Byron lay on his side in the Field Unit's parking lot, yawning. "I don't wanna go to school, it's Saturday." He tried to stretch, but his hands were bound behind his back, and his ankles were bound together. He lost his balance, rolling onto his stomach and scorching his nipples on the hot asphalt.

"Oww, fuck! Asparagus! Asparagus!" But his safe word brought no relief. He flopped back onto his side and rolled his shoulders down, creating enough space to sit through his restraints. Once his arms were in front of him, he rubbed the swollen lump on his forehead. "Bitch, I said asparagus," he muttered in a petulant tone.

Slowly, even for someone with a head injury, Byron remembered that his condition was not the result of sex games gone awry. Ray needed his help. He tried to chew through the zip-ties. No good. He considered chewing through his thumb, but he couldn't bear the thought of depriving his lady friends of its services. And worse, what if he developed a taste for human flesh? Definitely no good. Come on, brain, Byron thought. Just one more rep!

Conditioned to never, ever quit midway through a set, Byron's brain put up one more thought: Inside his truck was first aid kit, and inside the first aid kit was a pair of rescue shears. Fuck yes, he thought, giving his brain a congratulatory, and totally straight, psychic slap on the ass. He scooted over to the nearest car - Karen's - and stood by bracing himself against it. The truck seemed impossibly far away. He made it three bunny hops before falling down.

He struggled to his feet and hopped forward again, with the same result. He had been tased twice, suffered a concussion, and skipped leg day to work on his biceps enough times to make him top-heavy. He couldn't keep his balance, but what could he do? Capitulate? Byron didn't know the meaning of the word.

Well, I'm boned, he thought. Like a Zen koan, that thought unlocked the full power of the portion of his brain that thought about sex. A simple phrase, poetic in its symmetry, echoed through the expansive halls of his libido, becoming a mantra: Face down, ass up. Face down, ass up. Face down, ass up!

He rolled onto his stomach, planted his hands and feet, and stuck his butt high in the air. "Come on, bro!" Byron exhorted, for how can a man bro another if he does not bro himself? "Core strength!"

--

"What the hell is he doing?" Frazer said, looking out the Field Unit's window. "Yoga?"

Beginning in downward dog, Byron walked his feet to his hands, then launched himself forward, landing in a plank a couple feet from where he started. Wearing a look of grim determination, he stuck his ass skyward again.

"I think he's breakdancing," Karen said, filming on her cellphone. "He's so crazy."

Frazer threw up his hands. "Oh, would you just fuck him already?"

Karen turned the cell phone on Frazer. "That's sexual harassment, which you'd know if you read your emails."

Frazer's face turned red. He seized Karen's phone and hurled it across the office to clatter against the far wall. "You-" He jabbed his finger in her face. "-think you can threaten me!" He pointed at himself.

Karen stood in stunned silence, her hands still framing the space that her cell phone had occupied.

"Jesus," M said. The other Field Unit employees watched Frazer, uncertain.

"I was joking." Karen walked well out of reach of Frazer. "What's your problem?"

"Do you have any idea what it takes to keep this place running?" Frazer said. "You all think you can do a better job, but you do not want to sit in my chair. None of you has what it takes. I make the hard calls, I take responsibility, and all I ask in return is a little fucking loyalty."

The Field Unit's employees exchanged uncomfortable glances and raised eyebrows. None looked directly at Frazer, and one mouthed, "Okay..."

M raised her hand. "I'm loyal, sir."

Karen scrunched up her face, mouthed "I'm loyal, sir," and pushed a phantom cylinder in and out of her lips rhythmically.

Frazer glanced around the room at his employees' worried expressions. His rage vanished as though it had never existed. He smiled a sincere-looking smile and spoke in a congenial tone. "I apologize, Karen. My joke was inappropriate, and I shouldn't have thrown your phone. I'll replace it, of course. I'm just having one of those days. We've all been there, right?" He offered a light chuckle.

Frazer's employees looked at him as though his eyebrows had fallen off. A man without eyebrows was somewhat unsettling. A man who glued his eyebrows back on in front of onlookers, as though nothing had happened, was more unsettling.

"Are you feeling okay, Jim?" Karen said.

Frazer shook his head sadly. "Everything's going to hell. Ray, I understand. I never trusted him. But Byron? I treated him like a son, and this is how he repays me."

Karen gave him a questioning look.

"By burning down the forest!" Frazer said.

