A genderqueer hillbilly and a haunted woman must break a generational curse that has entwined their lives in the abandoned coal-stripped mountains of the Pennsylvania Wilds.
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Desperate to flee a dark past, Finley drives off a cliff and prays to...
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02. || shiver.
This wasn't the first time Finley had stared down the barrel of a gun, been told not to move. But the first time, she'd been foolish enough to listen. To not move. To not run. Still wound up taking a bullet to the foot, ensuring that she could indeed not run for the next couple weeks, and by then she'd missed her chance.
She'd sworn to herself she'd be smarter; that she'd hightail it head over haunches next time, 'cause there'd always be a next time, but this time, those damn woods had other plans for her.
As she turned to run, she tripped over the knotted tree roots, and a shot cracked through the forest, splintering against the gnarled trunk she fell in front of. Her chest heaved for breaths as the spoiled flesh of some unseen carcass filled her nose. Its rank odor burrowed through her, putrid like the black tissue that had rotted and cracked away from her pus-filled foot all those months before.
Her fingertips dug into her temples to purge the smell from her mind. She was sure that's where it was coming from. She needed to get up. Move! Her head shouted through the static buzz left from the gunshot. But the smell, whatever the hell it actually was, held her down. Her feet were more useless now than they'd been all numb and shot to shit before. Over the ringing in her ears, a low voice hummed through.
"You still in one piece?"
Like an unspoken command, the weight of the smell lifted with the voice's inflection. Uncurling her body, Finley looked up. The stranger lowered the butt of the rifle to the ground and leaned it against another tree. Their eyes continued to search the black branches above before finally falling back down to meet her own. Kneeling next to her, they removed the coyote head that hooded their face and tresses of dark auburn hair spilled over their shoulders.
"You all right?" they asked again, gently rubbing Finley's bare arm.
The echo of the gunshot still rattled through her chest, rot still clung to her throat, but Finley nodded. "I thought you were trying to kill me."
"Not much meat on ya, certainly wouldn't do me no good." Their eyes creased with a smile, still shifting between Finley and the hemlock behind her. "But that uh, wild cat thought otherwise. Fool, he is."
"A mountain lion?" Finley pushed up with a wince and slid closer to the stranger. The pain in her shoulder returned, radiating deep beneath her skin.
"Oh, he'd like you to think so," they laughed softly. "But nah, just a damn ghost cat." There was a smooth grit to their voice, both warm and raspy like the crackle of a fire. The coyote hood and its hide draped down their back, layered over a dark suede jacket with fringe. As they continued to look past Finley over her shoulder, she followed the sharp line of their jaw to the curve of their lips. But their eyes darted back to her, sharpening beneath a scarred brow as they looked her over. "You're hurt."
