“Get out of here, you stupid drunk,” Darryl shouted as he planted a firm boot into Cassius’ back, forcing the drunken doctor to fall forward out of the saloon doors and into the evening street of Marrion, Kentucky. to stumble flat faced onto the muddy ground.

Cassius stumbled onto the street, attempting to arrest his fall, but he slammed head-first into the thick, cold mud. In his drunken state, he hardly noticed the cold wetness soaking into his trousers and white button-up.

Cassius' blood started to boil, furious about being denied the ability to continue drinking freely at the only saloon in fifty miles. It's not like he bothered anyone while he drowned his sorrows with his friend Johnnie Walker.

Cassius turned around in the mud, rolling over like a fat pig. He propped himself up on his hands and looked back at Darryl. A man Cassius once considered family and a dear friend, but those times were years and uncountable numbers of drunken blackouts ago. At this point, the burly Kentuckian was little more than a pissed-off bartender.

“What the hell, Darryl? I didn’t do anything,” Cassius said while wiping the gritty mud off his face.

Darryl crossed his arms, resting his thick muscled forearms on his massive beer gut. The man snorted and spat out a large sling of dip spit, the brown liquid dripping off his salt and pepper beard and onto his dirty cotton apron.

“You owe me ten dollars, Cassius. Until you get me that, I'm cutting you off.” Darryl growled.

“Oh, come on, you know I'm good for it,” Cassius slurred as he stood and stumbled back toward the doors to the saloon.

“That ain’t true, and we both know it,” Darryl spat.

Darryl planted his meaty mitt on Cassius’ chest, stopping him from returning inside.

Cassius looked at Darryl confused, his inebriated mind not fully able to piece together that Darryl was not joking this time.

“Go home, Cassius,” Darryl demanded, pushing the doctor away from his saloon. Cassius stumbled and nearly fell into the mud yet again but grabbed hold of one of the posts holding up the saloon overhang.

“Fuck you, Darryl, this is how you treat your brother,” Cassius snapped before he got face to face with the rotund man.

“Back up before you regret what you're doing,” Darryl warned, choking the words out as he struggled to breathe while in range of Cassius’ rank breath and the unclean man's maggot-gagging odor.

“Make me you fat—,” Cassius started to say before Darryl suddenly brought his iron-like fist into his jaw.

Cassius’ head snapped back, and the world briefly went black as he collapsed back into the mud. If not for Cassius likely having more alcohol than blood inside him, that hit probably would have been incredibly painful. However, right now, his mind could not even register the sudden strike.

Before Cassius dredged himself from the dirt, Darryl slammed his booted foot onto his chest. Cassius gasped as the air escaped his lungs. Darly cruelly twisted his foot against his former brother-in-law's sternum, pressing him into the ground.

Cassius grabbed hold of Darryl’s boot and attempted to free himself. But no matter how hard he thrashed, Darryl did not move. Darryl was determined to send a message to the town drunk; Cassius’ raucous, drunken rants had been going on for months and, at this point, affected his bottom line.

A pang of guilt shot through Darryl as he watched Cassius squirm like a worm beneath his muddy boot. Darryl’s scowl shifted to contempt as he listened to the pitiful man he was stepping on like a bug squealing in pain.

“Cassius, look around,” Darryl said while gesturing at the growing crowd. “You are making a fool of yourself. I will give you one more warning—go home right now. If not for whatever little respect you have left, do it for Rose.”

“Don’t say her—” Cassius Started but was again cut off by Darryl.

“I will say my sister's name if I want to, you snake!” Darryl yelled. “The only reason I've tolerated you is because, for some reason, she loved you, and then you went off and killed her.”

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The crowd joined in on the treatment of their once well-to-do doctor. They had all seen what happened to Rose and enjoyed seeing what was happening to Cassius, even though the town reverend told them to forgive them.

Rose was the bright, shining star of the town. They mourned for months after her mangled body had been found in front of her house. None of them could imagine what demon had possessed Cassius to gut and behead her.

