When the Wolf Comes Home E-Book

Nat Cassidy

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 523

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

An unabashed, adrenaline-fueled pop horror thriller about parenthood and other monsters from "The Stephen King of TikTok" The Lineup, reminiscent of Joe Hill and Grady Hendrix. One night, Jess, a struggling actress, finds a five-year-old runaway hiding in the bushes outside her apartment. After a violent, bloody encounter with the boy's father, she and the boy find themselves running for their lives. As they attempt to evade the boy's increasingly desperate father, horrifying incidents of butchery follow them. At first Jess thinks she understands what they're up against, but she's about to learn there's more to these surreal and grisly events than she could've ever imagined. And that when the wolf finally comes home, none will be spared.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Content Warning

Part One: All Dads are Motherfuckers

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Part Two: Yes And

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Part Three: Wolf at the Door

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Part Four: Fairy-Tale Endings

Afterword

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

The Library at Hellebore

Angel Down

The Captive

Goodreads Readers’ Most Anticipated Horror Novels 2025 Paste Magazine Most Anticipated Horror Novels 2025

“This is the kind of great, big, epic horror novel we got back in the ’80s that came out swinging for the fences and left everything on the field. Welcome back, you shaggy, bloody monster of a book!”

GRADY HENDRIX, bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House

“When the Wolf Comes Home is an imaginative, adrenaline-fueled wild ride through the babysitting job from Hell. Brims with both horror and heart.”

TANANARIVE DUE, author of The Reformatory

“When The Wolf Comes Home is a sharp-edged metaphor for trauma and rage, for how they seep into us, how we carry them in us and how sometimes, we pass them on like a curse.”

CASSANDRA KHAW, Bram Stoker Award®-winning author of Nothing But Blackened Teeth

“When the Wolf Comes Home has the feel of a modern-day Twilight Zone episode. Conceptually daring, riveting on the page, shockingly intense in spots, the book is bound together at the heart by a relationship between two lost souls seeking peace. Equal parts scary and soulful.”

NICK CUTTER, author of The Troop

“When the Wolf Comes Home kicks so much ass! The less you know going in, the better, but I’ll tell you this much—it’s not at all what you’re expecting! Full of heart and harrowing suspense, it belongs on the shelf next to Firestarter, and reminds me of one of my favorite short stories, which I can’t reveal without spoiling the plot! Enough talk … just read it!”

CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN, New York Times bestselling author of The House of Last Resort and Road of Bones

“How can you outrun something that will never stop? Nat Cassidy gives us a werewolf novel that transcends horror, in which fear is not as simple as a hulking monster lurking in the shadows, but something much more complex. A thrilling journey through the darkness.”

CYNTHIA PELAYO, Bram Stoker Award®-winning author of Vanishing Daughters

“When the Wolf Comes Home is a wildly inventive horror novel, and a ripping, bloody page-turner. But that’s not all it is—in its beating heart there’s a fierce, moving treatise about love, parenthood, and notions of familial indebtedness. I loved it.”

KEITH ROSSON, author of Fever House and The Devil By Name

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When the Wolf Comes Home

Print edition ISBN: 9781835413562

E-book edition ISBN: 9781835413579

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: April 2025

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Nat Cassidy 2025

Nat Cassidy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

EU RP

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[email protected] [phone]

Typeset in Bulmer Std 10.75/15.5pt.

Printed and bound by CPI (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

For Barry

CONTENT WARNING

I’ll never understand why some people get so upset about content warnings. If you’re a sicko like me, all these do is give you a little preview of what flavors of nasty fun you’re in for; and if you’re a reader who prefers to avoid certain subjects or prefers to go in with some bolstering, well, forewarned is forearmed, right?

This is specifically a story about the slippery nature of fear and how important it is to find healthy ways to live with it, so I’m more than happy to provide a heads-up: this book contains graphic depictions and/or discussions of murder, gore, dismemberment, needle trauma, blood-borne diseases, spiders, insects, suicidal ideations, abuse, grief, alcoholism, parent death, child death, child trauma, child endangerment, and a whole lot more. It borrows a few tropes from fairy tales; happy endings isn’t one of them.

And, hey, if you are the sort of person who’s offended by the existence of content warnings, I’m truly sorry. Maybe next time, I’ll give you a little heads-up that they’re coming, so you’ll be able to prepare yourself.

Part One All Dads areMotherfuckers

I am afraid, oh I am so afraid!

The cold black fear is clutching me to-night

As long ago when they would take the light

And leave the little child who would have prayed,

Frozen and sleepless at the thought of death.

—Sara Teasdale

I must not fear.

—Frank Herbert

1

DADDY IS ROARING.

Howling.

Destroying everything in the house—furniture, pictures on the wall, all of it—while he searches for the boy.

The boy is crouched inside the pantry. Hidden. For now.

Hardnoise, he thinks in his terror, flinching at the sounds of destruction. He’s seen Daddy angry plenty of times before … but not like this. This is so much worse than all the other times.

“How?!” Daddy demands in a deep, raspy voice. “Where?!” It sounds as if the words rip out of him, pulling bits of throat along the way. “Where … ind … I-i-t?”

The boy—who is only five years old and small for his age—shrinks farther inside the pantry. He thinks about disappearing completely, but knows he can’t. The thing he’s clutching to his chest keeps him moored to the world. The thing Daddy is raging about.

The book.

Lately, the boy had been sneaking out a window while Daddy took his afternoon naps. He knew it wasn’t allowed, that it’s Bad and Dangerous, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. The call of the outside world was too great, and for all his rules and precautions, Daddy hadn’t yet realized the boy figured out how to open that window.

Daddy’s naps are always the same time and the same length every day, so the boy never went far on these walks. Usually, he just stood and looked around for a bit before scrabbling back inside. He looked at the other houses. At the cars driving by. The little rocks with bits of sparkle in them. The trees. A lizard. A stray cat. Things he’d seen or heard from the other side of the window, usually accompanied by Daddy’s dry, detailed explanations of what they were looking at. “So you never have to wonder,” Daddy always said.

But it was so much nicer to experience them. So much more exciting to wonder.

