by Jay Nichols
* * *
"How?" Valerie Price asked the swatch of dog hide that had once been part of her husband’s Rottweiler’s sleek, dark coat. "How could a person do this?"
She scooted away from the dead patch of skin as if it was going to rise up and slither after her. "Honeeeeyy!!" she cried out. "Hurry up!"
Price galloped down the last flight of stairs and burst into the foyer. "Did you hear that?!" he exclaimed, looking past her, to the door. "That sounded like an explosion!"
His head dipped to see his wife dragging herself toward the kitchen. "What happened to you? Did you fall or something?"
Valerie’s roiling eyes told him it wasn’t quite that simple. She picked up the letter and threw it at her husband. He reached out for it but missed, and it went fluttering back to the floor. "Read that," she said.
He knelt and plucked up the page. His eyes skimmed the short paragraph. When he finished, he crumpled the paper in his fist and proclaimed, "I’m gonna kill that bastard!!" before storming down the hallway, leaving Valerie still on the tiles.
"Where are you going? You better not do anything stupid. Who is Hector Graham?"
But Price was out of earshot. The only response she got was from the shrieking sirens of police cars and fire trucks on their way to a disaster that had to be of astronomical proportions.
Looking at the front door, and by doing so, trying to see beyond it, she asked the cosmos, "What the hell is going on out there?"