“Have you seen my fox?”

It wasn’t a very good question. Aiden wasn’t expecting an answer. But the man walking along the dirt at the side of the road in his boxers and one sock holding an open jar of peanut butter looked so much like the way Aidan felt, he had to slow down and ask. Neither of them stopped entirely.

The man shook his head. “No.” He scooped out some peanut butter and crouched to wipe it on the exposed roots of a laurel bush. His arms were scratched and bleeding. Aiden opened the glove box and pulled out a roll of gauze and gave it to the man. “I’ve been using steak,” he said. He rolled up the window and drove off. The man didn’t need a ride.

Three empty crosswalks later, a fox darted across the road. Aiden slammed on the brakes, scaring two more foxes out of a recycling bin overturned on the sidewalk. Tuna cans clattered into the street. Aiden stared after the foxes, trying to see where they’d gone, but the hedge they’d disappeared into wasn’t even quivering. He looked back at the road and a can rolling oblong in the wind. Tuna, he thought. He fished a piece of paper and half a pencil from his pocket and wrote Tuna Melt. The pencil point stabbed his thigh through the paper. Maybe open-face on rye. With a pickle.

The grocery store was quiet and cold and full of men drifting along, towed by their shopping carts. A little boy huddled in a cart between canned soup and hot dog packets stared up at Aiden and picked his nose. “Don’t do that, kiddo,” his father said, not looking away from the spectrum of orange juices. A fox trotted down the aisle, enormous tawny ears pricked, and stopped to sniff at a half-chewed burrito. Aiden and the boy stared at it, but all it did was give the foil wrapping a couple halfhearted licks before burrowing through the parmesan to the next aisle. The father looked around at the noise. “It’s okay, Daddy,” the boy said. “It was just a fennec.” Vulpes zerda, Aiden mouthed silently to the carton of orange juice he pulled from the shelf.

Only one checkout lane was open. The man behind the counter whistled in harmony with the scanner’s beeps as he rang up Aiden’s purchase: a six-pack of canned tuna, a box of cereal, a gallon of milk, a block of cheddar, a jar of pickles, orange juice, QuickMix salad, rye bread, and a bottle of tequila. “I.D. please?” Aiden flipped open his wallet and a photo fell out, landing facedown on the counter. Red fox (Vulpes vulpes) was scribbled on the back in smudged pencil. The checkout man nodded at the driver’s license and started whistling again as he put groceries into bags, hands swift and practiced. When he saw how Aiden was looking at him, he just shrugged. “Son,” he said, “I lost my fox a long time ago.”

Aiden drove home with his right foot on the gas and left foot hovering over the brake, racing the sun and his own nerves whenever something flickered across the road. Twilight was fox-time. He needed to be home before the ferns cooled and the shadows under the porch grew long and bruised. What time was sunset—six? Seven? It didn’t matter anyway, Aiden had thrown both his watch and his phone off the porch at a Doberman chasing two hoary foxes (Pseudalopex vetulus) in the back yard, as well as a flowerpot, hose nozzle, watering can, and both his shoes. His car radio didn’t show the time anymore, not since he’d smashed it with his fist three days ago when it had just happened and all the radio screamed was mystery, tragedy, catastrophe, orphaned sons and anguished husbands, ecstatic ayatollahs and devastated Mormons and what did the gay community have to say about this, Steve?

Something was happening further up the road. A couple cars had stopped and a small crowd was gathering, slowly and reluctantly. Aiden honked. A fox leaped out from underneath a parked car at the noise and ran.

“There goes another one!”

Aiden jumped, making the horn blare again. A man vaulted over the hood of the car ahead, face hidden behind a paintball mask. He wore thick gloves on each hand, but he’d still managed to jam two fingers through the trigger guard of the paintball gun hoisted over his shoulder. “Aw, god damn it.” The fox had disappeared. “God damn it.”

A few others, all masked like the first, lowered their guns and slowed their crouched run, slipping between the cars like leaking oil. The wind plucked at the bandanas they used to cover their heads. “Shit, man.” One fired a shot at the ground, fingers barely twitching against the trigger, splattering the asphalt with green paint. A dark scraggle-tailed fox started from its hiding space behind the wheel of a parked truck, muzzle misted with a spray of green. “There!” yelled the shooter, lunging forward and raising his gun. “There, there!”

