The Pier

Lifelessness floated on the ocean’s surface. In the distance, something large, black, and lumpy was floating towards the shore. My wife Mia spotted it first, as she and I lay on the sandy beach enjoying the sunset while our two children played close by. I was wrapped up staring at the vixen lying beside me, her red and white fur exposed all over, save for the more intimate parts covered by her bikini.

“You know,” I said to her, leaning close, “I think the hardware store is still open—I could go and get a lock to put on our door for tonight.” When she didn’t even point an ear back at me, I followed her gaze out to the large black bag nearing the shore. It looked like it was floating right at the pier where I kept the fishing boat docked up, so I got up and headed out cautiously to the end of the pier to retrieve it. Mia and the pups followed me out onto the pier and watched and waited with me.

“What is it, Daddy?” my little girl asked curiously, but as the bag crept nearer, I already knew what it was.

“Mia, take Chase and Marie and go into the house right now,” I said urgently. I didn’t want my family to see what I had to take care of. “Lock the doors,” I added.

Mia understood and scooped up little Marie in her arms. “Come along, Chase,” I heard her urge our son, and I watched them run back to shore and into our lonely beach house just beyond the sand.

Carefully, I waited another minute as the black body bag approached the pier. I quickly grabbed a hook from my boat and used it to draw up the bag onto the pier. It took me a couple of tries, but I was able to heave the bulky thing out of the water. With bated breath, I slowly unzipped the bag, recoiling at the gruesome smell and even more gruesome sight that lie before me on the pier.

It was Frank Alabaster, and from the looks of him, he’d been dead quite a few days already. His bloated body, dressed in one of his better suits, already had all manner of sea sludge splotched here and there all over. I briefly wondered how he’d gotten his, but as I turned the lumpy rhinoceros’ head to the side, I saw the bullet wound in his temple.

How classic, I thought. At least it must have been quick and painless—I wouldn’t want it any other way for a friend and ally as good as Frank. I began to wipe the sludge off his face when I noticed something sticking out of his mouth. I sat there a moment, considering what to do. My gut already told me what it was inside his mouth, but I didn’t want to accept it.

I gulped dryly and gently pulled the black card out of Frank’s dead mouth. It was laminated in this case—obviously to prevent it from disintegrating in the ocean—but it was still so obviously mine. It had my name on it in bold white letters: Riley. But wait—it only had my last name. These cards were supposed to have both the first and last name of the next victim…unless…

“Mia!” I exclaimed as I turned to the house, but it was too late. Just as I uttered her name, I saw in horror as the beach house exploded in a glorious ball of orange flame and black smoke. I must have been hit by a piece of flying debris from the house, because I didn’t remember anything after that moment until I came to much later in a hospital.



* * *



“All my true life,” I explained over a scotch to my friend, “I had been just another soldier in this war. After that day six years ago, though, the war became my own and not just my boss’. It was no longer just a struggle for turf and for profits. It was a conquest—a mission—for life, for death, and for the vengeance of my family.”

“I understand that, Docks, but—“ my friend started.

“Will you stop calling me Docks?” I interrupted. God, I hated that name. “My name is Jack. Jack Riley. Okay? So please, Cesar, call me Jack.”

“Sorry,” Cesar replied. “But this all happened six years ago,” he started again, keeping his voice hushed in the quiet, dank bar. “You gotta stop being so fuckin’ trigger happy all the time. You’ve fucked up three meetings with our associates within the past year.” He raised his glass to his lips, but stopped to add an afterthought: “And you nearly fucked up almost a dozen more.”

“’Associates,’” I scoffed. “They play for the other team, or have you forgotten? They’re the reason why we can’t do business as normal around here anymore. They’re the reason why—“ I stopped myself, hearing how loud my voice was getting.

The frazzled wolf sitting next to me sighed as he sipped his drink, and then finished what I was about to say. “They’re the reason why your wife and kids are dead. I know, Jack. But there’s a shitload more vixens out there that you could hook up with. You’ve got to let this go. Come on,” he said, smiling at me, “where’s the young athletic fox that I knew? The one that could have any girl he wanted just by twitching his tail the right way?”

“I dunno, Cesar,” I said, staring down into my scotch.

Cesar wrapped his arm around my shoulder and went on, his breath heavily foul from his drinks. “The one that could take a bullet to the shoulder and one to each knee cap and still kick the ass of the guy that plugged him? Where’s the Jack Riley I knew that outran a train, then leapt in front of it across the tracks, landing safely on the other side, and all just for a $20 bet? You used to be the party animal in all of us, Jack, rolled up into one.”

