As the wolves close in, there is, between the towering trunks and low, leafy plants, a light glowing in the distance, pushing back against the jungle’s shadows and secrets.

  You in there? I ask the voice that’s been in my head all this time. Are you in there or not?! I’m coming for you. I’m coming to kill you, if it’s the last thing I do!

  So, I keep shlooping through the forest like a snake slipping through weeds.

  Which snake am I? I wonder. Order or chaos. A little of both maybe.

  Shlooping sure beats walking. I’ll give the tentacles that much. It was always so hard stomping through the weeds.

  “Hawooo!”

  The glow belongs to a porch light. The electric bulb buzzes in the otherwise quiet night, where before I could hear only the trees with their hushed speech, whispering little secrets in the cool midnight breeze.

  A cabin. Imagine that. A cabin in Washington. My sarcasm’s too dry, even for me. Drier than the rye I drink.

  Stop it. You’re not back. You’re not in Washington. Don’t get your hopes up.

  I’m over this all. I need a drink.

  “Hawooo!”

  “Hawooo!”

  That bastard’s got to be in there. I’ll find him. I’ll kill him. I’ll throw what’s left to the wolves even.

  Two black Fords are parked outside. Shlooping over to the cars, I raise an eyestalk up to peek through the driver’s side windows.

  Empty. These look just like I remember them. This stupid forest is playing tricks on me again. You’re not fooling me, you stupid, alien woods! You’re not fooling anyone!

  I clench my jaw like a rusty bear trap, trying to hold in the manic screams.

  This is insane!

  Real or not. Fact or fiction. Dream or memory. It’s all a mystery. Roll with it ‘til you can’t, Jack. That’s the best a man can do.

  What’s that mean to a monster?

  The next move is to check the cabin. I waste no time. I can almost feel the breath of the wild canines wafting on my tendrils. Heaving. Hungering. The stench of rotten meat stuck between a dog’s teeth fills my nose. Proverbially.

  I slink up onto the wooden porch and over to a window. Quiet. Careful. Stretching a stalk up, I give the window a peak.

  Blinds and curtains. No looking in. If I want to know what’s inside, my only choice is to go inside.

  I shloop over to the door. Try the knob.

  Locked.

  Alright. There’re a few ways to go about this.

  I try jamming a limb into the lock to rake the tumblers. My tentacles are as squishy as warm sourdough, but I can’t quite finesse it. It’s like trying to grab loose change in a crevice with your fingertips.

  “Hawooo!”

  Maybe with a little practice, that could work. No chance right now, though.

  I take a look at the door and see another option: there’s space between it and the frame.

  Enough space to squeeze through?

  I give it a try.

  I’m in up to my proverbial elbow when I accept the whole bowl of spaghetti that is me ain’t squeezing through the sieve.

  “Hawooo!”

  Not in one piece.

  I at least reach around on the other side of the door. I turn the deadbolt and loose the chain.

  Progress. Everything Roosevelt ever promised and never delivered. Bastard.

  There is still one lock left, the one on the other side of the knob. I can reach it, but it’s stuck tight. My slippery tendril tips can’t quite get a grip.

  Thankfully: I know a guy who knows a simple trick, you see.

  “Hawooo!”

  “Arrggghhh”

  “Raf! Raf!”

  Wolves snarling and barking behind me, I squeeze my tentacle in between the latch and the strike plate, pushing the latch back into the mechanism. The door swings open like a dame’s arms when she hears you have money.

  The guy is me.

  I shloop in and slam the door.

  Were they even really there? I forgot to look. Not used to these eyes. I should check now. No. Forget. Forward. Just move forward, Jack.

  ‘Yes, Jackie. Forward. Keep moving forward.’

  Where are you?! Get over here and fight me.

  The foyer is dark and narrow. It’s silent, but I get the sense it’s far from safe.

  Shlooping in as quiet as an owl sailing through the night, I come to the end of the foyer where it meets a hallway that goes to the left and right.

  To the right: nothing but the black of night locked in this wood box of a cabin.

  To the left: the dim glow of an electric lamp.

  I’m sick of darkness.

  I stick an eyeball around the corner to check out that room the yellow light is coming from. There is no door to the entrance. Built like a living room. It leads in from the corner. I move in to investigate.

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  The room is empty except for the lamp on a small table pushed up against the wall to my right and a man tied to a chair turned sideways in the center. A window looks out onto the cabin’s back yard or would if it weren’t covered with curtains. The doorway on the wall to my left leads into the kitchen.

  Dining room, not living room. Not much difference in a shack like this. Anyway, what’s up with this guy lying here?

  I’m close enough to see the man’s face. He looks like raw ground beef left out on the counter for too long. His white shirt must have been part of a nice suit. Now, it’s painted so red:

  You could use it as a stop sign. A “please, stop beating the ever loving piss out of me” sign.

  I stick a tentacle on his neck, feeling for a pulse.

  Carotid’s there.

  “Jack…”

  He’s conscious.

  “Laura sent you, didn’t she?”

  Who? Laura… It’s been so long since that night, I’ve forgotten her name again. Laura Softson.

  “Yeah, Sam. Laura sent me.”

  “You’re such a loser, Jack.” His voice is hoarse in a soft, friendly sort of way. It’s like he’s talking to an old schoolyard pal. Too bad I barely know him.

  “I’m not the one tied to a chair and tossed through a meat grinder.”