Aiden wrenched open the car door. It slammed full into the shooter’s running knees, and the rest of his body followed in a rush, face mask rebounding from the window with a crack. He lay on his back for a moment, stunned, while Aiden tried to figure out what to do to get the explosion out of his chest—scream or spit or strangle or crush—but the world froze with a click.

“You fucks!”

The gun the minivan driver held didn’t shoot in color. Tears of rage spilled down his fat cheeks. “You motherfuckers!”

“Whoa, man, just—”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Spit flew from his mouth and landed on his tie. Behind him, a soccer ball and a pair of small purple shin guards fell out of the open minivan door.

The paintballers stood with their arms out, loose and beseeching, paintball guns pointing at the sky. The one on the ground rose as cautiously as he could, clutching at his knees and trying not to stagger. “Dude, take it easy, there’s—”

“Drop your guns!”

The paintballers began to move gingerly, as though they’d already been shot.

“Drop your guns!

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

 The guns clattered as they hit the ground.

“Dude,” said one, “it’s only paint.”

The gun never wavered, but the voice of the man holding it did. “You people are sick. Sick. Get out of here.” The paintballers glanced at each other warily. “Get out!” They took off running down the block, one of them limping.

The minivan driver lowered the gun and breathed heavily as he straightened his tie, unaware of the silent crowd leaning out of their cars or stopped on the sidewalk. He simply turned, put the soccer ball and shin guards back into the minivan, climbed into the driver’s seat, and shut the door. When the traffic didn’t immediately move, he honked.

Aiden leaned back and shut his own car door. His seat belt was still on. The milk container was sweating a damp patch into the upholstery already; this was taking too long. He could see the traffic unknotting ahead and it was still taking too long. The scent was fading from the sheets and the wrinkles in the clothes on the bathroom food were growing stale. If there weren’t a man with a handgun in the next car over, he’d be leaning on the horn. Futilely.

Aiden rolled the window down as he drove, squinting against the sun. It felt good against his side, and the air cooled the anxious sweat that stuck his shirt to his skin, but the empty rushing highlighted the silence of the world. Nobody sang or giggled. The few remaining voices were too gruff, too heavy and cadence-less, all hushed in mourning and despair and shock. Only a few foxes flickered at the side of the road now. They must be taking siesta, curled in their dens with tails over their noses, all shades of rust and earth and snow.

As Aiden pulled into the gravel drive across from his condo, an arctic fox (Alopex lagopus) trotted out from behind a woodpile. Two kits tumbled after, floppy white paws noodling beneath them, snapping at each other’s ears and yelping. They paraded up the street, ignoring the car that slowed to a crawl and gave them such a wide berth it mounted the sidewalk. The trio turned right at a mailbox and bounded up a short flight of steps to where a man held the door of his house open. His smile was lost in his beard.

Aiden’s heart disappeared for a moment, only to be replaced by one twice its size, pounding at his throat. The kits stopped to chew experimentally on the laces of a pair of sneakers by the door. “Come on,” the man said, “don’t drool on the mat. Bluey’s on. What would you like for a snack?”

The kits stopped their gnawing and scrambled over each other to be the first inside, yapping and growling. The man shut the door behind them, making sure their tails weren’t in the way.

Aiden gasped for air. His hands spasmed around the steering wheel. Then he flung himself out. The pickle jar cracked with the ferocity of his grocery grabbing and leaked a trail of pickle juice all the way to his condo door and through the kitchen. “Oh fuck,” he whispered, chest lacerated with hope. “Oh please, fuck, please, fuck, fuck, where’s the can opener?” Mayonnaise, eggs for hard-boiling, celery, dill, knife for cutting, bread for toasting, fork for mashing. Get out the hand-painted blue plate for the tuna melt and the matching bowl for the milk. Nonfat. The cheddar sizzled in the toaster oven, burning to black on the heating coils where it dripped. Then everything in the kitchen lurched when the neighbor’s door slammed.