"They can shoot you for that?" one of his employees said.

"I don't want to hear any speculation about what Ray did to provoke the officer," Frazer said. "Just sit tight and let the police do their job."

Karen shook his head. "Ray is weird as shit, but he likes the forest. And I know Byron. He likes the forest, too, he's just not gay for it like Ray is."

Several employees murmured their agreement.

"Maybe you didn't know them as well as you thought!" Frazer snapped.

M raised her hand again, drawing a wrathful look from Frazer. "Sorry to interrupt, but your son is getting away."

Byron inch-wormed towards his truck. He'd traveled almost ten feet.

--

Ray rest his hands on his knees, gasping for air. Dizziness overcame him, and his vision blackened. I'm going to pass out, he thought. Then he heard the frogs' calls, the owls' hoots, and the crickets' songs. What music they made, he thought, although some of the creatures were crepuscular rather than nocturnal. He shelved his pedantry for the moment, because he had larger concerns. His vision had not gone dark, the forest had, and the trees had grown taller and thicker, obfuscating the full moon. According to his cell phone, the time was 11:30 a.m.

Bet you wish you'd laid off the Snickers.

The intrusive thought felt like one of Ray's own. It was, after a fashion; the deer stood before him, its proud antlers softly glowing with golden light.

"Where the hell have you been?" Ray asked, hobbling towards it.

You know who had respect for her spirit guide? Joan of Arc. She was a saint.

"What, you're an angel now?"

The deer looked away, conceding that it was not.

"Besides, she burned to death. I'm hoping for a better outcome."

The deer came up alongside Ray and supported his weight. They walked together as fast as he could manage.

You're almost to the grove.

"I'm not going to make it in time, am I?"

No thoughts sprang to mind. Ray took the deer's lack of response as a concession. "How the hell does that cop even know which way to go? Did someone stick a microchip in my ass?"

The same way you know he's closing on you. A scent on the wind, a broken branch, a bird startled by your approach. A sympathetic bond as old and sacred as carnivorism. Call it magic, if you like. Call it prey drive.

"I'm not prey!"

I'm not the one you have to convince.

The thought was accompanied by a vision of a yellow-eyed, coal-black hound, clothed in flames.

"I don't suppose you could you gore that cop for me?" Ray asked.

There's an idea. Just one problem.

Ray fell through the now-translucent deer, bruising his shoulder.

The deer disappeared and reappeared twenty feet away.

"Oh, screw you!" Ray said. "You're a ghost?"

The deer dipped its head to nibble a yellow-petaled flower.

Your soul. I won't be a ghost unless you die under traumatic circumstances, which is looking pretty likely.

The deer walked back to Ray, hooked its antlers under his armpit as it had on the beach, and lifted him to his feet.

"Thanks," Ray said. "Wait, how did you do that?" He looked at the decapitated stem, then down at his own hand, which held the same yellow-petaled flower he had seen the deer consume.

Your parents did warn you about taking drugs.

"This is stupid." Ray threw the flower away.

No, it's sympathy. You are connected to your own soul. Don't take that for granted, you'd be surprised at how many people aren't.

"That's why Audubon couldn't see you," Ray said. "We don't have enough of a connection."

She hardly knows you.

Ray felt an icicle twisting in his gut. "Trivia couldn't see you either."

His mind went quiet. Another concession.

Nearby, a branch broke, and a bird startled into flight. Ray couldn't bring himself to care.

I'm going to look really dumb with a sheet and chains draped over my antlers.

"I'm sorry. I'm too tired to run anymore."

Who said you had to run?

The deer butted him in the chest.

Grow a pair.

"You're right." Ray gazed skyward. The lunatic moon filled his eyes with silver fire, quickening his spirit. His pocket held his wallet, keys, cell phone, a roll of chapstick, sketchpad, several colored pencils, and a portable sharpener. He gripped a pencil like an ice-pick and sharpened it furiously.

What are you going to do with that, hurt his self-esteem? He's not Dorian Gray.

"Fight him, like you said!" Ray practiced stabbing the air with his improvised weapon.

Not what I said. What happens in April?

"Four twenty?" He smacked his forehead. "Wait! Deer grow new antlers, because their old ones have fallen off."

The colored pencil returned to his pocket; he had found something better. The discarded antler was mice-bitten, but sturdy and sharp. It was lighter than he expected. Picking it up was easy. Holding it felt as right as revenge.