“Those were different times,” I said. “That fox left me long ago, and this aging body is all I have left.”

Cesar stared at me intently for a moment, then took his arm off of me and downed the rest of his drink. “Forget it,” he said quickly. “It’s useless. You’re fuckin’ hopeless.” He sighed heavily and ordered another drink. “Why’d you try and quit, anyway? Did you really think you could leave? This isn’t exactly the line of work you just leave one day, unless it’s with a bullet to the head.”

“I wasn’t quitting,” I said, turning to him. “I was just going to be…less active. I wanted to spend more time with my family.”

“What about that business of yours?”

“You mean my boat? Taking customers out fishing? I was going to contribute most of my profits to our…business.”

“Still,” Cesar said, “it didn’t make the boss very happy. You were good. You were better than good—you were great. We needed you, and we still need you, Jack.”

“I guess I’d just grown tired of seeing all those lifeless faces,” I confessed, finishing off my scotch. “Of being the one that made them lifeless in the first place.”

“That’s no excuse,” my friend said sternly. “I’m sorry, Jack, but this is our life. It’s what we’re bound to, and the only way out is death. You knew that when you made the choice to sign on way back when.”

“I didn’t know shit,” I spat. “I was a kid, just some dumb-ass kid, growing up in the slums. I wanted a better life, and I thought that this was the way to get it. Don’t tell me about what I know or knew; if I knew then what I know now, I would have never signed on.” I sighed heavily as my mind drifted back again to that day six years ago. “Why Frank Alabaster? Why’d they get him?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, not this again,” Cesar said, getting annoyed. “Look, you know as well as I do that it could have been anyone—it could have been me, it could have been Rick, it could have been Fingers, anyone. But it was Frank, okay?”

“But Frank was in hiding. He was protecting someone. Why go through the trouble of tracking him down? And who was he protecting, anyhow?”

“How the fuck should I know? I don’t get told nothin’.”

“Whatever,” I sighed. “It still ain’t right.”

“Let’s go outside,” Cesar said suddenly. Without question, he and I used a back exit near the restrooms to step out into a dark alleyway. “We need you back, Jack,” Cesar said, looking at me earnestly, after he shut the door.

“What for?” I asked after a pause.

“The boss wants you back, off of your…probation. There’ve been a lot of our men turning up dead lately, and they’ve all been killed the same way.”

“How?” My curiosity was rising just a little, but there wasn’t much that really could make me truly want to pick this up again full time.

“They’ve shown up on our doorstep just…broken. Broken in two, like a twig. No one can figure what they’ve been using to do it, really. And the boss…well, he’s getting concerned, to say the least, and he wants someone he can trust with a gun—someone skilled.”

“And that’s where I come in?”

“Yeah, that’s where you come in,” the wolf sighed.

“How many have been killed?”

“Within our unit? All except you, me, the boss, and Rick.”

I felt my jaw drop. “You’re shittin’ me,” I said in an astonished whisper, looking around quickly to make sure no one was listening. “That’s impossible…that means that we’ve just lost almost 18 good furs. Are you sure that no one else is around? It’s just the four of us?”

“Yeah, just the four of us.”

“Well why the fuck didn’t we ask anyone from Chicago for help?”

“That’s the thing—we did.” Cesar was looking very serious and very worried about this as he spoke. “They got killed the same way. When Mahoney heard about that, he went ballistic. Said he was going to tear up our asses for getting three of his best men killed.”

“How the fuck can the other side have gotten such a firm hold on our balls?”

“I don’t know,” Cesar said firmly through gritted teeth. “It’s fucking bullshit and you’ve gotta come back and help out.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” I said. “I ain’t going back—not to that. No fucking way.”

“You want to see us dead?” Cesar exclaimed. “Is that what you want? You want to see me and the boss dead?”

I stared at him for a moment, regarding him carefully, sizing him up. “What if I do?”

Cesar answered by pulling a gun out from underneath his suit jacket and pointed it straight at my head. “Don’t be stupid, Jack,” he said.

I paused again, wondering if he’d really shoot me. “Fair enough,” I said after a time. “I gotta get going, Cesar. It’s late.”

“Fine,” the wolf replied. “Just be safe and don’t do anything stupid.”

