FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter Thirty-four

Sunday October 12, 2014

12:41pm

Things started happening very fast.

He was in a shirt and shoes with the Glock stuffed down a shorts pocket. He was ducking out of the patio door into daylight. He was in the parking lot, and he saw his father in the corner of his good one eye. The eye Anessa had caught was swollen shut. The gun was in his paw, aimed at his approaching father. He was shouting to stay back.

"What are you doing!" his father was hollering.

Then Tyson was in the Camaro, rolling along the beltway and heading southeast.

It was all over. Everything.

He had topped the Camaro's tank since the drive with Anessa. That gave him four hundred highway miles--for what it mattered.

"Nessa, you fucking bitch," he snarled.

The agony left by his sister was incredible. Only a few miles past the belt and he had lost most of the mobility in his neck. He could hardly check his mirrors as he cruised down a two-lane highway. The slightest twitch of his left arm shot a screaming pain to the site of the damage. The nauseating screech in his eye was spreading across his face.

He wondered what he was even doing. It didn't matter where he drove. The weight against his thigh assured him of that.

Not yet, he told his tightening chest.

* * *

Friday September 18, 2009

10:04pm

"You too? What the hell is going on tonight."

"I've been thinking about what you said," said Tyson, left paw on the steering wheel, right paw on his phone. Ohio fields ran to the oblivion of the night before him.

"And?"

"I want to leave with you."

The phone crackled with a laugh.

"Are you serious?"

"Yes."

"And here I thought you'd lost your balls."

"I'm on my way."

Tyson snapped the phone shut and tiredly looked across the 944.

She smiled back at him, night and streetlight interchanging effects upon her face. She wore a long shirt which was a pretty emerald-green. It had an arrowhead neckline and a hem that fell into the lap of her dark pants. A small satchel nested between her feet. In it: a burner and a bundle of bills.

"We're really doing this," said the black shepherd in a gleeful voice, and she set a paw upon Tyson's arm.

Her voice grew soft. "After you left last week I had the worst goddamn migraine I've had in my entire life--first one since your father and I divorced. When it started I thought to myself that you were never coming back."

The paw squeezed his arm, and she smiled wider as they continued their drive into the night.

"Grady, it's Patty."

. . .

"I need some help."

. . .

"Some shit came up."

. . .

"Obviously I mean tonight!"

. . .

"I'm on I-60 right fucking now, Grady. It has to be tonight!"

. . .

"Half hour."

. . .

"Just get it fucking sorted."

. . .

"I'll call you."

His passenger lowered the burner from her ear, grumbling agitatedly about assholes and lazy sons of bitches. When Tyson looked over he saw no more than the glisten of eyes and fangs upon the shadow. "So, what does this guy do?" he grumbled, immediately unsure of why he had even asked. It didn't matter.

"He's just a prick who knows lots of other pricks."

"And how do you know him."

"From work. He runs one of the pharmacies in Sandy, so I had to deal with him all the fucking time. Got to know him through the years. What he's really like."

"An old fling?"

"That's right."

More fang glistened from the shadows.

"Not jealous, are you?"

Tyson said nothing.

"Don't be. He was a shit lay, but if you let him put his little dick in you he'll give you a goddamn key to his store. Forged me a few prescriptions throughout the years, too." She laughed. "Wonder how many junkies he's sponsored since he got into that fucking place."

"You trust him?"

"He won't fuck us over, if that's what you mean. He's covered in too much shit."

"Good," said Tyson. Again, not that it mattered. "Where are we meeting him?"

"In the park. It shouldn't take long."

"And after that?"

It really didn't matter.

"Let's go someplace warm."

Hours and miles passed.

"I haven't been in Sandy for a while," said the voice from the shadows, "but I'm pretty sure this isn't the way to the park."

The curling road was as Tyson recalled: striped with decay and ran through fields of flourishing weeds. The 944's headlights illuminated retired grain hoppers and semitrailers up ahead, mounds of rock and metal scrap which they rolled past.

Tyson didn't speak.

There was a laugh from his side. "How romantic," it cooed. "For old times' sake?"

After putting the Porsche between two trailers, Tyson killed the engine and lights. Everything went black--blacker than he had known possible.

"I'll text Grady that we'll be late."

Tyson looked into the black shepherd's smiling face. Then he hurled himself across the car.

A collar to lead her;

She, with eyes great,

Fangs white;

She who feebly pried his reach,

Grasped for air's respite--

* * *

Sunday October 12, 2014

3:56pm

Shit had certainly hit the fan.

A live round sat eagerly in the chamber--the guaranteed exit.

The Glock rattled in his violently-shaking paws. The Camaro sat alongside an otherwise-vacant road, miles from any town. That shouldn't have mattered, he knew. Once he depressed the trigger nothing would matter.

Tyson closed his eyes and wrung all his energy into his paws. Fire engulfed his left arm. His paws trembled harder.