The image of Rose's shredded corpse was burned into Darryl's mind. He had half a mind to rip Cassius’s arms off and filet him just as he did to his sister and her unborn child. But the Sheriff would have no vigilantism on his watch, and the Sherriff was still insistent they had no proof Cassius killed her. Without the sheriff's constant threats of repercussions, the whole town would have already killed Cassius and fed him to hogs.

“This is your last warning. I don’t ever want to see you here ever again. If I do, I will bury you facing north, yah hear?” Darryl questioned, pressing his total weight onto Cassius' ribs.

Cassius' chest bowed inwards under the pressure. Darryl was a full head taller and twice Cassius’ weight and was making full use of that difference in his warning.

Cassius attempted to respond but only managed a wheeze. His body pumped trickles of adrenaline into him, giving him a fragmented understanding of his reality. He nodded in agreement as he could swear his ribs were another pound of pressure from caving in.

Darryl moved his heavy boot off Cassius, unrooting him from the ground. Cassius’s body heaved in desperation, pulling in air. Darryl spat his rank tobacco leaf onto his former brother-in-law's face and returned to his saloon. Knowing that Cassius was little more than a well-educated coward from out east, he would not get back up and actually try to hurt him, drunk or not.

Cassius sat up and looked around at the dozens of people around who wanted to watch the show, but in his blurry vision, hundreds of shifting ethereal people surrounded him.

“What the fuck do you all want,” Cassius yelled at the onlookers as he stood back up and opened his arms wide.

“Just a stupid drunk,” One of the people shouted.

“That and the rambling madman,” A woman chimed in.

“Bah, fuck all of you,” Cassius grumbled, “Go find your entertainment elsewhere. “This shows over.”

Most of the crowd did understand that their daily entertainment was over and departed. A few watched and heckled Cassius as he started to stumble down the main street and back to his house. The insults ranged from calling him a demon to insulting him about being soaked in silt.

Their venomous words hardly bothered Cassius anymore. The last year, they had treated him like a leaper, avoiding him at all costs. The stupid hill folk of this town hated him ever since Rose died, and these morons had the audacity to blame him for her death.

Cassius loved Rose with all his heart; hell, he left a successful practice in New York to follow the angelic redhead. None of them could understand what he felt when she died, nor the days since everything felt wrong. It was like a part of him had been ripped out.

Especially when he knew that he saw a large hulking creature slinking away when he found her body, but they did not care. He wasn’t to blame for her death; that thing was. Cassius wished he got a better view at it other than a fleeting glance; at least then, he would have something he could genuinely blame and not just sound crazy by ranting and raving about the beast in the woods.

None of that mattered; these hill folk still needed him and could not outright kill him. He was the only educated man and doctor in hundreds of miles of Marrion. Without him, they would have to go back to relying on those crazy old medicine women masquerading as witches who lived in the hollars.

Or they would desperately pray to their precious god for help like superstitious morons. Some good their prayers got them. No matter how hard they prayed to their apparently forgiving god, they still die, get sick, and get lost out in the woods.

All the town of Marrion was good for was breeding these superstitious and uneducated hill billies, and it was filled to the brim with them. Why Rose insisted on returning here when they married was beyond him; she just rambled on about how it was her roots, her home, but he wanted her to be happy, so a few years back, he moved here with her, a decision at this point he regretted. If they had stayed in New York, Rose would still be alive, and he would not be drinking multiple bottles of liquor a day to keep himself numb to the townsfolk's rants and raves.

Cassius stumbled over to the edge of town and was about to leave to follow the winding dirt road back to his clinic and home a few miles away when he heard his name being called from nearby. He followed the sound up the road with some difficulty, not questioning the distance he had to travel to locate the sound's origins.

An incredibly out-of-place man stood just off the edge of the gravel crossroads beneath a gnarled dying oak tree. He was clad in a pristine and well-pressed black suit, with a matching tie and all. The man looked like he was going to a funeral, his ghostly complexion matching his macabre attire. He looked Cassius up and down slowly; a coy, conniving grin grew on his face. The action looked unnatural for the man, as if upturning his lips was a painful knife to the gut.

“What the fuck do you want?” Cassius blurted out.