As grim as it gets, you've got to admire postal workers for taking a stand. Getting out there and shooting defenseless people who had nothing to do with their lousy family lives or lack of inner life; really making a statement about their aweful working conditions. At least they've decided to actually do something. I often find myself going through that dogeared mental checklist buried in the back of my skull. The one with the list of people who made fun of me in gradeschool. Was it all worth it? Did I screw up ay worse than my folks? Could I have tried a little harder? Sequestered out here in the Sierras like some jury deliberating a case I’m not allowed to know anything about; selected because I’m so fucking stupid that nothing can influence my impartiality. I suppose there’s worse ways to spend my retirement. Lime green pants around my armpits, fucking around on the links talking shit about grandkids. In a way, after years of playing the judge, jury, and executioner, it's only appropriate that I've sentenced myself to a lifetime of Christmases year 'round, out here in the great blank nowhere, nobody to talk to but a half dozen split-personalities, none of them with anything interesting to say. Not even the Grinch.

But once in a great while, something crosses my path and makes it all worth it. It could be some detritus from a tourist family from the east coast. Or a half-mauled carcass of a deer. Then there are the curious, the borderline retarded, the cross country skiers who get separated from their package tour group. They're the ones who remind me why I was put here in the first place. Take that fucktard lawyer and his wife, for instance…

She was sitting on her candy apple red snowmobile, arms folded, skinny legs jackknifed, staring off towards the baked ash horizon, waiting for the cavalry. She was bundled up like a Barbie on a toystore shelf. I could barely see her eyes sandwiched between her pink pom-pom cap and matching scarf. The way she held herself made her look frigid and frustrated, like a prom queen waiting impatiently for her chauffeur driven limo, admiring her reflection in the toes of her spitshined shoes. She'd occasionally kick tufts of the freshly fallen snow out of boredom. Boredom was going to be the least of her problems. I figured the sooner I get this over with, the better off all of us will be. I shuffled towards her, my snowshoes zipping through the thin ice layer like rubber icebreakers through the snow.

"There’s this thing called a fuel gauge. Tells you how much fuel you got left, " I hollered. "Whatcha doing all the way out in this neck of the woods, sister?"

"Looking for somebody," she yelled back. "Guy by the name of Burns. The ranger back at the village said his cabin is around here. You know him?"

"Yeah, I know Burns. He's an asshole," I laughed, steadily making my way towards her. The white ice snapped beneath my feet like dried bones. I could see her better now. Real pretty lady. Reminded me of the tits you see in the beer commercials with a woman attached.

"What you want with Burns? He take a dump in your purse or something? He used to do that a lot for kicks, you know?”

"I heard he's a retired detective. I need help finding my husband; he's lost up there." She pointed with her thumb towards the snowcapped peaks of the Sierras. A soft crack of thunder echoed in the distance, muffled like a duckpin strike in a pillow factory.

"Burns ain't been in the tracking business for years, lady. Good reason, too. He stinks at it. He barely got his license in Nevada. What makes you think he'll want to help you?"

"I'll make it worth his while. I got a lot of money that says he'll help me. Think you can take me to him?"

"Sure, but I doubt if the old geezer's up to it. Here, lemme take a look at that busted chafing dish of yours."

She slid off the snowmobile like a sheet of melting ice. I could feel her chill stare on my back as I popped the fiberglass hood. Sure enough, the tank was emptier than Reagan’s cranium and the distributor was frozen turd.

"This thing’s about as useful as a fart in a spacesuit," I farted, wiping my hands on my pants. "My cabin is a mile down thataway." I pointed towards the Wahsatch babbling off at the foot of Mount Teton. She made a motion that didn’t mean anything and followed behind. She was as quiet as a churchmouse with its tongue torn out the entire walk to the cabin, which was fine by me. Those noises a woman makes are what drove me to the bottle in the first place, and both were addictions that I needed like I needed another hemmorhoid. We got to my cabin and I threw a few termite infested fir logs on the dying red embers of the fire. The bugs cracked and popped as the fire consumed them. Lucky bastards.

"Name's Sibyl," she said finally, "Sibyl Bloodworth."

"That’s a real shame. You should take it up with Actors’ Equity."

"I didn't get you're name."

"I didn't give it. Park it." I nodded at the ottoman.