A few days ago, the boy let himself walk down the block a little, and that’s when he’d discovered the tiny house. It was in a neighbor’s front yard: a tiny house on a short pole. The tiny house had a little glass door, and inside … was all books. If the boy could read, he still might not have known what the phrase Little Library meant, but he thought the teal calligraphic squiggles were pretty.

The boy didn’t own any books, but he’d seen plenty. Daddy liked to read. Except, his books were all dull, uninteresting things. Flat colors, no pictures, blocks of tiny words inside. The boy had never seen books like these.

Some were soft and floppy, with glossy pictures on their covers. Some were sturdier, and their covers even slipped off, revealing the blank, hard covers the boy was more familiar with.

One book in particular stole his attention.

Old. Worn. Hardbound, but its peach-colored cover wasn’t blank; it had shiny gold lettering and pictures stamped into it. This book had been loved, the boy knew somehow.

The inside was also full of pictures. Beautiful, full-color, richly detailed pictures, some taking up one or even two whole pages. A boy and a girl finding a house made out of candy. A girl asleep in a bed full of flowers. Another girl with fish fins instead of legs. The boy didn’t understand any of these images—he’d never heard a fairy tale, had never seen a picture book—but he was captivated.

He didn’t know a book could ever be like this.

He’d been out too late—had sensed the time slipping away like a physical thing—so he hurried home with the book in tow, making it back into his room just in time before Daddy woke up. He hid the book, his book, under his mattress, peeking at it very rarely and very briefly, whenever he was certain Daddy wouldn’t catch him. He only looked at one picture at a time. Savoring it. Cherishing it. Trying to imagine the words that might go with such fantastical pictures. He didn’t even feel the need to sneak out the window anymore. The book was his window now.

Until one day he flipped to the wrong picture. A large, hulking wolf stalking through an endless forest. The wolf had oily dark fur, a long, pointy snout, pulling back to reveal rotting gums and massive teeth dripping with foamy drool. Its claws were massive, perfectly sharp and curly, and made for tearing into soft, little-boy flesh.

The picture scared the boy. Scared him in a way he’d never been scared before. He couldn’t shake it. He had to keep looking at it. It seemed to give a shape, a face, to every fear he’d ever had, as if this wolf had been waiting for him all along in the shadows.

Every time he looked at his book, he went straight to that picture. Compelled. Hypnotized. Like prey.

He was staring at it this morning, when Daddy caught him.

Daddy got so angry, seeing what the boy was doing. He began to yell and stomp and demand answers. He threw the book. He shook the boy. Which only scared the boy further.

And now …

Another howl tears through the silence.

“WHERE—?! STOP THIS!”

The boy hears heavy footsteps stomp farther into the house, searching for him.

Go now, he thinks. Run.

Don’t, he also thinks. Stay hidden.

But Daddy will check the kitchen eventually. And when he does …

Remember the other boy!

That gets him moving. The other boy. His only friend.

The boy has to leave. At least for a little while. So Daddy can calm down.

He carefully opens the pantry door. Daddy is gone, destroying other rooms in his search for the boy, but the devastation in his wake … The kitchen table, smashed into bits. The walls, ravaged and slashed. Holes punched in the plaster. Shreds of fabric everywhere.

For a moment, the boy is frozen, taking it all in.

The air is hot. Heavy. Smelling like food left burning on the stovetop. Like that time Daddy ruined dinner and got so mad and the boy got scared and—

More hardnoise from the other room—Smash! Crash! Howl! No time.

Still clutching his book, the boy tiptoes his way to the front door. Too many things on the floor to trip over and make noise. It takes all his balance and concentration to not—

Snap!

The boy inhales with a hiss. A framed picture. Daddy and Mommy smiling. The boy has stepped on the thin wood of the frame and cracked it.

The hardnoise in the other room stops.

Daddy. Listening.

The front door is suddenly yards away. Miles. Impossible to reach from here. Too late. The boy ducks behind the overturned coffee table. Makes himself small, as small as he can, and squeezes his eyes shut. Maybe if he can’t see Daddy, Daddy can’t see—

A hand closes over his ankle.

“FOUND YOU.”

The boy is pulled out and up. As if he’s insubstantial as air.

He opens his eyes to find himself dangling upside down, staring at eyes burning with senseless anger. Lips pulled back in a sneer. Breath as hot as an oven’s. Frothy drool seething between clenched teeth.

He barely recognizes the face.

No, no, no!

The boy squeezes his eyes shut again. He remembers another picture in his book. A hero, brandishing something long and sharp in the face of some fire-breathing, scaly thing. In that desperate instant, the boy imagines he holds a similar weapon and brings his book down, hard as he can, onto the hairy arm holding him. He feels the solid resistance of bone.

Daddy yelps.

The boy hits the carpet in a tooth-rattling thud. He wastes no time, scrambles toward the front door, not caring how much noise he makes now.

He doesn’t let himself worry that the door might be locked, or the knob too high, or his palms too slippery. Still holding the book under one arm, he wrenches the door open and sprints into the night. His bare feet slap against pavement and asphalt.

From inside the house, Daddy’s cries change from pain to anger again.

“GET BACK HERE!”

The boy ignores his father’s commands. He runs and runs. Daddy will be behind him any second, so he heads for back ways, through bushes and culverts, ignoring sharp gravel, hoping his small size helps him disappear.

“GET BACK HERE!”

Daddy’s voice, fainter now. The huge world, swallowing up sound the farther the boy runs.

But the memories of hardnoise still crash in his ears.

And the taste of fear never leaves his mouth.

2

OH MY GOD, Jess, what are you so afraid of?”

Jess cocks a hip, makes a show of considering the question.

“Hmm. Chlamydia? Gonorrhea? Weeping pustules? The kind that smell like cheese from a few feet away?”

Margie grimaces. “Okay—”

“Hepatitis A? Hepatitis B? Hepatitis C and D?! And AIDS is still a thing, right? Can’t forget AIDS—”

“Shut up!” Margie smacks her with a menu. “Good lord.”

It’s a quarter past 1:00 a.m. Jess doesn’t bother keeping her voice down—the only people eating at Poppy’s Diner right now are past caring about the animated conversation of the establishment’s two-person waitstaff. Even if that conversation invokes cheese-smelling crotch rot.

