CHAPTER THIRTY

This Tenuous Thread

 

THE PLAN IS simple.

Well. No. It’s not really simple. It’s actually quite complex.

But it’s simple in theory. Coyote finds elegance in complexity.

The woman, Alison, is inside this police station. In a holding cell. Awaiting—well, whatever it is you await when the police think you stole a car.

Coyote will crawl through the air ducts.

He’ll use his nose to scent his penis, which gives off a piquant, ermine-y odor that the ladies cannot resist. This will likely lead him to the evidence room, where he will find within the full-figured, robust-shouldered, ginger-topped Officer Bonita Squire, and he will then cast into the ducts his Bonafide Penis Returning Powder, a fine concoction made of lavender, sage, beaver pelt, and the dried, pulverized shame of an ugly swan.

Then, he will descend into the evidence room.

As his penis stirs to life and seeks to return to him, he will begin to seduce the lovely Officer Squire, and just as he has disrobed her and laid her on a cardboard pallet, his penis will burst through the wire cage and reattach to his pelvis and he shall fornicate with her until she achieves the mighty gush of a well-satisfied woman. That will, of course, put her to sleep. From there he will steal her outfit, paint his hair orange, fill the outfit with whatever he can find nearby to pad the uniform, then wander into the small police building while masquerading as the beautiful, thick-bodied Officer Squire.

Then, blah-blah-blah, down to the basement, unlock the door, open the holding cells, free Alison, and once more find and follow the golden thread to its natural and necessary conclusion. Whatever that may be.

Excellent.

Coyote stands out back of the police department, hunkered down behind a few scrubby shrubs. He crawls over to the vent. Rattles it. Plucks numbly at the four screws with his hands.

“I should really have a screwdriver,” he says.

It’s then that a big fat horsefly lands on his shoulder. Zzzzzvvvpppt.

He flicks it away.

It returns. This time, to the other shoulder.

He swats at it. It takes flight.

Then: on the bridge of his prodigious nose.

Oh, no.

He can barely make it out, but it’s there—the horsefly has a human-looking face. Green fly eyes, but the rest is all tiny human.

It all happens so fast.

There comes a whumpf of air, a reverse imploding thunderclap—

There stands a tall, lithe man with dancing green eyes and long greasy hair draped around sharp-angled shoulders, ill-contained in a v-neck black t-shirt.

The man snaps his fingers, and in his hands a serpent appears. Black skin, green eyes, long fangs.

“You sonofab—” But Coyote can’t finish the statement. The snake stabs out with its triangular head and bites him right on the cheek.

The venom is quick like a jackrabbit chased by a hawk—

Lickety-split, it’s through Coyote. The world tilts. His chest tightens.

He’s hit in the face with a tidal wave made of his own unconsciousness.

Boom.

 

 

LOKI STANDS OVER Coyote’s body. Not corpse, of course—the mangy trickster isn’t dead, just resting. Gods don’t like to kill gods when they can help it. Put them out of commission for ten minutes, ten years, ten glacial epochs, fine. Death, though, is so permanent. Rude, too, though Loki has little concern about violating social norms.

Time is running out. The thread fraying, ready to snap.

Coyote would’ve taken too long. He always takes too long.

Loki pulls out his iPhone. Texts to Eshu: In progress.

Then he enters the police station, whistling.

 

 

ALISON SITS. THE jail cell is cleaner than she anticipated; some part of her figured this place would smell like body odor and other... fluids. But it doesn’t. It is, in fact, only one of three cells, and now she knows the difference between holding cells (‘drunk tanks’) and a full-bore penitentiary. This is the former, and thankfully not at all the latter.

Just the same, it does little to quiet her slow-simmering panic and despair.

Because the penitentiary—jail, prison, the Big House, the Hoosegow—is where she’ll be headed. She committed Grand Theft Auto. She stole a car, with the help of a man who was probably not at all a man, because he was, at least in part, some kind of rangy, mangy wolf-dog-dingo thing. She didn’t even bother telling the police what’s really going on. What’s the point? She’s already starting to wonder if this is the result of a complete and total breakdown of reality. Why chase the rabbit down its hole?

They offered her a phone call, but she didn’t know who to call. So she called her mother at the hospital. Her mother started crying. Said Barney still hadn’t woken up. Alison started to cry, too, told her where she was. Her mother said she’d get a lawyer. They’d figure this out. Mom says what Alison is thinking: “You just... had a nervous breakdown, is all.”

And now she sits. Empty of tears. Empty of most everything, it seems. A tray of fast food nearby that she hasn’t touched. The cops here have been very nice. Which she doesn’t deserve, but it is what it is.

It’s then that she hears someone yelling. Above her. In the station. Muffled, because, well, she’s in the basement surrounded by a whole lot of concrete.

Then: she’s pretty sure she hears goats.

Outside the cells, there sits a cop—in this case, Officer Masterson, a small, older fellow with a big gut hanging over his belt and holster. Bald on top, and a fuzzy red mustache, hanging on an outthrust lip.

She sees him peer in through the door window. Just a spot check.

He meets her eyes. She gives a little wave. He nods.

Then his eyes go wide. Like he’s in shock, or in pain.

Then, he’s gone. Just like that.

And just outside the door she hears the bleats of a goat.

The door drifts open. Sure enough, a goat comes tottering in. Head stuck up through a cop shirt. Back legs kicking off the uniform pants, replete with belt and holster. The goat’s belly hangs low. Fat.

The goat is Masterson.

Masterson is a goat.

It’s then another man walks through the door. Sharp boomerang smile. Glittery emerald eyes. Scruffy stubble, long hair, v-neck t-shirt.

He dangles a set of keys.

“Alison,” he says in a sing-song voice (Aaa-leee-sooon). “It’s time to go, doll. Your ride has arrived.”

The keys jingle.