Free Forest of Shadows by Hunter Shea Page A

Teddy’s second dinner, though,” Ahanu said with a sneer. 
    Muraco flipped his hand to the backseat and motioned with his fingers for a beer. Ahana slipped it into his hand with anticipatory glee. 
    The two men spotted the black car barreling down Main Street and were obviously deciding whether to continue on their way towards the approaching car or run in the other direction. Muraco would have given anything to see Teddy run. 
    As they swept past the duo, Muraco threw the full can out the window and hit Judas square in the chest. He dropped down to his knees, holding his hand to his chest like a man in the throes of a heart attack. Checking his side view mirror, Muraco saw Teddy flip the car his middle finger. He immediately slammed the brakes and spun the car into a tight turn. Ciqala grunted in the back seat as Ahanu smashed into him.
    Muraco stepped from the car and shouted, “You have a problem, fat Teddy?”
    Teddy was trying to help Judas to his feet and keep his eye on Muraco at the same time. 
    “Are you going to cry because I hurt your white bitch?”
    Teddy replied with silence. Judas rubbed his chest, wincing with pain. 
    “What about you, Stitch? Maybe you have something you’d like to say.”
    Roger Stitch was a kid at their school when they were all in middle school. In seventh grade, Roger had been caught by several unsuspecting girls masturbating in a stall in the girl’s bathroom. Why he was in the girl’s room was never known. What was known was the fact that he had become the school pariah, absorbing a constant stream of abuse until he killed himself two years later. After his death, the nickname Stitch was given to any and all deemed social outcasts. Judas was unfortunate enough to inherit the honor of wearing that nickname, but he was damned if he’d ever let a bunch of assholes drive him to kill himself.
    The heads of Muraco’s pack poked out of the car’s windows and taunted them, cursing their mothers and daring them to fight. 
    “I didn’t think so,” Muraco huffed and turned to get back in the car. 
    He stopped when he heard the pop and hiss of the can being opened. He whipped around to see Judas taking a long sip from the beer.
    “Hey man, waste not, want not,” Judas said to them and resumed crossing the street with Teddy in tow. 
    “Crazy fucking white man,” Muraco muttered. 
    “Come on, let’s have some real fun,” Ahanu whined. 
    Once they were back on the road, Muraco made it a point to swerve the nose of the car to clip garbage cans, bicycles and anything else that was close to the edges of the curb. The full moon was bright in his rearview mirror as he pulled up to Mai Smith’s house. It was a new moon tradition for each of them to have sex with Mai, one at a time, finish off whatever hard alcohol she had and run naked in the woods, high on tequila and testosterone induced dementia. 
    High on the moon.
    It had been Muraco’s idea, these monthly gang bangs, and Mai, the high school whore who had taken the virginity of nearly every young man in Shida, was a happy and willing participant. She said it made her feel like a kind of shaman, allowing the men to use her body to achieve an altered level of existence. Of course, she said this when she was drunk, high and horny, just like Muraco and the pack. 
    Mai answered the door wearing only a flimsy robe that was open down the middle, revealing her full, untrimmed womanhood. “What took you so long?” she asked. Her breath was toxic from hours of downing cheap gin. 
    Muraco snarled, grabbed her by the waist and slammed the door shut with his boot. 

Chapter Eleven
    Judas Graves felt his head sag forward and he snapped back awake. The paperback he was reading, some battered old sci-fi novel by an author he’d never heard of, was closed on his lap. It was two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon and he was the only one in the library other than Millie Cloud, the librarian. Despite the fact she had a name from