From where they’re leaning against the main counter, Jess and Margie can see every one of Poppy’s nine tables and fifteen booths, save for a couple of booths at the extreme ends. It’s the usual sparse, graveyard crowd as ever this time of night. Whether or not a single customer has actually set foot in Poppy’s before, it’s the same cast of characters. Itinerants. A truck driver or two. Goth kids. People using the $3.50 bottomless cup of coffee (“North Hollywood’s Finest!”) as their evening’s rent.

It’s not as if Los Angeles is exactly drowning in options as far as twenty-four-hour eateries are concerned, so Jess often thinks it says a lot that Poppy’s still doesn’t pull in huge numbers during the graveyard shift. Location might have something to do with it. Poppy’s is tucked away under the 107 like some vestigial organ the body forgot to reabsorb. That and a pretty decent Denny’s opened up just a couple of miles away.

Margie straightens the pile of menus and blows a curly strand of hair out of her eyes. “He is cute.”

They give one more appraising look at the photo Jess conjured forth from social media of the boy she’s crushing on.

“Yeah,” Jess grumbles. Then she kills the display and puts her phone back under the counter, where it continues to charge. “Too bad he does improv.”

“You do improv.”

“Girls that do improv are cool. Guys that do improv are … the opposite of that.”

“Okay.” Margie sighs and gives the menus a firm tap, then pours herself a white ceramic mug of Poppy’s not-actually-all-that-fine coffee.

“No, seriously,” Jess continues. “Wanna know why?”

“I bet you’re going to tell me.”

“Because everyone in the comedy scene has daddy issues. It might as well be a rule. And girls with daddy issues know how to party. But guys with daddy issues? They’re just mean.” She gives a disappointed shake of her head. “Fuckin’ dads, Margie. They ruin everything …”

In fact, Jess’s first UCB team after she moved to LA was even named Daddy Shoes (short for Daddy Is Shoes, which was a compromise from the originally proposed All Dads Are Motherfuckers), because it was the one thing every member agreed they had in common. Before she can share that detail, though, one of the goth kids over at Booth 8 periscopes over the vinyl seat back and looks around for assistance. Jess hurries to attend to them. More coffee, shocker. As black as the kid’s cargo pants and, presumably, soul.

When Jess comes back, Margie is wiping down the counter with a rag. At one point in its history, Poppy’s could’ve been considered a ’50s-style diner, all spaceship sparkle. Its chrome will never shine that way again, but Margie always wipes it down as if it will.

“Anyways,” Margie picks up their conversation without missing a beat. “Just ask the guy out. You don’t have to—ugh—exchange fluids with him. Not yet, at least.”

“I dunno, man.” Jess’s turn to pour herself a cup. “It’s been so long I might not actually have a choice. It might just happen.”

“ ‘So long,’ ” Margie scoffs. “You’re young. Long for you is, what, a month?”

Jess quickly does the math. “Three and three-quarters.”

“Hmph. Come crying to me when it’s been six years.”

“Six y—?! Margie!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“We’ve gotta get you some action, like, tonight.” Jess begins looking around for an eligible candidate.

“The only action I want is for someone to pick up my bills for the month. I’m a fifty-eight-year-old single mother, sweetie. You wanna talk VDs? Having a kid is the only VD you’re expected to send to college.”

“Hey, I sent my HPV to college. Well, I guess technically, it came with me, but still …”

Margie smacks her with a menu again, and Jess grins. Jess likes getting a rise out of her. In fact, she likes everything about Margie. Of all the staff at Poppy’s, Margie’s the only one ever willing to riff with Jess. Sometimes Jess even entertains the idea of showing up at Margie’s house with some wine and/or weed so they can hang out, gasp, outside of work. She knows where Margie lives—a few weeks ago, Margie’s car had been in the shop, and Jess had driven her home a couple of nights in a row. Jess has never followed through on these plans, though. Something she can say about a lot of things in life.

Still. Margie’s good people.

More than that, this conversation is doing Jess a world of good. This companionship. This distraction. It’s allowing her to forget about the static that’s been buzzing inside her skull for the past several days.

Margie wouldn’t know this, but there’s a reason Jess has dads on the brain right now. Hers was just found dead a little over a week ago, and she still has no goddamn idea how to feel about it.

Fuckin’ dads ruin everything.

* * *

She doesn’t have all the details—which is fine by her—but it appears to have been a fittingly pathetic end to a pathetic existence.

He’d been dead for a few days before someone found him, out in Pennsylvania where he’d been living his spartan, isolated excuse for a life. No foul play; his body had simply given out after years of alcohol and neglect. He died alone, which was all he deserved.

There’d been a records check, a contacting of the next of kin, which had led to Jess and her mom being notified. Neither had any interest in claiming the body, so they left him in the custody of the Commonwealth. By now, he’s probably the finely packed contents of an urn in some potter’s field somewhere.

Simple. Fitting. No muss, no fuss. Adieu and good riddance, Tommy Bailey; we hardly knew ye (which was your fucking choice).

And yet, since hearing the news, something fundamental has changed for Jess. It’s like she’s been split into two separate entities.

There’s Outer Jess, living her life, cracking her jokes, unaffected by the death of the man who, for all intents and purposes after she reached the age of six, might as well have been an anonymous sperm donor.

And there’s Inner Jess, who’s busy seeing him everywhere. Who’s working overtime to force everything into the context of him.

I wonder if Dad liked this kind of cereal, too.

What kind of music was he listening to lately?

Did he put his socks on before or after his pants?

Did he ever think about me?

Inner Jess is fucking obsessed.

Every now and then, there’s an additional presence, too. Not quite a voice; it never speaks. A feeling. A bone-deep agony Jess remembers from when she was first told Dad was leaving. From those few, brief slurring phone calls he’d made before eventually giving up. She thinks of this presence as Little Jess. And Little Jess just hurts.

It’s all so infuriating. Honestly, after two and a half decades of absence, how dare he become so present in her life now? It’s gotten so bad she hasn’t even wanted to talk to her mother lately, something she’s done almost every day for as long as she can remember. She and her mom used to have no problem not talking about Tommy—not even thinking about him. Now Jess feels like he’d be there on the call with them.

She just wants things to feel normal again. To go back to having a dad who was a concept, a few tainted memories, something she could safely joke about. Not this nagging puzzle. Not this thing caught between her teeth.

