Would she be coming here to rescue me, or lead me to my next temptation? My redeemer or destroyer? Here, I’m assigning external blame for my fate as though I don’t control my own thoughts and actions. It’s time to stop looking for someone to save me; I’ll save my goddamn self.

As though conjured, I heard a woman’s voice. High-pitched and hysterical. Sobbing and pleading and screaming for me. Too distant to tell if it was Malia or not, but coming closer. Someone on a death march, by the sound of it. The long walk to the gallows.

“Jesse!”

My heart seized when I heard that cry. My breath evaporated. People in passionate relationships know what it sounds like to hear their lover scream their name. That was Cassie out there.

“Jesse!”

I scrambled toward the front door, threw it open without considering the likelihood of this being a trap. A trick to get eyes on me since I’d barricaded myself inside. It was dusk and the shadows were thick under the canopy of trees. Hulking shapes shifted near the tree line. I heard the excited rasp of feral boys. The alien light from a firefly shined a flash bulb on a bushy face and blinked out. Footsteps came crashing through the brush. Cassie screaming my name, “Jesse!”

“Here!” I shouted, eliciting a hoarse murmur among our feral audience. I reached inside and flipped on the porch light, sending those closest to the perimeter shuffling back into the receding shadows. The forest was rich with the blinking lights of fireflies flashing on the faces of the men hidden in the trees. The night loud with insect chatter. A whole ceremony out here beyond my understanding. The boys or men or whatever those things were cleared a path for Cassie to stumble through. If I’d had a weapon, maybe I would have run to her. But I was so damn startled and confused I stood frozen in place, still not completely convinced this wasn’t some kind of a setup. They had presented a convincing Razz, after all.

She came to the clearing, flinching in fear every time she passed by a feral scout as though expecting one of them to grab her. Then there was nothing between her and the cabin and when she realized this she broke into a frenzied sprint toward the door, unleashing a scream like a runaway train. Eyes wild, mouth stretched in a panicked grimace. My animal wife.

She crashed into me without slowing, knocking us both back through the door. I tripped and fell onto the couch.

“Oh God, close it! God, close it!” she was yelling hysterically, jumping and flailing her arms as though freeing them from spiderwebs. “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God God God.”