Andrew reaches across the vehicle to open his glovebox almost as soon as the driver side door shuts behind him.
He pulls the tab and his arm retracts. Waiting for the jaw of the compartment to finish dropping.

The long fingers on his left hand scratch across his mouth to stop on the side of his face. Tip of the middle finger in his mouth, teeth grinding the bed of the nail into his skin, causing discomfort.
He doesn't stop. There's no inclination.

Index finger resting on his upper lip. Ring finger on his chin – little finger dangling loosely.
He's almost forgotten about the open glove compartment. Almost.

His eyes darting from the pack of cigarettes to the steering wheel – as if there was anything else he wanted to look at.
A light sprinkle feeds itself to a heavy rain rather quickly. Heavy drops pelting against the windshield as if to speak to him.

Blinking and shaking his head, he grabs the pack of cigarettes along with the lighter and fishes one out with his free hand.
He tosses the pack back into the chasm and doesn't bother to check where it lands. Stuffing the filter into the corner of his mouth, he inhales.

Tossing the lighter into the chasm and slamming it shut with his right hand, he removes the lit cigarette from his mouth with an undeserved fluidity. The end of his cigarette smashes against the driver's side window and embers rain down on his wrist, singeing the fur.
Cursing ash to himself, he uses his right hand to reach around him and crank the window down just enough to open up the world.

A ball of resonated tobacco clings to a dying ember as it leaps from the cigarette out into the rainy streets.
It dies quickly in the rain, on the way down. Whatever is left of it fades into the pools of precipitation on the asphalt beneath the car.

Andrew curses once again, and the glow from his lighter once again lights up the cab. He doesn't even notice the shadow approaching him from his left.
Distorted by the raindrops and the blaring city lights.

Tire iron in its left hand. As it approaches the driver's side door, the arm raises.

The light goes out and the lighter is once again discarded. Eyes closed as he draws in another chest full of smoke and lets it out of the crack through the window.
When his eyes open, the glass from the window to his left is shattering, splashing into them.

Instinctively closing his eyes, shards slicing through the thin membrane that dresses the windows to his soul.
Tearing away at the inside of his eyelids.

Something connects with the side of his skull. Blunt instrument tearing through the fragile flesh. Shrapnel embedding itself awkwardly into his brain.

There aren't thoughts to express this disruption. Just a twitching hand, dropping the lit cigarette into his lap as his head follows the momentum of the metal object.
While he is unresponsive, the shadow's hand reaches into the vehicle to open the door from the inside.

His eyes wide open. Aware. Bleeding.
As he is dragged from the safety and sanctuary of the car out into the cold wet streets, his vision blurs under the overhead lights.
Trying to speak, trying to reach out to the silhouette above him. The words lost to the unsettling and abrupt disfiguration of what's left of his skull don't make it far through the overwhelming hiss of rain splashing every available surface.

Pockets turned out, keys jingling above him.
The engine turns over. A door slams above him.

Headlights flickering on. The vehicle speeds through a red light on the empty streets.


wolfen
a story by cornwallace
chapter one: ambiance


Static trailing scanlines.
The tape plays on old machinery.

Andrew lights a cigarette before realizing what he's doing. He looks at someone off camera.

"Can I smoke in here?"

"Whatever makes you comfortable," a disembodied voice says.

"Where do I ash…?"

"The table is fine."

Nervously, the ape looks up at someone we can't see. He looks down at the table in front of him before looking back up at the voice. He reaches out, hand trembling, and he taps the end of his cigarette over the flat surface.
Grey particles dance their way down to a scattered pile in front of him.

"So," Andrew says, rolling the filter between the joints of his middle and index finger of his right hand. The nail of the other index finger digging into the bed of his thumbnail. "What did you want to talk about?"

"Why do you want to join us?"

Andrew rolls his eyes at the question. He repeats it as if it didn't need to be asked. "Why do I want to join you?"

No response.

Andrew takes another drag off his cigarette, thinking about it. His demeanor changes abruptly and with little regard to whether or not anyone catches onto the act. A cheesy grin stretching across his face. A rhythm to his delivery that dismissed what he was saying as he was saying it.
"I guess you could say I like money." He winks and resumes his smile as if it had been untouched. "Almost as much as you'll like paying me."

Looking away from the disembodied voice, he looks right at the camera. Pointing and clicking his tongue as he hammers his thumb down.
Pretending to shoot you.


The song on the radio blaring in the car.
Wolf hasn't even thought to change it.
Noise drowns out everything else, at least mostly. When he closes his eyes Andrew is sitting in the passenger seat next to him, offering him a cigarette.

Wolf tries not to blink. He tries not to do much of anything besides paying attention to the road.

He signals his way into the turning lane. He takes a left.
His headlights trailing off into the rain like watercolors. Slamming on the brakes at a red light. A fire dances in the back of his eyes as he examines his perimeters.

Eyelids flickering over his field of vision. He's tired, but he's got a job to do.
Muscles in his hand flexing and releasing around the steering wheel. Anything he can do to keep himself awake, applied, involved. Blinking fast, and still the streetlights change when he isn't looking.