Someone’s got her Daddy Shoes laced a little too tight, Inner Jess observes.

Outer Jess hides her grimace inside a cup of North Holly-wood’s finest coffee and scans the diner for some new distraction.

Moments later, she finds it.

* * *

“Ooh, hello,” Jess nudges Margie. “I think I found someone who can end your dry streak. Maynard over there—he your type?”

They both crane over the bar to get a better look at the ragged beanpole who’s just sat back down in Booth 15. No, sat is the wrong word. He’s come back from the bathroom, coughing, sweating, and has crumbled into his seat.

Jess has no idea if Maynard is the guy’s actual name. Speaking of Poppy’s regular cast of characters, every patron who looks one day shy of living the bindle life is named Maynard by the staff. “That’s just how it’s always been,” Margie explained back when Jess first started working here. They get a lot of Maynards on the midnight shift.

This particular Maynard looks terrible. He could be anywhere between thirty-five and ninety years old, draped in ill-fitting clothes the ashy color of neglect and hard luck. He’s shivering and damp, scratching at dark spots creeping up his neck. His skin is somehow both red and green: a Christmas ornament of nausea. A faint line of drying crud rings his lips.

The unasked question hovers over them: Drugs … or disease?

Jess drops her voice. “What do you think he just did to our bathroom?”

“Nothing good,” Margie mutters back. “Guess someone should check and see?”

Jess makes a whining noise. “Or—what if we don’t and this can be a Rhonda-and-Freddy problem?”

But no. Margie doesn’t even need to say that if Maynard left the bathroom a mess, they need to know ASAP. The next shift doesn’t start for well over an hour. Plus, Rhonda would never miss an opportunity to tell their boss that Jess and Margie failed to maintain even Poppy’s loose standards of hygiene and present-ability. Fucking Rhonda.

“Tell you what,” Margie says. “I can clean up the bathroom—”

“Bless you—”

“—if you ask Maynard to leave.”

A steely glare. “Margie, you know I hate doing stuff like that.”

“Take your pick.” Margie shrugs. “How about this? If you take care of the bathroom, I’ll help Maynard leave, and I’ll cover the rest of the shift so you can go home early.”

“Seriously?”

Margie nods. “It’s totally dead tonight. And my back and knees would appreciate not having to clean a toilet right now.”

Jess considers. She does have an audition later this afternoon. A commercial she desperately needs to book if she wants to live her fantasies of qualifying for health insurance and paying rent. Getting even thirty minutes more of sleep would be a blessing.

Plus, wasn’t she just looking for a distraction? If she stays here much longer, listening to the steady backbeat of dad, dad, dad in her head, she might get bored enough to tell Margie what’s going on. That might lead to her receiving sympathy for her loss—and that might make her actually snap.

“Ugh. You asshole. It’s a deal.”

3

JESS LOOKS AT the soupy-gray vomit sprayed in a fine patina across the toilet and thinks, Could be worse.

One time, a guy had finger-written on the wall in feces: A WIZZERD SHIT HERRE. The misspellings were almost as upsetting as their medium of expression. Almost.

That wound up being a two-person cleanup job, which could only be done in sixty-second bursts because of the smell.

Another time, someone wrote a few inches over the toilet paper holder in what she’d prayed was red Sharpie: NO ONE WILL BE SPARED WHEN

The unfinished thought sent literal chills through her body. She thought about it for weeks after cleaning it up. When what? Why hadn’t the tagger completed their sentence? Had they been sucked up by a UFO or something?

Considering how run-down Poppy’s often feels, though, cleaning the bathroom usually just means brushing the inside of the bowl after all that fine coffee gives some trucker a touch of the ol’ Jackson Pollock backdraft. Or wiping up piss from the seat, tank, and floor, since men apparently feel they have permission to set it on spray whenever they step into this room.

This sort of chunky, emetic display is a blessed rarity.

Blessed. Right. Like this job is a treat otherwise.

Breathing through her mouth so as to not smell the room and trigger a sympathetic response, she sets down her bucket and sponge and reaches for her phone to put on a podcast or some music while she cleans. Then she remembers her phone is still charging under the counter.

Curses.

She considers turning back and retrieving it, but the thought of going out, then coming back to face this reeking tableau afresh seems entirely too much. Plus, it’s probably wise to spare her phone from the whole biohazard-y vibe in here. If she had it with her, she’d feel compelled to soak it in Lysol for hours afterward.

“Let’s just do this fast,” she says with a groan, then starts singing tunelessly: “Make our own kinda music …”

Continuing her song, she maneuvers her hands into thin yellow plastic gloves that go halfway up her forearm, then flushes down what the guy managed to get inside the bowl. (She closes the lid first—something she does for every flush since reading an online article about bacterial spray.)

While she waits for Poppy’s languid water pressure to work its magic, she takes the bucket over to the sink and starts filling it.

Inner Jess pipes up.

I wonder if Tommy puked a lot before he died. Was he scared? Did he even know it was happening? Did he think about his daughter?

Little Jess stirs in her hiding spot.

Outer Jess hums louder.

Once the bucket is full, she turns back to the mess sprayed all over the toilet and gets to work.

* * *

Halfway through cleaning the bowl, Inner Jess says something that stops Outer Jess cold.

But why didn’t he want me?

It hits her like a fist to the throat. A simple question. Almost rhetorical, really. Certainly not a new idea or concept to her. Yet, for a moment, she can’t even breathe it’s so overwhelming. Tears sting the backs of her eyes, and she has to mentally shove them back into her skull.

“Whoa,” she says, voice choked with emotion. Legitimately surprised at the full-body response. “Okayyy. Let’s … let’s not go there right now.”

But Inner Jess knows a victory when she gets one. She ushers in a parade of related questions, letting them loose like a bunch of children sneaking under a circus tent. Why didn’t he want me? Why didn’t he stick around? Why didn’t he ever even call? Why was he so okay with cutting me out completely? What is it about me that not even my own father could love? It has to be my fault somehow, doesn’t it?

“Welp,” Jess replies with brittle cheer, “can’t really ask him, so, better just drop it!”

The tears surge back, harder. A sorrow she’s never tasted floods her mouth. She blots her eyes with the cleanest part of her forearms.