She looked insulted, which really broke me up. Did I send out engraved invitations for stupid holes to throw problems at my head? I helped her out of her coat. She was wearing a set of white cotton long johns and a heavy plaid shirt and tight jeans. She looked about twenty-five going on forty. Curly hair spilled out of her scalp like bubbling brown fountain soda. Her eyes were dark, heavy lidded. She looked like she needed a couple stiff ones and about 10 hours sleep. Apart from her racktacular sweater puppets, I could easily have mistaken her for a 4th grader.

Her face was a collection of intersecting ovals and arcs. The shallow curves of her eyebrows were bisected by the steeper curves of her nose that ended in the wings her nostrils. It was like someone fucked a Spirograph. Poorly. Her cheeks floated like birthday balloons on either side of the tiny fragile gash she used for a mouth. You couldn’t fit a cock in it with a crowbar, vaseline, and three fags who worked out regularly. She looked like a good kid. I should have sent her packing then and there, but my sense of humor got the better of me.

She shook off the snow from her L.L. Bean boots and shuffled around the room, taking in the TV, the stereo, my collection of colonial American cock rings. She paused beneath the stuffed jackelope over the mantelpiece and eyed my computer set up.

"Didn't see any phone or power lines on the way up here."

Keeping my eyes on the fire, I stabbed the log with my poker and silently pointed towards the rear cabin window. She peered through the frost glazed window and saw my windmill generator setup and the satellite dish.

"Nice. Real cozy."

I nodded.

"How do you… live up here? I mean, how do you get your supplies?"

"You ask a lot of questions, lady."

"Indulge me." She tried to smile.

"See that kayak out back?" I sniffed, pointing out the window, "Whenever I need something from town, I ride it down the Wahsatch and get it. Ranger usually gives me a ride back. End of story. Any other questions?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. When can I get a hold of Burns?"

"You're looking at him." I shoved the poker into the heart of the fire.

She sat back in my smoking chair and gave me the once over. I could tell she didn't like what she saw. I couldn't blame her. I didn't either.

"Nice. Maybe I've made a mistake," she sighed.

"Maybe?" I cleared some phlegm from my sore throat. "Want some coffee?"

She nodded wearily. I heated up two cracked Garfield mugs of tepid coffee that tasted like burnt turpentine. I handed her one just as the old Spidey senses began tingling. What was this hole’s angle? I scratched my head and sipped. Here I was, a million miles from nowhere, trying to live out a retirement I bought with blood, torn skin, and garlic. I wanted to forget the fact that I’d wasted fifty-plus years fixing nothing and Sports Illustrated supermodel Sibyl Bloodworth wants me to go back to the grind. My reputation was following me around like a stinking piece of pink toilet paper that wound from my ass crack back to Washington, DC.

"How the hell did you get up here, Bloodworth?" I mumbled. "You can't get more secluded than this: fifty miles from Donner Lake and surrounded by twenty-foot snow drifts."

She eased herself back into the slick red leather of the chair, sipped her turpentine and looked up at me through the rising steam. "The ranger told me you were a retired detective; you knew these parts like the back of your hand. I thought you might be able to help me out."

"You must really want this old man of yours back. Most wives would have cashed the insurance check by now and headed for Rio. What gives? You in love with this faggot or something?"

The girl cracked a funny look, like she was doing a bad job of acting sincere. I'd seen the act too many times before. It made me want to put my dick in a blender. I did all I could to keep from slamming her head first through the front door. 'You've had your fair share of slamming women through doors, Burns,' I said to myself, 'let it go.'

She put down her coffee. "Max was flying up to Mount Truckee to do a some skiing. His plane went down two weeks ago, right before the big snow. The locals searched for a week, then they gave him up for dead. The storm front moved in and this is the first day its been clear enough to take a snowmobile up here."

I shook my head, reached for my hanky and blew my nose. "If he went down a couple of weeks ago, the plane's under a couple tons of snow. Not much chance of finding it 'til the spring thaw." I picked some crisp ropy things out of my hanky.

"We found the plane, Mr. Burns, about five miles from the summit. It was empty and the parachutes were missing. My husband and the pilot must have bailed out before the plane crashed."

She blew the rising steam from her turpentine and sipped.

"And how do you intend to get back to the town, Mrs. Bloodworth. It's a long walk back to civilization and I got no phone."