That is to say, the world is different when he opens his eyes again.


There are two kinds of folks that live on Sargasso. People that have no other choice, and people trying to escape from something. It doesn't matter which category you fall into, the atmosphere is thick with oppression, regardless whether or not it lends itself to a decision you made.

Sargasso is a city with no sky. The very air you breathe is recycled artificially. Walking down the street and looking up, it's just the empty flickering building lights putting up a protective barrier of ambiance against the void, the protective shell of pretend atmosphere around this absolute dump.

If there was a light bright enough to shine on the ceiling of Sargasso, you wouldn't want it to.

Pigma secretly gets a rush when the lights flicker inside his diner because he knows it makes you feel like everything is collapsing around you – and there's nothing you can do about it.
He also loves ordering a giant pile of bacon during a meeting – just to let them all know how much he relishes in eating his own kind.

There won't be any misunderstandings here. The atmosphere alone does enough to set the stage.
But nothing turned Pigma on like the already nervous eyes in the seat across from him widening when they saw a big plate of pig meat set out between them and watching the monster go to town.

More invested in digesting the flesh of his own kind than in what they had to talk to him about.

The stuttering, the palpable desperation in the air far more delicious than the food he sucked down with reckless abandon before them.
It's what makes the angels sing. It's what makes the light shine the brightest, for him, in this old, decrepit, and oppressive diner.

Regardless what you know about Pigma, when you see him licking bacon grease off his bottom lip, and the lower end of his snout, you know you're fucked.
And he knows you know that. And he loves it, knowing when you know that, and knowing you have no other options.

During his downtime, he drinks coffee and stares out the front set of windows at his pride and joy. A 9491 Slellabont. The car that opened his soul to the road.
His back to the wall. Kitchen on the other side of the bar. You couldn't approach him in this place without his ability to observe you coming.

The possibility of you figuring that out on your way in, however, was far more important to him than the safety he feels doing it.
Pigma is not worried about his safety. As far as he's concerned, he'll live forever. What he's more interested in is the kind of atmosphere you can cut through with a knife – and his 9491 Slellabont.
He sips his coffee, watching it. Waiting on the next sucker.

There's a phone ringing to his left. Drowned out by the thunder of his own power as he stares out through the windows at his beautiful car.
He quit drinking, subconsciously, for just a taste of clarity on such a feeling.

The echoed "hello" of the voice of whatever slosh the coward that owned this place had hired to pretend to run it today swimming just past his area of understanding.
On the table in front of him, his pager has been buzzing for an hour or more. It continues to do so.

Lost in himself in the least reflective way imaginable, he fantasizes about all the ways he could be worse. Or better, depending on whether you were asking someone else, or him.

When he realizes the slosh is talking to him, trying to get his attention, he gets angry.

"What the fuck do you want?" He doesn't quite snap at the poor boy, but every word is thick with insufferable indigence.
"fuh-Phone for you, sir!" the slosh replies, desperate to stop paddling the boat, to stop making waves of any sort.

Pigma sighs and gets up, taking the receiver and cradling it with his shoulder and face, as he picks the corded anchor of the phone up by the back and sets it closer to him.
Turning his back to the slosh. The useless cover, the weak fodder of his very basic and very preliminary construction of a front.

Drawing in a breath and almost breathing his words as he gets immediately tired of speaking to someone who isn't there to contribute to his mounting ego.

"Pigma here. What."

"Unfortunately I have to be the one to inform you, Pigma," Panther says in a whispered hiss into Pigma's ear. "Andrew has been found dead outside my club."

"The fuck do I care? Some disaster I been using since his unfortunate decision to become a mercenary that was entirely dependent on his dumbass uncle being a famous piece of murder floating through space?"

"I thought you might care because I know he was on his way to see you, bearing some unfortunate news."

"No shit?" Pigma snorts. The smothered car horn growing behind his words. "What kind of bad news could a worthless little shitstain like that be coming to give me?"

While the faded glow wraps itself around the corners of the buildings across the street, you can hear Pigma screaming into the phone before slamming down the receiver hard enough to break it into several pieces from outside the diner.
And yet, while he does that, his attention is off of his 9491 Slellbont. Just long enough for a flaming car with its horn set to continuous to slam into it.

The plastic shrapnel floats in the air, some of it hitting him, some of it blasting through his field of vision at at least a quarter of the speed it normally would.
As the flaming car smashes into his baby. As the aflame vehicle demolishes his driver's side door into an inoperable state.

The fingers on his left hand quiver, and not because they're bleeding. Even though they are.
Quaking, dripping blood onto the counter and the linoleum floor below.

Fire spreading. From one vehicle to another.

Pigma begins to walk, taking power from the insurmountable anger building up within his chest. Pulling the revolver out from the back of his pants as he pushes the front door open with authority.
Falling to the ground completely lifeless after the crack echoes through the streets, signifying what you might imagine as a boot crushing an ant.

There's a corpse next to two burning cars and an empty diner. The ambulance takes its time with this one.