Why was it so easy to leave me?

“Because he fucking sucked,” she insists through clenched teeth, “that’s why. Why am I getting upset right now? Seriously!”

Anyone listening at the door might think she sounds nuts, snarling at herself in an otherwise silent room. She doesn’t care. Not too deep down, she understands this one stupid question is the most insidious articulation of everything she’s been wrestling with throughout this week of messy grieving.

But why didn’t he want me?

She traces the thought back to where it sprang from, hoping to maybe retroactively yank it out by the roots.

She’d been cleaning the toilet, thinking about Arnie, the improv boy. How he might laugh at seeing her this way. How, if she had her phone with her, she could send him a selfie saying, “Thinking of You,” while hugging the be-Maynarded bowl. Which made her think about Maynards. How her dad had no doubt been a Maynard, too. Which made her wonder if maybe she’d gotten this job because, subconsciously, she’d craved being around people like him. Serving people like him. Cleaning up after people like him. Which made her wonder—

“But this is how I know this is bullshit,” she says. “I know why I got this job.”

Once upon a time—namely, half a year ago—Jess used to work at much higher-end restaurants, until a certain general manager of a certain $$$$-restaurant in Venice cupped her tit one night after closing. She’d been in a particularly rotten mood when it happened, so she’d rejected his advances, rather bluntly, and quit. Next thing she knew, though, she was blackballed across every $$$$-, $$$-, and even $$-restaurant she applied to, and cursing herself for reacting with such uncharacteristic fury.

She has no office or retail skills whatsoever, so she wound up applying to Poppy’s out of a mix of desperation and irony, thinking it’d be kinda funny to work at a place she’d never patronize, and as so often happens in one’s late twenties and early thirties, the irony quickly calcified into habit. Importantly, though, no one she knows would ever patronize this place, so she never has to worry about anyone seeing her here. Plus, the graveyard-shift hours allow her to still take auditions, rare though they are nowadays. All perfectly legitimate reasons for her to be working at this shitty diner, none of which had anything to do with her stupid, absent dad.

“See?” she snaps at the voices in her head. “Case closed. Just stop.” She gets back to the bowl, singing that damned “Make Your Own Kind of Music” song again at a low, determined volume. The angriest anyone has sounded, channeling Mama Cass.

But her heart is pounding. Little Jess is wide awake, too. Awake and aching.

Why didn’t my dad love me? What is it about me? Why couldn’t I make him care?

A question she could ask regarding her acting career, too.

For a while, it’d seemed like it was about to take off. A couple years ago, she’d filmed a principal supporting role in a comedy pilot for a major streamer that was perfect for her and earned all those deliciously jealous coos from her peers. But the pilot never got picked up, and the auditions just … slowed to a halt. Pandemics and strikes didn’t help either. Her Big Break remained stubbornly in one piece.

Except other people seem to be getting work again. Why wasn’t she? Had she done something wrong? Why had it all just suddenly stopped? She’d begged her agent for more insight, and all he had to offer was, These things happen, Jess. We just gotta keep at it. Then he added, I hate to say it, but … it doesn’t help that you’re not a Jennifer Lawrence, and you’re not a Melissa McCarthy. Maybe try losing twenty or gaining fifty, you know?

She’d swallowed that with a smile. Understood. Totally. Always eager to please, eager to avoid conflict. Eager to be seen as game—especially by a man in power (incident with Handsy von Manager being the exception that proved the rule). Because, otherwise, why would they want her? Why would anyone?

“Shut up!” She sits back on her haunches. Smacks her head with the insides of her forearms. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” If the bullshit self-analysis doesn’t stop, she’s going to drown herself in the toilet just for a little peace and quiet. Fucking grief. Fucking stupid, unpredictable, illogical, unhelpful grief.

“I’m never doing anything without a podcast to listen to, ever again, that’s for goddamn sure.”

Inner Jess changes tactics.

I think we all know the reason why no one wants you.

“Wonderful.” If she could, if her hands weren’t clad in puke-drenched gloves, she’d rub her temples in frustration.

It’s because you’re just like him.

“Okay. Sure.”

He was a coward. He was afraid of everything.

“And that’s me, too, right? That’s where we’re going with this?”

He had his booze and his isolation. You have your jokes and all your excuses. What a cliché. Put on your Daddy Shoes and dance the night away.

And isn’t that true? Isn’t she an absolute coward? Isn’t that why she’s really in this bathroom? Hadn’t Jess intended to take action against that handsy restaurant manager? Find some other women he groped and demand accountability? Become a crusader? Demand justice? And for all her jokes about VD, isn’t she also desperate for some romantic companionship, too?

Inner Jess conjures Margie’s voice from earlier:

“Oh my god, Jess, what are you so afraid of?”

With that, Outer Jess snaps.

“FUCK. THIS.” Furious, manic, she gets back to scrubbing the toilet. Ready to be done with this fucking task and conversation. “I’m nothing like him. This is just oversimplified pop therapy bullshit. Too much Instagram, bitch. I am a good person. And I’m just going through a rough patch. And I’m sad my shitty dad died, and that’s it. We don’t need to turn this into some big fucking thing, okay? Okay?!”

No response. But now Outer Jess is on a roll. She adjusts herself so she can start scrubbing the rest of the toilet, barely even paying attention to what she’s doing.

“I don’t need this shit. Things are hard enough right now. I didn’t ask for him to die. I didn’t ask for him to leave. I wasn’t the one who cut him out. I deserved a dad. And I deserve success. And I shouldn’t be working this shitty job! Cleaning drifter puke for shit money? Life is too short. I’m thirty-one goddamn years old. Working at a place like this was never supposed to be part of the plan!”

In that moment, clarity overtakes her.

“So I quit!” she tells the bathroom. “Okay? I fucking quit. Tomorrow’s my last day here. I deserve something better. I fucking quit.”

Do you really mean it? Inner Jess asks. Hopeful. Doubtful.

“Oh, I mean it,” Outer Jess says. “And I’m gonna fire my shitty agents. Find new reps who actually believe in me. I’m fucking talented and wonderful, and this dry spell is going to end because I’m going to make it end.”

The resolutions continue, faster than she can even speak them. She’s going to swallow her embarrassment at still needing a survival job and ask her friends for advice, for connections.