"I told the ranger to come and get me a week from now," she smiled quietly to herself.

Lovely. That was it. The part of me that wanted to beat the tar out of her climbed out of my mouth like a diseased rat out of a sewer.

"A week, eh? You assume an awful lot, lady," I hollered, slamming my mug on the table. "One: that I would take you up on your stupid offer and two: that I would let you use my dojo as a Motel 6."

She looked up at me with a pair of second-hand doe-in-the-headlight eyes. I wanted to slam the accelerator.

"I have to get my husband back, Mr. Burns," she sighed, "whatever the cost. Coming up here was a risk. I took it."

She kept eyeing me like I was a dog who wouldn’t roll over. I turned away, stared blankly at the taxidermy fox-in-a-trap that came with the cabin. This girl wasn't any weeping widow. Mourning didn’t become her any more than it did Elektra. She wanted something out of this deal, but it wasn't her husband. And Old Yeller would rather eat his own sick than the Milbone this bitch was waving in front of my nose. Hell, he’d ride the rabies for all it was worth, kill everybody in the room, then take himself out.

"Fuck would I want with your filthy lucre up here, lady? I had no use for that back in the world. I got even less of a use for it now."

"Well, there must be something you want."

I spied her ample rack, shook my head. "I came up here to get away from people like you, lady. Uptight crackers like yourself who think they can get through life tipping five percent and servers won’t fart on their frappuccinos. That's what I hate about life back in the World, people like you think you can just waltz into somebody's home, pinch a loaf on their carpet, throw a mop at their heads, and look at them like it’s the mop’s fault. Guess what? I always thought you people weren't worth the polyester on your backs. I figure to hoof it out round these parts. Everything I need, I already got. and what I don't got, I don't need."

Her eyes went from doe in the headlight to kitten up a tree.

"I can understand why you wouldn't want to help me, Mr. Burns," she purred sadly. My sphincter tightened for the torrent of tears I knew would follow like the credits to a bad movie. "I have no right to impose on you. It's just…"

She turned away from me and wept, or at least that's what she wanted me to think she was doing. I had a good mind to donkey punch her to the taint then and there but it was no use. I'd lost it. The old hate that served me well in the ’76 election didn't percolate like it used to. It just sat in the bottom of the coffee pot: cold, black and bitter. All this rustic living was making me soft. She started gathering her things. That was my cue.

"I'll leave you, Mr. Burns. If I could borrow some tools and fuel, maybe I could fix…"

I grabbed her two shoulders.

"That machine of yours is deader than cheeseburgers, lady. And I ain't got no spare distributor caps lying around, so why don't you sit your ass back down while I figure out what I'm gonna do with your sorry ass?"

She looked down at her reflection in her patent leather boots like a kid that's been told that she can go to Disneyland if she behaves herself. Her ass slid back into the chair, her pinkie finger ran a couple laps around the brown rim of the coffee cup.

Part of me wanted to tell her to get the hell out of there. Breen's cabin was five miles upstream, she'd be there by nightfall. But the whole distraught housewife spiel left my mouth tasting like bad pussy, and the ugly part of me that wanted to wash that flavor out got the better of me. She spoke hesitantly.

"I really wish you would…"

I took a quick sip and cleared my throat.

"I don't think you heard me, sister," I barked. "I've done a lot of slug work in my lifetime. But digging stiffs outta snowdrifts...it’s not in the cards for me. Not no way, no how.”

I sat and stared at the shivering pool of spilled coffee that formed around the base of my cup. I looked down and saw her staring vacantly back up at me from the icy black liquid. Something about that pathetic little face reminded me of someone I'd known long ago, somebody who meant something to me. Her face kept coming back like a bad late night rerun, begging me to switch her off.

"We look for three days," I farted. "No more. If we haven't found him by then, I'm putting your ass in a luge and riding you back into town myself. You got that shit?"

She nodded. We both leaned back in our chairs, stared blankly out the window at the silent snow falling on all the living and the dead.

Sentence was passed.

Brunch

I examined the husband's flight manifests over breakfast. I didn’t have any appetite, so I only had one steak and a five-egg omelette, six-nches of flapjacks, some french toast, fat-free yogurt, and a pot of coffee.

She looked like she wasn't used to having a old fart cook for her. She kept complimenting me on the cooking, how good this tasted, how nice that smelled. Either she was feeding me a line or she really appreciated the treatment. I felt like a whore who’d given a really good blowjob.

