The Hunter In Me

8 - Thunk

Owen got to the front door and stood gawking at the world beyond the house.

Soon, the silence was more than I could take. "Is something wrong?"

"Everything's fine." Owen stepped onto the wooden boards of the porch and froze. "It's sort of overwhelming."

"You mean the whole sharing a body thing?"

"No," he said, his voice wistful. "Well, yeah, but it's not only that. It's touching things and being outside."

"You did touch stuff. I saw you move things like anyone else. You sat in chairs and dug through your desk."

"Moving things and being able to feel them aren't the same. It was like... energy passing from me to whatever I was moving. I held this knife, but I couldn't feel the indentations left by my dad's fingers from the hours spent practicing and using it."

Owen ran my thumb over the handle before striding into the tall grass. Stopping, he picked up a few pine needles and brought them to my nose. With a loud sniff, he closed my eyes, and tilted my face to the sun. "I missed this. The warmth on my skin, the smells of summer. This is the first time I've been outside since the day my spirit was pulled here."

"Then how did this furniture get out here?"

Owen squeezed the back of my neck and focused on the ground. "I was angry. We planned this, and I wanted to be the one to stay if we didn't finish them, but I was still pissed." He scuffed the red dirt with my boot. "It took me a while to figure out how to lift things. When I did, I threw some stuff. I couldn't wreck our house, but throwing furniture and watching it bust was satisfying. When the door kept the couch from fitting, I took it downstairs. I spent too much time making that thing, to just let it ruin out there."

He continued to dig the toe of my boot into the ground, apparently embarrassed by his behavior, and I tried to process everything he'd said. "You made the door?"

"Actually, I bought it, but I did the carvings. Mom liked that kind of stuff, so I did it for her."

"Wow. That's pretty cool."

He didn't respond, but he lifted our gaze, and I looked at the furniture and how far some of it landed from the house. "You pitched a freaking refrigerator across the yard?" I knew I sounded too impressed, but I couldn't help it.

"I told you it was more of an energy transfer. Anger holds a lot of power. I probably couldn't have thrown the fridge that far before."

"Probably couldn't? Nobody could throw one, let alone that distance."

"I never tried, but like you said, I was a beast." Owen grinned and stepped toward the trees, but stopped short when he spotted my truck. "That's yours?"

"Yep."

"Bitchin," he whispered before pacing over to trace my fingertips across the hood on his way to the driver's side window. Cupping my hands on the glass he peeked inside. "They haven't changed."

"No, this is a 73'. The new ones are different. I just like the older body style, and having a truck I can work on myself without a bunch of computerized stuff."

"Trucks have computers in them?" My shoulders drooped, and I realized it disappointed him that even trucks had changed.

"Some things are computerized in newer vehicles, but this is probably pretty close to what you remember."

He leaned away and ran my knuckle over the concave trim line that spanned the length of the truck. "This bumped out on the 68' model." Pointing toward the bed, he said, "They moved the gas tank back too."