She’s going to fucking ruin that gropey, blackballing restaurant manager.

And later today, she’s going to ace that audition. Then maybe she’ll call Arnie up and ask him if he wants to collaborate with her on something. A web series. A TikTok channel. Something productive. Then they can move on to something more reproductive. Ha. Gross. She hates kids. But, hey, who knows? Arnie has kissable lips and a scruffy beard and really nice shoulders she deserves to hang off. Life can change in an instant. Especially with a little force. Especially if you’re not afraid.

A grim but genuine smile crosses her face as she reaches around to finish behind the base of the toilet. A more thorough cleaning job than she needs to be doing, but fuck it, she’ll go the extra mile this one last time. This little meltdown in the bathroom has been a good thing. A galvanizing thing. That moment near the end of the story where our plucky heroine finally realizes what she needs and can start living her goddamn l—

Something bites her finger, hard. Her smile disappears into a gasp.

She yanks her hand from behind the toilet and scoots away on her butt. What the fuck?!

Her first thought is she cut herself on something structural. But whatever got her felt too thin, too bendy, to be part of the toilet.

A snake? She stares at the dark spot between the wall and the porcelain, waiting to see if something fanged and venomous uncoils from the shadows.

When nothing does, for a moment, she wonders if she imagined it. Then she sees a bead of red blood emerge from a tiny hole in her yellow-clad index finger. She strips the glove off. There’s a tiny puncture wound in her skin. Another jewel of blood seeps out.

Slowly, she reaches behind the toilet with her other, still-gloved hand and feels for the thing that bit her.

She knows what she’s going to find even before her fingers wrap around it. Because she’s thinking of how Maynard looked. How sick.

She pulls it out into the light.

Not a snake.

A syringe.

A dirty, obviously used syringe.

“Huh,” Outer Jess says. “Shit.”

Welp, Inner Jess replies. You wanted something new to think about.

4

THE WORLD GETS loud. Every molecule in the air, grinding and roaring inside her skull. She can’t think from all the clamor.

Emergency walls slam into place. That helps muffle the noise.

Jess watches herself move quickly and decisively—no longer Inner or Outer Jess but some strange, robotic hybrid. Action Jess. Imperative Jess. Definitely Not Going to Panic Jess.

She rips off a chunk of sponge, sticks it on the needle-tip, then wraps the syringe in a thick wad of toilet paper and throws it in the trash. Hopefully that’ll keep anyone else from getting stuck.

Yes. Good. Keep moving.

She strips off her remaining glove. Trashes both, too. Washes her hands. Washes her hands again. Forces the wound to bleed. Washes her hands again. And again. Once it seems like she’s out of blood, she dries her hands and wraps her finger in toilet paper. Avoiding any eye contact with the mirror the whole time.

Ignoring the scratching at the walls.

(theFUH)

Next: leave the bathroom. Grab coat and bag. Say goodbye to Margie. Margie asks a question in some language Jess no longer speaks. Doesn’t matter.

Maynard’s gone, too. Doesn’t matter.

(uhtheFUH)

Now Jess is in her car. Traffic is light, and that’s good because the scratching at the walls is getting louder.

Hospital.

Need to get to a hospital.

When she got on the road, she automatically pointed herself toward home—that’s okay, there’s a hospital not too far from her apartment in Van Nuys. Don’t know the exact address, but that’s also okay. It’s all okay. Just look it up and—

“I left my phone at the diner,” she says in a monotone. “Fuck.” She can see it, still charging under the counter.

All okay. Turn around, get the phone from Poppy’s, then go to the hospital. Or don’t, there are signs to follow, don’t even need the addr—

“What am I doing?”

She pulls off the highway. Not heading to the hospital and not heading to Poppy’s. Taking the exit for her apartment.

Fingers digging into the mortar, pulling out entire bricks.

(uhtheFUCK)

(uhTHEFUCK)

“I just gotta … ”

Pulling into her apartment complex’s parking lot.

(uhTHEFUCK)

“I just gotta … ”

Fumbling with the keys to open her front door.

(whuhTHEFUCK)

Bricks crumbling all around her now.

Finally, she gets herself inside and sags against her front door. She has to scream, let it all out—

(WHATTHEFUCK?!)

—but she can’t. Not out loud, at least. It would feel incredible to do so—necessary, even, like vomiting up poison—but her roommate, Kelsey, works during the day and is currently asleep, so Jess has to settle for a silent exhale of words.

WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCKING FUCK DO I DO NOW?!

* * *

She does this a few times, wheezing silent curses, and starts to feel better. Well, not better. Present.

That rushing, grinding cacophony is gone. The world sounds normal again. No more need for protective barriers.

She staggers away from the door. The apartment is dark, so she turns on a rickety floor lamp, her injured finger sticking out like the inverse of a teatime pinkie.

She’s still a little disoriented. Confused, almost, to be home.

The events of the past half hour or so come back to her like memories of an in-flight movie watched during a red-eye.

This isn’t the first time she’s had this sort of response.

When she got groped by that restaurant manager, she hocked a righteous wad of spit in the guy’s face and stormed out … but didn’t really realize what she’d done until about forty minutes later, after she’d gotten home.

Another time, when she was nine, she found a stray cat while riding her bike around her neighborhood in Tempe. She picked it up to give it some cuddles, and the cat latched its teeth into the side of Jess’s neck. After it sped away, Jess calmly checked her neck for blood, then calmly got back on her bike, and calmly pedaled home. It wasn’t until she got inside and saw her mom at the kitchen sink that she switched into Breakdown Mode.

An acting teacher in college once pointed out that “fight or flight” is a myth; there are way more trauma responses than that. “I’m a Flight with Freeze and Fawn rising,” Jess had cracked. Everyone had laughed at her quick wit.

She starts to shiver.

“Shock,” she says. “Just a little shock. That’s all. I’m okay. Shock-a-doodle-doo. Boom-shock-alocka.”

She grabs Kelsey’s Mexican blanket off the couch and wraps it over her shoulders. It helps.

So stupid, coming home like this … but it also feels safe. Calm. Quiet.

“I’ve gotta get to a hospital, though. ASAP.”