“Yeah, sure,” I grunted and stumbled away, swaggering a bit drunkenly. I don’t really remember the walk home to my apartment, or going to sleep, but I was woken up rather suddenly very early the next morning when something sailed its way through my bedroom window and landed on the ground next to the foot of my bed. The sound of the breaking glass woke me up well enough, and I before I could orientate myself fully, I heard the squealing of tires right outside as the perpetrator zoomed off.

“Oh, fuck,” I mumbled and sat up, slipping my shoes on and grabbing my revolver from underneath my pillow. I inched my way carefully to the window, flattening myself against the wall right by it, and peered carefully outside, gun at the ready. Whoever was here had already made tracks, so I checked out whatever had landed by my bed.

It wasn’t a brick, as I had expected, but a large lump of fur lying there. I switched on the light and fell to my knees almost instantly when I saw the dead body in full light. I gagged, almost throwing up right there on my bedroom carpet, but was able to recover myself.

“Goddammit, Cesar,” I said softly to the body. “And you told me to be careful and not to do anything stupid.” I sighed as I overlooked Cesar’s corpse. From the looks of him, he looked like he had been broken in two—just like he had described everyone else from our gang had been done in. “So now there are three,” I thought aloud.

I noticed a note pinned to his suit jacket, on which was scrawled, “$500,000 in exchange for the life of your boss. Tonight at 10 p.m., the pier where you used to live. Come alone.” I didn’t exactly know what this was all about, but I had been in the business long enough to know that such a petty ransom was only a cover for something else. Was it to get my own turn at being snapped in two? I could only guess, and hope the reason was something better than that, but in retrospect, I didn’t really feel as if I had much to live for anymore.

I looked back at the clock on my nightstand—it was only a little past 4 a.m., which gave me roughly 18 hours to figure out what this was really all about. I turned out the lights and went back to sleep, this time with one eye open, and woke up a few hours later with a massive headache.

Picking up the phone, I tried to call Rick, but got no answer. I tried the same thing with the boss, but that was obviously a lost cause, since he was supposedly being held for ransom. So with no one else to turn to, I got out my briefcase and started stuffing it with what I was hiding in my mattress, which wasn’t much—not nearly enough for the ransom.

I needed to go to the bank to withdraw enough to make the ransom, but as I was heading out the door, I stopped myself. Why? I thought. Why should I really give a flying fuck if the boss got his tonight? After all these years of service, what had I gotten out of the deal? I mean, really gotten out of the deal. Sure, I had a shitload of money, but my wife and kids were dead—the only people I really earnestly cared about. The boss treated me well enough, but he treated everyone well enough; it didn’t really make me feel special. I guess that the old saying is right: you can’t really buy happiness. I’d pay everything I had, though, if I could see my family one last time. If nothing else, I wanted to say goodbye.

Goodbye…I suppose that’s what I’d be saying tonight. Goodbye to my boss. I decided not to go to the bank. They’d take whatever money was in the briefcase now and live with it. They’d probably kill the boss and me, too, but I didn’t care anymore. I figured that if I died, I’d at least get to see my family again. In death, I guess, I was looking for my life.

I sat around my apartment for the remainder of the day, watching television, napping, eating—you know the routine, the one that most single men sink into eventually if they have nothing much more outside to really live for. So at around 9 p.m. I grabbed my gun and the briefcase, left my apartment, got in my car, and started driving to the pier. It’d be at least a 45-minute drive, and I never liked to be late.

When the charred remains of my old beach house came into view, I started feeling stiff, as if I couldn’t breathe right. I hadn’t been back here since the day I lost my family, so coming “home” was more than I had thought to expect. There wasn’t even a frame to the house anymore—it was just a pile of black and brown rubble, a useless and pointless mess, left with nothing but memories and sorrow. For some reason, I felt more attached to that house now than I ever did, though I couldn’t figure out why.

I turned off the headlights as I pulled my vehicle off the road and onto the sandy beach, parking it within a stone’s throw of the pier. I checked my watch: 9:52. Might as well head over there now, I figured, so I silently grabbed the briefcase and got out, walking solemnly and slowly onto the pier. My footsteps felt heavy, as if I didn’t want to return here, but I had to do this—not as a loyal soldier for my boss, but for myself. I had to see what this was all about.

“You can stop there,” a voice called from behind me as I was halfway out to the edge of the pier, and I heard the cock of a gun.