“Baby!” the neighbor called. His voice filtered through the wall, clear and loud. Something clattered as he stumbled over it. “Baby, you gotta… I’ve got…” Something else got knocked over. There was silence for a moment as he righted it. “I’m angry!”

If he got louder, he’d scare away the foxes. Aiden threw out yesterday’s steak package and opened the back door. His neighbor lurched outside at the same moment in pajama pants and socks and bloodshot eyes. Smells of vodka and weed wafted from his apartment. He nodded blearily at Aiden. “Hey.” He gestured at a hookah smoldering on his wood-and-cinderblock table. “You can’t have any,” he explained, not unkindly. “It’s not for you.”

“I don’t think foxes can smoke hookah.”

The neighbor glared at him. “‘I don’t think foxes can smoke hookah,’” he mimicked, waving his arms in Aiden’s face. “I don’t think foxes can fuck you, you fucking twat! You… it’s not for you. I know what. And no chocolate either. Chocolate-man. You think I don’t know? You think I don’t know? I know exactly.”

He sat down heavily on an inflatable armchair. It squealed under his weight. “S’not that. We were going to drive to Mexico. Through TJ. See the ruins, swim with the… the fish. The dolphins. Mota.” The hookah pipe fumbled to his hand and snaked to his mouth. “Mota. Mota will work. I was going to ask. They smell, right? Everything?” He rested his head in his arms. “Good sense of smell.”

Aiden watched the pipe drop from his neighbor’s fingers. A thin gold ring rolled out of his slackened fist, hitched on the tiny stone clamped in the prongs, and settled on the table. A moment later, he snored wetly. The glow in the hookah’s foil-wrapped tip faded. 

Foxes hated smoke. Aiden’s fox did, at least. He picked the hookah up and brought it into his neighbor’s condo, pushing pizza boxes and sandwich wrappers to the floor so he could set it on the table. His neighbor was harder to move, but Aiden grabbed him under the armpits and hauled him inside, dragging the inflatable chair along for the ride. He left the man snoring on a pile of laundry and shut the door. He left the ring outside on the table.

The tuna melt was done toasting. Aiden levered it out of the toaster oven with a knife and carefully placed it in the center of the plate, then flanked it with two pickle slices. He brought it outside and set it in the last of the fading light on the porch alongside the bowl of milk. If any raccoons tried to eat it this time, he had the broom ready by the side of the door.

A cold sandwich was all he needed. He scraped the last of the tuna out of the bowl, piled it haphazardly on a slice of rye, and crammed it into his mouth one-handed while he scrolled through his music. It was time for Debussy; he’d already played his best Strauss and Tchaikovsky. He opened the windows and let Claire de Lune seep out into the evening, then settled at the table with the remains of his sandwich and the bottle of tequila, afraid he’d scare the foxes—his fox—away if he sat outside.

The air thickened from gold to red to purple. Trees swayed and shushed in the wind and the ferns rustled with life. Shadows snuffled and dodged through the edge of Aiden’s vision as he strained to see in the growing dark. Sometimes he felt as though all their hidden eyes were upon him, winking charcoal and red as they followed the shot glass from table to mouth, ears pricking to catch the clink of glass on wood. Other times, he felt ignored, so peripheral to their wild agendas he might as well not be there at all. They barked shrilly to each other, laughing, and accompanied the opening strains of Syrinx with vixen wails. Maybe they were talking about the males, the dog-foxes, whom they now must outnumber a hundred to one, or the men they’d left behind. Maybe they weren’t talking at all, just calling to make noises of being alive.

Flies buzzed from the untouched tuna melt as the air cooled and stars emerged through the suburban haze, but Aiden left the porch door wide and let the tequila keep him warm. The carpet was warm too.

He was cold when something woke him. Subtle sounds and the smells of redwood and wet granite moved around his head. Everything looked shapeless and gray but the glint of copper that shifted through the shadows of the room. Aiden closed his eyes again, inviting the dream to fade, but it licked at his eyelids, warm and wet. He reached out his hand and felt a nibble on his thumb, gentle but solicitous, as though implying he needed grooming. Then there was a tight circling, a moist-nosed sigh, and the tickling of soft, thick, red fur in Aiden’s arms as his fox settled against his heart.