"Mmmmm," she mumbled, her mouth full of food. "This is delicious. What is it?"

"You ever had venison?"

"Well, no but…"

"It's venison."

She looked down at the meat, then back at me, then shrugged, continued eating. I returned to the maps and lit up a pina colada blunt.

She'd really done her work. Charts, weather reports, topographical maps, straps, the whole nine yards. She even had a dozen photos of the plane wreck. On closer observation, I noticed something damned peculiar about the photos, but decided it was in my best interest not to mention it. I started plotting and calculating the route of travel the men were most likely to have taken, considering the terrain and location.

"May I ask you a question, Mr. Burns?"

"Do I have to answer?"

"No, but it would be nice."

"So would a glazed donut, honey. Shoot."

"Why did you quit being a detective?"

I slowly looked up from the maps and fixed her with stare number thirty-one: the "you'll live to regret that question" stare. It made her look nervous..

"I got caught in a… compromising position with a client. It cost me a nickel in the joint, but I got out after six months on a technicality."

"Did you enjoy your work?"

"Parts of it I missed. But the average hour of the day is 58 minutes of boredom and two minutes of intense pain. But once you get a taste for the job, you're hooked." I smiled to myself. "But after you've been at it as long as I had, it’s all routine. The flavor's gone, like a piece of chewing gum that's been in your mouth too long. You just have to put it under your bedpost. Every day is the same as the next: grey, chewed up, bland. Just another hunk of rockhard gum under your bed. You get sick of all the pretty, made-up faces wandering in, wanting you to find their poodle or their lost necklace or who's blackmailing them. I had all I could stand and I couldn't stand no more."

"Well, now that you're retired, what do you do with all of your spare time?"

"I'm indexing Ulysses."

She looked at me like she smelled something stinky. "You're indexing what?"

"Ulysses. James Joyce's Ulysses. Nobody's ever done a proper index and all the work that was done in the 1930s is obviously dated. It's a little hobby I started when I was working: it helped calm me down after a long day tracking leads. Then I took a tour of Dublin and I was hooked. I figure I can add a valuable Northern American cracker perspective. I'm up to the 'K's right now." I shoveled a spoonful of omlette into my face. "How about you, what's your story?"

She wiped my omlette spray off her sleeve.

"I did lots of things, Mr. Burns. Before I married Max, I was a paralegal. Before that I was a librarian, and a school teacher before that."

"You've been around for someone your age."

"That comes from not knowing what I was doing,” she groaned. "Straight out of college, everybody told me I had so much potential, I could do anything I wanted. Trouble was, I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I went down the list: law school, teaching school, librarian school. I got something out of all of them, but not enough to make any of it stick."

"Jack of all trades, master of none, eh?" I sneered at a crack in the ceiling. It reminded me of something. I dug underwear out my ass.

She shrugged. "Max came along at a low point in my life. A lawyer with Porsche, assistant director for a Fortune 500 firm. That's what a woman's supposed to aim for, right?" She didn’t sound convinced.

I shrugged. What the hell did I know about what women wanted? She was sounding like she was looking forward to getting back together with this tool.

"Anyway, we got to know each other and before either of us knew it, we were married."

I smiled like a dog with a mouthful of fresh turd, went back to the maps. What a stupid fucking story.

"Was there ever a Mrs. Burns?" she asked.

I winced.

"Almost," I sighed. "My fiancée was in an… accident. It was one of the reasons I left my job. One of many."

"I'm sorry," she whispered, her arm reaching for my shoulder. I brushed it off. That seemed to throw her off guard. "Have you ever thought about…"

"Every night, lady," I snorted back. I didn't like where this conversation was going, especially considering how touchy-feely she was getting. "People are more trouble than they're worth. I submit our current situation as proof."

She didn’t say anything for a while. In the distance, something went thud.

"Any idea where we might start looking for them," she asked coldly, staring at the crinkled maps.

"Uh-huh." I pointed at the map, an area five miles south of the wreck. "If they were smart, they'd have headed towards there. It's level and offers a good place for aerial spotting. If they're stupid, they're deader than a Happy Meal."

I folded the maps, swigged my coffee and dumped the grinds into the garbage can next to a bunch of broken egg shells.