  “Heh… I guess you’re not. Got me beat, Jack.”

  “You’re more than beat, Sam. You’re pulverized.”

  “You win on one hand then, but you’ve lost to Laura on the other.”

  “How’s that, Sam?”

  “She wants me dead. She wants my money.”

  “You have no money.”

  “I’ve got money. Loads of it. It’s all tied up in businesses. If I die, it all goes to her. She sells, even at half price, and she has enough to run off to Tijuana for the rest of her life.”

  “There’s another man, isn’t there?”

  “Probably.”

  “Usually is.”

  “Well,” he says before drawing in a deep breath as if he’s ready to fall asleep. “There’s definitely another man she wants dead.”

  “Does that man know about her plan, Sam?”

  “He does now.”

  “Thought so.”

  “That’s why you’re a loser, Jack.”

  “You have any cigarettes for a dead man, Sam?”

  “In my shirt pocket. Lighter’s in my pants.”

  I grab the pack. It’s crumpled and smashed. Half the cigarettes are snapped.

  “Took you for the kind of guy to use a case.”

  “I usually do.”

  I fish the lighter out of his pants pocket. A steel Zippo with his initials engraved on it.

  I fish out two cigarettes that look decent enough.

  “Appreciate it, Sam. Want one? They’re yours anyway.”

  “No thanks. Always wanted to quit. Figure I might as well now, before time’s up and my bucket list is due.”

  “Don’t talk like that.” I hold a cigarette with my lips as I fiddle with the lighter. “Ol’ Jack is gonna get you out of here, Sam.”

  “You really think you’ll win the hand?”

  “I’d bet my life on it. I play’em close to the chest for a reason. And dames? Dames always have tells.” I continue to fiddle with the switch, not even getting any sparks. “Can you tell me something, Sam?”

  “Shoot, chief.”

  “Aren’t you bothered by all the tentacles?” I sure as Hell am. The lighter still won’t spark. I’m about to chuck it at the bloody pile of ground beef that got me into this mess. I oughta chuck this stupid thing at your bloody, broken face.

  “Tentacles?”

  Just what I thought. Sparks. He doesn’t really see me. Or, he does really see me. More sparks. I don’t know which. Which is real? The man or the monster. Nothing.

  “Tentacles?” I say. “You’re delirious, Sam.”

  “Oh. No… You said ‘tentacles.’ You asked me about tentacles.”

  “Vestibules. I said ‘vestibules.’ It was a metaphor for… life.”

  “What do you mean, Jack?”

  What do I mean?

  “I mean… all these vestibules you have to go through in life just to get to the truth. Shouldn’t the truth just be right there in front of you?”

  “Then you’d be out of a job, Jack.”

  “And the world would be a better place for it.”

  “You think the world would be a better place without you, Jack?”

  “What kind of question is that?” The kind I ask myself when the night is long and the handle of whiskey is deep. I toss the lighter down like I’m throwing away a broken dream. Holding up my crooked cigarette, I gaze wistfully at its unlit tip.

  “I think Laura would have been better off without me…”

  “Probably. You’re a lecher and crook.” I stare at the lighter on the ground.

  “Kind words for a dead man.”

  “You’re still talking. You aren’t dead yet. Besides, I’m not interested in kindness. I trade in truths. If I wanted to do business in kindness, I’d shave my legs and become a nurse.” He’s not real.

  I pick the lighter up again.

  “Would you do me a favor, Jack?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Mind untying me before they come in and finish the job?”

  None of this is real.

  “I’d like to die on my feet.”

  I spin the lighter wheel gently.

  “Jack?”

  May as well make the most of it.

  I lift Sam up, set the chair on its feet, and take a long hard look at that pile of chuck sitting on his shoulders staring back at me.

  Maybe they left the ribs for me.

  “Thank you… Now—hngh!”

  Socking him in the ribs with a tentacle is like bopping a stuffed bear with a pillow.

  “Are you trying to hit me?”

  Face it is, then. You can hit a man in the head with a pillow hard enough that he flips back in his chair. If his hands are tied behind his back, the chair will smash them when he lands. Might break a finger if you’re lucky.

  “Ahhh!”

  The sound of the wooden chair slamming against the wood floor is satisfying.

  “That’s for getting me into this mess, you dirty, lying, cheating son of a three-toothed Sally.”

  “Sally is my sister. Ma had four teeth.”

  That’s something I’d say. He’s just a figment of your imagination, Jack.

  “I don’t blame you,” says Sam. “Get out of here while you can. They’ll be back in here any minute now.”

  “You still don’t see! You still don’t see what’s happened to me!”

  Sam stares at me from the ground, lying on his back.

  “I just see a man who’s done too much and never been thanked enough for it. A man who’s tired. A man who plays his cards close not because he’s playing to win, but because he doesn’t want to play the game at all anymore.”

  “I’m not even a man anymore, Sam! I’m a monster!”

  “I know, Jack. I understand.”

  The door behind me and to my right swings open.

  “What the hell?!”

  Damn.

  “Shoot it!”

  Four ugly mooks have stormed in. They have drawn their 1911 handguns. They send a hailstorm of bullets my way. My slimy, lumpy flesh accepts the delivery like a broad accepts a visit from the milkman. Jets of green blood gush from my body. I do not feel a single thing but rage. I do not see a single thing but red.