They just wouldn't--

He barked a curse into the confines of the car and wondered how Bella had managed. Had he come so far to be a coward? To puss out? A pathetic whimper left him as he opened his eyes, looked out at the blue skies wandering aimlessly. They were beautiful, and the day was perfect.

"The perfect place--"

Clarity struck the shepherd as a knife.

Panting mightily, he looked at the gun.

And then at the Camaro's fuel gauge.

The street was old and quiet, and there was a soft breeze knocking fall leaves across a long, grassy yard. Tyson sighed and marched to the top of a four-step porch and wondered what he was doing. There were two cars in the driveway: a gray Subaru Outback and a steel-blue Nissan Pathfinder. Both unfamiliar, giving him the feeling that he was about to give some stranger a nasty surprise. He wasn't sure what he was hoping for regardless of who answered the door. He was only delaying the unpleasant. Running from it.

He punched the doorbell with his good arm and waited.

If he didn't get it over with, what did he have to look forward to? He was surely facing imprisonment. Worse, he would have to face his father and sister. His existence would become nothing more than all of the horrible decisions he had made--

The squeak of a hinge brought Tyson's attention forward, and a pretty young woman Tyson had never seen before blinked at him.

"Sorry," Tyson said, wanting to save the poor stranger from having to address his horrid state. "Wrong place." He dragged himself down the steps.

"I can call you an ambulance."

Tyson turned to tell the lady not to bother.

She watched him with golden-yellow eyes.

That stopped him.

Tyson hesitated a moment.

"Does Elena still live here?" he asked.

But he needn't have asked. The woman in the doorway had the same eyes, if nothing else. She was tall and wore rust which was redder than fox, and her chocolate hair spilled down in lazy curls. Her golden-yellow stare was slotted at a sharper angle than the eyes he knew, and they sat opposite over a wolfish muzzle, but there was no doubt.

"She does."

Tyson put a foot back on the bottom step of the small porch. "Is she home?"

"She's resting right now. What's your name?"

Whatever she was, her voice, her hard stare told Tyson that he wasn't likely to get past her. Tyson spat out his name, pleaded with the ambiguous concoction of canine and grizzly to see her mother. She closed the door on him.

Tyson put a paw to the swelling over his aching, unseeing eye and waited. A minute later, Elena's daughter reappeared at the door and ushered him in.

"Are you sure you don't want me to call an ambulance," she said, sounding annoyed.

"No," Tyson replied, stepping into a familiar entryway.

Before Elena's daughter could try and steer him the way, Tyson dashed up the narrow wooden staircase and down the short hall with the open doorway at its end. The scent of musk and flowers blessed his nose as he slowed his steps near the threshold to the bedroom and slowly peered inside. Immediately, his eyes were drawn to the bed.

Her copper-brown hair was gone, and a hairless patch of peach flesh now sat beside her left eye. There were more faded spots around her collar. But her smile was the same--reserved, intelligent. The beautiful hue of her golden-yellow eyes was also the same. Elena smiled tiredly as Tyson edged into the room.

"Wow, Audrey was right," Elena said in a tired, husky tone. "You look terrible."

Everything hit at once.

Memories--long walks, stirring conversations, the happiest days of life--poured out of forgotten places.

Elena patted the side of her mattress and told Tyson not to stand there. He drifted to her side wordlessly and knelt down so as not to disturb the air about her. She looked beautiful as ever.

"What happened?" she asked, taking a closer look at his face. "Your neck looks awful, and your eye--"

Tyson broke.

Bella's death. His mother. Anessa--who had only wanted to help him. The shame. How could he sit so close to Elena after what he had done? He had humiliated everyone he had ever associated with. Had ruined his family. Everything. For what? He would beat his head against that question for many, many years. No answer would ever quiet it.

Elena sat, patiently soothing the fur on Tyson's head, smoothing his ears and letting them spring back up and into place. She did so for several minutes while Tyson loudly sobbed into her quilted blanket.

"You need to get yourself fixed up, Tyson," she said when his crying began to soften. "I'll have Audrey give you a ride."

The car was quiet for most of the drive: hellish minutes from Elena's driveway to the nearby Taylor C. Elliot Medical Center. Silence suited Tyson fine. The pain was coming back--heavier and meaner than before. He wondered if he would ever properly see from both eyes again. He chose to worry about that as long as he could.

As Audrey Rokem steered them from her mother's old neighborhood, she finally inquired, "So, how do you know my mom?"

Tyson smiled.

He wondered how he had managed to forget that wonderful spring?

"I took her class a few years ago," he said, and they left it at that.

The only other question came from Tyson as they stopped below an awning that shrouded the hospital's emergency wing entrance. He asked how Elena was doing. Audrey replied with a prognosis in months.

Audrey didn't wait for him. As soon as Tyson was clear of the Pathfinder, she was gone.

Tyson was left staring at the hospital doors.

The horrible things he had done were through those doors, sat with haunches taut, claws honed and fangs glistening.

The shepherd summoned what courage a coward could have and stepped forward.