Lunch

She was the first to find the distress flag.

The pilot and the husband had put together a little camp. The snows had covered their under twenty feet of snow. One of them had made a little flag out of a pine branch and a bandanna and placed it next to the entrance. A steep snow tunnel descended into darkness. She rushed over to the hole, started to yell. I grabbed her and slammed my mitts over her mouth.

"Fuck do you think you're doing?"

"It's their camp! They're alive!" she squealed.

"If they are alive, they can wait a few more minutes. If they aren't alive, you don’t want to interrupt bears or wolves during their meal."

"I didn’t come this far to sit around and wait.”

"You’ll wait here and like it. If you hear screaming, run. You know how to run, don’t you, sister? Just pretend there’s a shoe sale...in the opposite direction."

She got a stupid look on her face, nodded.

I switched on the flashlight and headed in.

I felt like an alien probing some farmer’s ass. I raised the flashlight and, through the fog of my breath, I saw him. I found him just as I thought I would, picture perfect.

In one corner of the tent sat the half decayed remains of the pilot propped up against an attaché case. He was remarkably well preserved; the snow did its job pretty well for a bunch of cold water molecules. There wasn’t the usual rotting flesh stink, but they’d used the tent as a crapper for a while.

In the middle of the floor was a worn snow-covered backpack. I unknotted the bungee ties and looked inside. I reached in and found several dozen packages of dehydrated and freeze dried food; at least a week's supply. Except for one package, it was completely untouched. I grabbed the open pack and smelled a familiar sickly sweet scent. It meant trouble, but I should have known it was coming.

"Are they there?" Sibyl cried from the far end of the tunnel.

"Don't come down here."

As much as they talk about communication, women never listen.

She didn't scream. She just stared at the pilot the way stewardesses stare at passengers exiting a plane after it touches down. Her face looked drained of everything.

"How long?" she wispered.

"Looks like the pilot's been dead for a couple of weeks. The cold kept most the body intact. I'm kind of surprised no scavengers took advantage of the free meal."

I didn't know what else to say to her. She didn't seem to care at all. She rummaged around and stopped right next to the pilot's corpse. She gingerly pulled the attaché case from behind the body. She slowly crawled back up the snow tunnel. I followed.

She said precious little on the way home. The attaché meant trouble.

But then again, it always does.

Dinner

When we got back to the cabin, we ate cold porridge and said nothing for half an hour. She just sat in the corner, staring at the briefcase like it was a long lost patent leather child.

"We gonna keep looking for your husband?"

"I don't think so, Mr. Burns," she said looking up. Her eyes were indifferent and remote like two lumps of coal on a distant ice floe.

"He might be still alive." I said half-heartedly.

No reply.

"Whatever," I shrugged. "When are you gonna get the hell out of my house?"

She made no response except to stand and pull her .25 automatic. She motioned me against the wall.

"You read the instructional video that came with that?,” I snorted, reaching for the rafters.

"Shut up, Burns. If you know what's good for you, you'll keep your mouth shut about this whole incident. My husband is dead. Period. He died of starvation after murdering his pilot. He got lost in the snowstorm."

"Eh, not…really." I said smiling.

She looked not unlike someone who's just been told their brain is on fire.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"C'mere," I snapped back, motioning with my finger. "I don't think I've ever shown you… my ant farm."

A Midnight Snack

I led her past the creaking oak door into the cool, ripe darkness of the basement. She hugged herself against the cold, keeping gun trained on my back.

"I'm warning you, Burns. Try anything funny and I'll…"

"Just shut up, why don't you? It's always the same: give somebody a gun and they think it's some kinda goddamn remote control. Just point and click and your problems are solved. You better stay tuned to this channel, baby. You don’t wanna miss this."

I slid the metal bolt from the door, yanked it open. I stepped into the darkness and tugged the light cord suspended from the center of the ceiling. The single 30 watt bulb cast a blur yellow glow through the basement. She shuffled over and peered in for a better look. I finally heard that scream I'd been waiting on.

Max's headless upper torso was still hanging from the meathook where I'd hung him the week before. He was in pretty decent condition, considering what he'd been through. Several of the steaks I had made out of his thighs and forearms were still drying from the salt racks. I shuffled over to the table where my homemade ant farm stood next to Max's impaled head.