“Who are you?” I called back, not turning around just yet. I groped around for my own gun slowly, hoping that it was dark enough that I wouldn’t be seen. However, the gunman behind me shone a flashlight onto me, and I was caught just as I had pulled the gun from beneath my jacket. I saw something down at the end of the pier, but the light barely reached it, so I couldn’t make it out.

“Oh, come on now, Jack—we’re all friends here,” said the voice, and it suddenly sounded familiar. “No need for that thing.”

“Rick?” I asked incredulously, turning to meet the bright light, now shining in my face. The light then turned and pointed onto its holder, and I saw that I was right—it was Rick. The tall, gangly cat started walking towards me slowly, keeping the light on him so I could see his face.

“That’s right, Jack. Are you really so surprised?”

“What the fuck is going on?” I asked loudly.

“Hey, hey,” Rick said calmly. “No need for raised voices here—this is just business. Business as usual.”

“Business as usual?” I repeated. “You mind, then, telling me what the fuck this whole ransom thing is all about?”

“Oh, I set that up,” Rick said, stopping a good distance from me. “I figured you’d come down here—it’d just make things easier, killing you and the boss off at once. That’s all.” With that, he pointed the light down at the end of the pier, and I saw the boss sitting there at the end, tied to a chair and gagged. He looked like he’d already been beaten pretty well. But there was something more—something standing behind him that looked like just a wall of fur.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Oh, come on now, Jack—look!” And to my astonishment, Rick slowly glided the beam of light up to expose something impossible: it was a fox, but a very large fox, crouched behind the boss. The fox had to have been at least 15 feet tall when standing erect, and he, too, looked rather beaten and bruised. His eyes turned away at the light, and I saw large scars running over his face and body.

“What the fuck is that?!” I asked in disbelief as I stared in awe at the giant fox.

“Don’t tell me you don’t recognize your own son, Jack,” Rick said with relish.

I turned and stared with a blanched face of surprise at Rick. “No,” I said slowly. “No, my son is dead—I saw him die!”

“Did you really?” Rick asked. “Or did you just see the house blow up from, oh, about where you’re standing now?” I couldn’t respond—it was too much for my fried brain to process. “I got him out, just in time. I was there. Who do you think set up the bomb in the first place, Jack?”

“You’re lying,” I said, trying to shrug the whole thing off.

“Look at your son!” Rick replied. “Does that look like a lie to you?”

“But…but how? How did…” My mind and lips were both having a hard time forming the questions I wanted to ask.

“Remember Frank Alabaster?” Rick began. “Good old Frank,” he said, as if remembering a good friend. “He was guarding that scientist of ours, remember? The one working on tools to help our…business. When I caught wind of some growth formula he was working on, I decided to give it a test run, but I needed a guinea pig—someone I knew was close enough that I could get my hands on but not someone, obviously, who already was on our team. That’s where Chase came in. But I didn’t want to unleash some giant monster, no…I wanted to be able to control him, so I had to hold him for a while. Tie him up and keep him in a basement, and beat him around, you know—tell him what a useless dirty little faggot he was. Of course, I’m sure he believed the ‘faggot’ part, with as much as I fucked him in the ass.”

“You sick fuck!” I screamed and tried to point my gun at him. However, I was so overwhelmed that I trying to stop myself from crying first. I staggered a moment and fired into the darkness at him. I heard a loud cry from him, and he dropped the flashlight. The next thing I knew, however, I heard another gunshot from his end and felt a dull thud in my head.

I never figured out what Rick’s total motives were, why he did all this to begin with, and now I guess I’ll never find out. I think I’m in purgatory now. Or maybe it’s Hell. I don’t really know—either way, all I know is that I’m no longer among the living. But I’m still here on this planet. I can’t see anyone else, though. I don’t see anyone who’s alive. But I don’t see anyone who’s dead, either. There’s no one here; only this barren, empty planet that I wander. No life, just memories and shadows, and still I wander, hoping I can find someone, anyone, or anything that might have an answer for me. But I always wind up back where I started—where I died.

I stay there on occasion, just standing at the end of the pier, looking out at the ocean’s horizon. Sometimes, when the breeze hits my face just right, I can still hear Chase and Marie playing together. I can see my wife still smiling at me, her face glowing underneath the bright sun. And there I see myself standing, smiling back at her, as I take a short break from fixing up my boat. It’s all very fleeting, and it fades almost as instantly as it comes, but it’s in these brief moments that I’m back before it all happened, and I can be at peace again. It’s when I can find this solace at the pier that I feel as if I can finally stop searching for my life.