Safe Keeping

It was a sad day. Raymond Fitzgerald was on the move west. He had taken all he could carry and had burned the rest. The move was good and stealthy - for, you see, the maffia was after him. He bested the top man's second man in a duel in the countryside.

He walked across the parking lot with his bag on his back heading toward the sunset... the mountains, cold lakes and streams, wild bears, and geese flying over head. It was autumn, and soon it would be cold.

"That's why I brought the sleeping bags, and the long underwear."  He was unprepared.

Ray took his sweet time and kicked rocks on the way. He was heading to the forest, to the forest path he knew so well. The same path he'd explore as a child.  And beyond the forest, the mountains, looming in mists of the unknown.

Autumn was coming. His favorite time of year -favorite of course, when there is a warm place inside to go, away from the snow, the sleet.

"That's why I brought the sleeping bags!" He shouted and growled a bit, as though he were an animal.

Ray took his time, he walked in melancholy.  He knew Big Earl and Ken the mafia men were right behind him. Back aways they walked. They knew where he was going and where he would stop. They carried no bags, just knives. They figured they'd just slit his throat or stab him and be home for dinner - leave him there in the forest for whatever to eat him.

The wind blew at Ray's back. He smelt something rotting. Rotting leaves? He took another sniff. He was near the forest and veered off the path to investigate. He tramped through the leaves, following his nose.

The maffia men behind him could see this and wondered "What in the hell?" and followed.

Ray kept on his sniffing and soon he found what was stinking. It was the carcus of a dead bull and maggots were about. The beast's insides were out and flies lingered on it's eyes. The smell burned up his nose.

"A sign," he said and plugged his nose.  The mafia men would find him soon, and this is what he'd turn into. 

He saw it in a movie once, and what are movies if not approximations of real life?  So, pulling some bicycle gloves from his pack, and putting them on, he fully emptied the rotting, stinking entrails from the bulls slit in it's belly.  Once they were all out, he hid his bag under the pile of intestines and climbed into the bull.

Despite Big Earl and Ken's allegiance to their boss, a second rate assassin who killed a second rate henchmen, whom they didn't like anyway, was not enough reason to inspect a bull's carcass.

"We'll tell the boss we got 'em.  How's that sound?"  Big Earl asked Ken.

"Fine with me.  The hockey game is on tonight."

They left with their hankies to their noses. 

Once the light left the forest, Ray climbed out of the bull, stinking and slimy.  He had heard the mafia men leave hours ago, but waited just to be sure.  He uncovered his bag from the pile of intestines, threw it over his back, and continued on the path towards the mountains.

Climbing inside a rotting bull builds character, he thought.  And the experience gives him a renewed sense of power for the journey ahead of him.