Chapter 2

Thunder boomed in the distance. Frank wondered if he should hurry up and get inside before the rain came. He decided not to bother. Buzzed short, his black hair dried rather quickly, and since the day was done, sodden work clothes would hardly matter.

“With the temperature so abysmally hot, I can only believe getting caught in a downpour might feel rather pleasant.” Frank spoke to an ant that searched about at his elbow now. He questioned why there weren’t more. “I know why I’m by myself,” he said to the single scout. “Look at me. But why are you? Don’t you normally travel with mates? Dozens? Hundreds?” The tiny black creature skittered across Frank’s palm, between his fingers, and partway up his wrist. “Have you upset them somehow, or are you just so bold?” He actually stroked it, using only one finger, as if the bug was a tiny cat. “I pray, if ants have feelings, you were not shunned, like me.”

Frank let the ant go free, then took an orange from the paper bag he’d taken his lunch in to work. He had joined Hellier’s Mortuary as an apprentice the summer he’d turned thirteen, because Frank Sr. no longer trusted his son home alone and they had run out of townsfolk willing to babysit. Eventually, Frank had worked every day after school, then whenever he was home from college. Vaughn Hellier had generously provided the costly education that had turned out quite pointless. Frank had known from the start he would likely never get to be what he truly wanted. He now worked full time as a mortician’s assistant, and that was all he would ever be. Dead people never judged.

Frank peeled the orange and sucked from the first segment broken off the round. The little hairs on his arms and those at the back of his neck stood up. The juice of the orange was both sweet and tart on his tongue, really good—but not that good. The reaction came from something else

“You want some?” The ant had not gone far. Most creatures, human or otherwise, were more than a little wary of Frank. “Here you go.”

Frank squeezed a few drops of citrus onto the dirt and then brought the plump segment back up to his lips, sucking in hard to draw in its flavor. Another shiver followed. The act reminded Frank of something. It reminded him of someone

It was a rather large orange, and as he worked the one wedge in and out of his mouth, a part of him much lower down started to tingle like his spine. Frank put his hand in his pocket. He touched himself through it, and then looked up again.

“Not a creature was stirring, little ant…Wrong season, I realize.” Frank smiled at his clever pun with the side of his face that still could. “Dig this,” he added, in a vernacular more befitting his age and the decade. “If you come back in winter, at Christmastime, I will tell you that tale.”

Confident in the fact that he couldn’t be seen, Frank took his hand from his pocket and put it down the front of his undershorts, allowing himself to get lost in supposed sinful pleasures. He rubbed himself hard, fantasizing about someone from his past. “Renny.” Frank exhaled the name as he stroked his rigid appendage.

“I was in love once with a man named Renny.” It was not the first time Frank had whispered his feelings to the trees or the creatures who lived and frolicked just behind the mortuary. They knew the whole story and could share it amongst each other. “Kiss me, Renny. Put your hardness ins—Oh!” The shiver came again. Frank had only a moment to realize its true cause, only a moment to think before his entire body went rigid, not due to lustful thoughts or sexual self-gratification, but rather nature’s tumult, her raging power.

Crack!

Frank fell over, partially conscious but not totally. He heard a second clap of thunder and smelled an odd aroma, one that brought back the memory of his childhood calico rescued from the burning house just in the nick of time. The leaves above him rustled now, disturbed by a gust that teased at the start and then a gale that attacked. Some foliage fell to the forest floor where it would die, while greenery in all shapes directly above Frank began to dance. It was a happier image to conjure, as huge droplets of rain worked them like a marionette master’s hand.

Some of Frank’s senses were still in tune—still alive. He could see, hear, and smell. He could think, about the dying leaves and the happier ones, giggling, perhaps, as leaves could only do amongst each other.