Then she remembers her phone. “Right. Drive back to the diner, get my phone, then get to the hospital.”

Right.

And then what?

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t have insurance at the moment; is this visit going to deplete her meager bank account? Does it depend on what kind of horrible, lifelong disease she might’ve just given herself?

“I should look up what I’m in for. What I should be doing.”

Don’t wanna know, Inner Jess starts moaning. Don’t wanna know, don’t wanna know.

“Oh, now she wants to leave things alone.”

Her laptop sits on the table that takes up the bulk of the two-bedroom’s dining area. She flips it open, only to discover a black screen. The charging cable lies in luxurious repose on the floor. Kelsey must have unplugged Jess’s laptop to charge her own computer, then forgotten to plug Jess’s back in. Thanks, Kelsey. A-plus roommate-ing.

“Charge the computer, then look up what I’m in for, then go get my phone, then get to the hospital.”

Jess connects the charger. It’ll take a minute or two for enough juice to boot it up, so she grabs a beer from the fridge. Drinks the whole thing down without taking a breath. It helps so much she opens another.

The apartment’s best feature is a sliding glass door that leads out to a patio area. They’re on the ground floor, and there’s a large, communal backyard to which they and the other six or seven ground-floor apartments have access.

The door slides open with a pleasant shhhh, and Jess steps out into the night.

A beautiful October Los Angeles night. Dawn still a few hours away. Chilly enough for a jacket, but not unpleasant without one. No Halloween decorations out yet, but the promise of fall crispness in the air. All is silent.

“Everything’s gonna be okay,” she tells herself. “This happens all the time, I bet.”

In fact, the likeliest scenario is that Maynard was in withdrawal and he shot something up to level out. That’s all. Still awful, but not deadly. Jess probably just gave herself a light dose of methadone or something. Maybe that’s why she feels so weird. The odds that he had some communicable, blood-borne disease have gotta be slim. And, hell, even if he did, there are cures for pretty much all the worst stuff these days … right?

What are you so afraid of, Jess?

Sickness. Infection. Hepatitis. AIDS is still a thing, can’t forget AIDS—

Her computer should be ready now. Then the phone. Then the hospital.

One last, deep sip of beer, enjoying this final moment of ignoance. As she turns to head back inside, she hears a strange rustling noise.

The backyard is long and narrow. Made for socializing, with its communal grill, picnic table, and ample standing room. It’s not entirely walled off; a long concrete wall running parallel to the side of the building serves as its main perimeter. The two shorter sides are open, one leading to the complex’s parking lot and the other out into the wilds of Los Angeles.

The rustling is coming from that side.

Not just rustling. Whimpering, too.

She stands there, listening. She needs to go inside, to begin the dreadful business of taking care of herself. Not to get distracted by the easy pull of taking care of something else first. But the noises are too strange to ignore. What if it’s someone’s pet?

Another whimper. This one sounds almost … human?

“Okay. Fine,” she groans. Investigate the noise, then check the computer, then get the phone, then …

She walks over to the bushes. Not too close. Just in case.

“Hello?” she calls to the foliage. “Is—”

A bird explodes out of the leaves, cawing in outrage. Jess flinches into a crouch. “The hell—?!”

She’s never seen a bird like it before. Its head is huge and knobby. Its feathers are bright yellow and … blue? Is she seeing that right, in the white glare of the backyard floodlights?

It flies around her head and then careens back into the bushes, apparently on the attack. The bushes rustle with movement.

Another whimper comes from the foliage. Words. Pleading. “Stop! Leemee ’lone!”

Definitely human.

“Hello?” Jess asks again. “Do you need help?”

Another whimper. This time, in the affirmative.

The bush rustles, and a small shape hurriedly crawls out from under it.

“Oh my god,” Jess gasps.

It’s a little kid.

Two huge, yellow, bigheaded birds follow the kid, pecking and cawing. The kid bats at them in a distinctly little-kid way, begging them to stop.

Jess rushes forward, whipping at the birds with the blanket from her shoulders. They squawk at her, and for a second, Jess thinks she sees what looks like human teeth in their clown-orange beaks. Then, thankfully, they disappear back into the bushes.

She turns her attention to the kid, standing there, not sure what to do. A boy, looks like. Small. Probably only five or six years old. Hair buzzed in a short, almost military crop. Dressed in pajamas and holding what looks like an old book. He looks like shit. Filthy. Bruised. Scraped by bushes and thorns. His legs wobble, but he also looks ready to bolt. And his eyes—which are an arresting, almost electric-ice blue—are wary.

“Are you okay—?”

The kid recoils a little at her outstretched arms.

“Hey, shhh, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. You’re okay. Everything’s okay.”

Tonight’s magic word.

An uneasy standoff. She breaks it the best way she knows how.

“You want some pizza?”

* * *

Not good, she knows. The need to get to the hospital is making her heart hammer and her stomach float. But the kid is so small, so clearly in need of help; she can’t just ignore him.

She wishes they had a landline or something. If only it were the 1900s.

She sets him up at the table (next to her now-ready-and-waiting computer), and while he wolfs down day-old leftover slices from LaRocca’s, she wipes him off with a wet dish towel. He’s too distracted by the food to mind.

“So, um. I’m Jess,” she says. “What’s your name?”

He doesn’t answer. He looks shell-shocked.

But from what?

“Is that your book?” she asks. “Can I see?”

He squeezes the old, thin book he’s carrying closer to his chest.

“Okay. Never mind.”

Midway through his third slice, he lets out a tremendous yawn. His head suddenly sags toward the table, ready to collide with the plate, before snapping back up.

“Whoa,” she says, rushing to his aid. “Okay. Let’s get you somewhere a little more comfortable. It’s okay, the pizza will still be here.”

He’s so tired it’s like he’s been drugged. She can only guess how long he’s been without food, how much energy he’s spent escaping whatever he’s escaping. He smells only a little ripe—maybe he’s been on the run for a day or two at most? Within minutes, he’s asleep on her couch, tucked under Kelsey’s blanket.

Only then does he relinquish his book. A Children’s Garden of Fairy Stories. The art and coloring look like they date back to the ’60s or ’70s, all muted earth tones and bulbous faces with beady eyes. Illustrators were straight up unhinged back then.

