heads down the first gravel road he sees. A less populated area would be better for him to study the humans in their own environment at a safe distance. Knowing that if the humans can display so much violence on each other, they wouldn’t think twice about capping his ass.
“ There’s good and bad in this world, so where would the good be hiding?” Scott wonders. He finally comes upon a farmhouse at the end of the gravel road, climbs into the corn field. At the edge of the farmers property, he sits and waits. Sunlight blazes down on the tops of the long stalks of corn heating up the entire field with bites of sunlight. A man comes up with a bag of trash from the house and dumps it in the fire pit and then puts a metal trash can lid over the wire mesh and runs quickly back into the house. Scott wonders, “Why am I even bothering with humans? I’m not human. I’m not even from this planet. Maybe I should just try and find a wolf pack or just go into the woods and hunt and gather my….however long a wolf lives. What maybe twenty years? I don’t know. Eight? Damn I should have tried to hack a computer or something to find out how long a wolf does live or at least something about them. All I know is their dogs basically that live in the woods. Naw, that’d get boring too quick. The humans are exciting and unpredictable. I think I’ll stick around here. Maybe I should see how they’d react to contact. I was always kind of repulsed by humans eating habits, but there was always a strange fascination with me on what a twinkie would actually taste like if you bit it. I mean the mountain lions innards were quite tasty at the time. I didn’t know I was eating it. That’s what I’ll do. Next time they come out, I will introduce myself.”
Awhile later, the young man comes back out the door and into the barn carrying a tool box. Scott intensely watches and slyly follows the man in towards the garage, keeping an eye on every step down the row of the cornfild that leads to the barn. Coming out of the corn, second row, first row and now looking both ways, dashes across the lawn to the corner of the barns edge. Hearing metal on metal as the tools jingle together onto a metal table with the metallic sheens, Scott heads towards the source of the sounds. The man is now under the truck, turning wrenches and Scott says, “Hello.” The man under the truck jumps and hit’s the top of his cap on the radiator and yells “Ohh, shit” and wheels out from under the truck mad . “What the hell?”
As doing so he says, “Damn it. This better be good.” As he slides out from under his truck, he’s startled to find a wolf staring right at him. The man slowly backs away with his arms fumbling around behind his back, hoping he’s headed towards the back of the barn where the door is. He finally bumps into the door in which a board has it clamped shut tight. Turning around his head to keep his eyes on the wolf, he squats down and pushes up on the wooden board that secures the door to somehow pop it off and get out of the barn, calmly as possible.
“ Good boy”, the man says.
Scott slowly approaches the man in the same calm fashion and says, “ It’s ok, I won’t hurt you.”
The farmers eyes widen even more and he pushes up faster. The door flies open he runs outside to the right corner of the barn and towards the back door of the house. Not slowing down or looking back, if that damn dog or whatever it is, is coming, he don ’t want to see it hit him. Faster and faster he runs, not caring how fast his heart is beating from the fright.
“ Did I just see that?”, the man thinks to himself as he’s running toward the door. Turning the knob of the door and bolting in. Turning the door and locking it behind him. The man runs straight to his gun cabinet and grabs the shotgun and the rifle. He thumbs through different cartridge boxes to find
Laurence Cossé, Alison Anderson