"C'mon," I shouted, peering into the sandwiched layers of plexiglass, "I've never made an ant farm before, gimme a break! It's not that bad. You know how hard it is to dig up ants in the middle of winter? The soil's harder than cement!" I picked the farm up and shook it. The little guys started racing around their tunnels towards the red plastic farmhouse and silo on the surface.

She just stood there gaping and pointing at the Max's head. She obviously wasn't impressed with my carpentry skills.

"Your buddy here showed up a few days before you," I said, putting the farm down and lighting an Old Gold. "He'd hiked the ten miles from his campsite to my place on a broken leg. Gangrene was starting to set in, he was half starved to death and he smelled like the toilets of the Punjab."

She just stood there motionless, eyes fixed on her late husband's remains.

"He told me all about the embezzlement scheme and the getaway plan you'd cooked up: how he'd skimmed the half mil from that busted-ass company; how this skiing trip was just a cover story for the police. 'Embezzler Dies in Freak Plane Crash,' the headlines would read. Those photos of the plane's interior cinched it for me, though; there was no skiing equipment, none at the camp either. Hell, Max probably didn't even like skiing, did he?"

She stood staring at the lifeless trunk of her husband, one hand covering her mouth. Her voice finally came burbling to the top like bubbles of swamp gas. "I… I think I'm going to…"

She looked like she was about to add some color to the old basement.

"You had it all set up, didn't you, hon'? The pilot would down the plane; he and Max would camp out at a pre-arranged sight, making sure to avoid contact with any rescue parties. They'd just sit tight and wait for you to come and pick them up. After a week, they'd give up looking and there you'd be: beautiful young wife, ready to share a new life in Alcupulco with a cool half mil, after the pilot had taken his cut. But you never showed up. And just to stack the deck in your favor, you laced his food supply with prussic acid."

Shaking, she nervously lit a cigarette, never taking her eyes from her dismembered husband. Her guard was down, the gun pointing towards the floor. I could have taken her down, but it had been so long since I got to tell a good bedtime story.

"Max figured that you might pull a stunt like this, so he made the pilot take the first bite of the rations. Sure enough, when that bile and blood came bubbling out of his mouth, the cat was out of the bag. He was on to you. He probably tried to hunt some food up, but what the hell does a city kid know about tracking game in the dead of winter? I can just see the stupid bitch chucking rocks at grizzly bears."

Her gun was really starting to shake. She wiped a stray rope of hair from her face.

"Anyway, he did his best living off of moss and berries, whatever he could scratch up, which wasn’t much. When he couldn't wait any longer for you, he took off, but not before stashing the cash at the campsite. Unfortunately for me, he kicked off before telling me where the goddamned campsite was. Only you knew the exact location."

"You're nuts, you…you killed him and cut him… cut him up and ate him!”

“Well, technically, I just killed him and had some of the gristle. I likes me some gristle. And the holmes was one gristly muv.”

“This can't be happening! I should shoot you right now, you freak!"

I stubbed out the cigarette in the palm of my hand. "You ain't shooting nobody, you cannibal sicko. Hand over the gun." I stretched out my scorched palm.

"Back up! You know all about me. If I let you get out of here alive, you'll hang a murder rap on me.”

“Well, duh. Doncha think you can do the same on me? Idiot.”

I slowly walked towards her. This was starting to get really funny. I had to pinch myself from laughing out loud.

"Don't take another step! I'm warning you! I swear to god I'll use it!"

Smiling, I did a little softshoe and scat number, bunny-hopped twice toward her. She pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked lifelessly on an empty chamber. I grabbed the gun by the barrel and slammed my fist into her lily white face, knocking her backwards head-first onto the icy cement floor. I rubbed my sore fist. That old feeling of bone on knuckle made me feel nostalgic for my days with the National Park Service.

"You think I'd let some stupid hole mince around my dojo with a loaded gun?" I sniffed down at her. "What kind of idiot do you take me for?"

She rubbed the back of her head.

"Don't answer that. Anyway, what are you complaining about? You're the one who said my cooking was so great."

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, remember that 'venison' you had yesterday?" I said, making two silent quote marks with my fingers in the air. I reached for the swinging light chain dangling above my head.

Through the silence, I could almost hear the blood rush from her face. Her jaw made an audible 'snap' as it dropped.

"It wasn't venison."

I yanked on the knotted light chain and the basement faded to black.