Jess quickly flips through familiar images of stories she’s seen depicted a million times in other books. A princess on a stack of mattresses. Another princess in a tower. A thoroughly creepy Big Bad Wolf. Jarringly racist stereotypes for a few of the more “exotic” stories.

Other than the thin line of brown crud along one edge she really hopes isn’t dried blood, there’s nothing interesting about the book. At least the kid’ll have something to read when she has to take him to the hospital with her. It’s either that or Jess can try to steal her sleeping roommate’s phone to call the authorities.

She decides to let the kid keep resting for now. She has other business to attend to first. Her plan. This new costar doesn’t change the overall plot.

She finishes her beer, then drops the kid’s book onto the kitchen counter before grabbing one more bottle from the fridge. She knows her limits. She’s just gonna take a few baby sips from this one to keep any pesky thought spirals at bay.

Next, she heads over to the table, opens her computer, and tries to prepare for the worst.

That way, at least, there’s no way tonight can surprise her any further.

5

AFEW MINUTES LATER and panic is scratching at her defenses again. Jess pauses, beer halfway to her lips, realizing her few baby sips have turned into half the bottle.

She gets up and pours the rest down the sink.

Two tabs are open on her laptop’s browser. The first displays results for the search “What to do if find missing kid.” The information is scattershot. Advice on how to talk to a lost kid, what numbers to call—many of which are region-specific and not always in Los Angeles. Nothing hugely helpful yet.

The second tab displays results for “What to do if stuck with dirty needle.” She can barely even skim these results, they make her so skittish. Even so, they’re mostly what she expected: force the wound to bleed, don’t suck at it, get to a hospital or clinic ASAP, certain viruses like HIV are best treated within seventy-two hours of exposure.

While she’s at the sink, she scrubs her finger again. Tries to squeeze more out of the little puncture hole. Nothing comes out. Which means the only thing left to do now is …

Jess tucks the hand towel back into place across the refrigerator handle and stands there, listening to the open-mouth sounds of the boy sleeping on her couch.

She’s just starting to think of the best way to wake him up, when she hears something else. Voices outside. Excited voices.

“Now what?” she whisper-groans.

After she’d gotten the boy to follow her into her apartment, he wouldn’t stop throwing nervous glances toward the glass door, so she’d pulled the curtains to give him a sense of security. She peeks through the curtains now, cupping her eyes and getting close to the glass.

Two of her neighbors are out in the back area—Carl, from three doors down, and his girlfriend / common-law wife, Amber. Plus, a third figure. All engaged in some sort of argument. And it looks heated.

What makes Jess decide to slip outside and investigate is this third person’s haircut. Close-cropped, like the boy’s. A tenuous connection, but maybe something?

It’s not until she gets a little closer and sees that the guy is totally naked that she realizes maybe this is something she might not want to insert herself into.

Carl has always been a bit of a mystery to the other residents in this complex. He stands six foot five, not counting the additional inches from his massive mop of dark, curly hair. He’s built like a linebacker—muscular but undefined—but he’s never seen exercising and he smokes like a chimney. He says he’s an amateur surfer, but no one’s ever seen him in a wetsuit or with a board strapped to his Ford Maverick pickup. That same truck has two decal stickers on the cab’s back window: a Grateful Dead bear on one side and on the other, one of those Punisher skulls with a Blue Lives Matter flag. He’s like a pothead and a frat bro melded together, Cronenberg-Fly-style. He’s got a faint, unplaceable accent, too. Something vaguely German or Eastern European, which makes Jess wonder if he’s really Karl, not Carl.

He’s one of the most inscrutable guys she’s ever met—in other words, so quintessentially LA.

Because of this, Jess doesn’t think it’s beyond belief that the argument she’s walking up on might be the result of some sort of sex thing gone wrong. However, before she can retreat, Carl sees her coming and says:

“Wendy! Didn’t mean to wake you!” He always calls her Wendy; she’s given up on correcting him. Took her ages to realize where the name came from. Her apartment is 1D. Wen. Dee.

Amber is still yelling at the naked dude. She even pushes him backward. Amber weighs about as much as a bag of Fritos, so the guy doesn’t move far. He holds his hands up in a pacifying gesture, and he’s speaking at her in low, measured tones. Jess can’t hear what he’s saying, but he appears to be trying to calm her down. As if he weren’t standing there with his (thankfully flaccid) dick out a few inches away.

Carl looks at Jess and explains, “I keep hearing weird noises, like bird noises, right? So I finally come out to look and also have a smoke, and that’s when this cowboy strolls up.”

“Total buck-ass pervert, creeping around the bushes!” Amber adds, keeping her focus on the naked stranger. “Get lost!”

“Please,” the guy begins, raising his voice a little in frustration. “I told you, I’m looking for—”

“OH, WE KNOW WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR!” Amber shouts.

“We’re taking care of it, Wendy—he’s going to be history,” Carl continues. “You got the cops ready, babe?”

Amber holds up her cell phone. “Just gotta press Send!”

“For the last time,” the stranger says, “I’m warning you. Don’t.” He sounds harried but firm, the way one might sound trying to discipline a particularly annoying child. Despite his nakedness, he bears himself with a rigidity that’s surprisingly intimidating.

Military? Jess thinks. Or maybe a cyborg from the future?

She doesn’t remember Terminators having tattoos, though. This guy has several, as well as a pretty hefty bandage wrapped around his right forearm.

Amber takes the guy’s “Don’t” as an invitation to start yapping like an angry terrier. She bounces back and forth in front of him, invoking all the places he can stick his “Don’t.”

Deciding Carl and Amber are useless, the man turns his attentions to Jess. “Ma’am, I’m sorry. Have you—” He takes a step forward, but Carl quickly wraps his arms around the guy’s upper chest.

“I gotcha, Wendy!” Carl grunts in the scuffle. “Amber, call the cavalry!”

Amber is straight up screaming now. “Get him, baby! It’s ringing, baby!”

Other neighbors are looking out their windows or coming onto their porches and balconies. What a sight they must be seeing: one of their more eccentric neighbors having a midnight wrestling match with a buff naked dude in the harsh light of the backyard.

Jess, for her part, is backing away. She wants nothing to do with this. Tonight has been too much. Way too much. Jesus Christ, this night.