Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 81279 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81279 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Or maybe I just feel a bit too much for the poor rat with its tail bent out of shape because I’m very much like him. A nuisance, scrambling to make a living, with a wonky knee that some days aches so much I need to use a cane. Trapped in Chuck’s hunting and survival gear store. If I could find a different job, I would, but it’s not easy in a small town when you’re not always fit for work, and have barely any connections.
So it is what it is. I’m trapped, but the rat can still have another chance.
I lift the hinge, the rodent squeaks, but then rushes off behind a pile of boxes in the storeroom.
“What the hell?” comes from behind me so suddenly I lose balance and fall on my butt, looking back at Jas. She watches me from the open doorway, radiating hostility. Her small, upturned nose resembles a tiny pig snout when she makes one of her mean girl faces. “Wow. Just wow. This is sabotage.”
I roll my eyes in frustration. “It’s just one rat, okay? Can you keep it to yourself?”
Like it’s not enough that I was late for work because I had a meltdown at therapy. I don’t need my boss finding out I freed a rat from one of his traps because I felt sorry for it.
Jas’s mouth stretches into a fake smile, and she cocks her hip, watching me as if it’s my job to witness her new jeans, which, by the way, are identical to all her other jeans but are dark red rather than blue. At twenty, I’m not that much older than her, but I feel as if there’s decades between us whenever I need to deal with all her petty teenage bullshit.
Maybe it’s because I went through so much tragedy at her age, I’m surprised I’m not gray.
“Depends. What would you offer me in return?”
I stand and consider the contents of my backpack. “I’ve got a Snickers?” I try hopelessly, but when she spins on her heel and walks out, she doesn’t need to say “processed garbage” for me to know I’m out of options. My transgression will be reported to our boss, who is also Jas’s uncle, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it, so I take my time pulling myself up without any more damage to my pride. I don’t always need a cane, but the current cold, damp weather doesn’t agree with my knee.
I barely manage to swipe the dust off my pants by the time Chuck marches in, thick gray beard first, and stares me down from under the visor of the camo baseball cap he wears all year round. “What in the fresh hell were you thinking?” he asks, spreading his arms as he regards me, with Jas hovering behind his back as if she’s getting off seeing me suffer.
I’m like a spider getting its legs ripped out one by one. Some days I wish that girl would end my misery already. There are enough guns in this store.
I take a deep breath to give myself a few more seconds. I’m not tiny, but next to a guy like Chuck, my five-seven makes me feel like a cockroach under a giant’s boot.
“Jas didn’t see it all. I was trying to get the rat out of the trap, and into a box, so I could take it out.” A smooth enough lie. I’d believe me.
Chuck flinches, as if smacked in the face. “The fuck is this tree-hugging garbage? There’s enough of those pests already, and they breed like crazy. It would just come right back into my store. You one of those people who call tracking hunting, even when they don’t shoot a single round once they find the animal?”
Why yes, I do consider myself a hunter. Just because I don’t shoot the prey doesn’t mean I didn’t hunt it down. And what would I even do with a deer carcass? Bring it to my small apartment? Sell it? I don’t have a truck to put it in, and frankly, I don’t care to. I’m a good shot, but that doesn’t mean I have to go around killing random animals for fun. Tracking is equally satisfying to me, if not more.
“No,” I mumble.
I don’t want to be a pushover. In my dreams, I tell Chuck exactly what I think of him, his buddies, my co-workers, and even the way he hunts. But I can’t do that in real life when my rent is on the line.
“Then do your job. Or, whatever you can, since I’m not legally allowed to ask you to do plenty of things even Jas can do,” Chuck says, once again hammering in the fact that my disability is a problem for him. He has no issue taking the tax break for employing me though. Of course.