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Flash Fiction

Old Pike Mulligan

Vincent Mannings
issue seven

Long ago, as a little boy, Mulligan had heard the calls of wolves when camping in the woods with Grandpa, and now an entire pack was howling in the distance, whooping it up in the snow with the fussing and the yapping, and he figured that these magnificent animals must be spread clear across a couple of miles, their minds perfectly focused and their snouts held high, nostrils flared, sniffing the cold air and taking in the good clean scent of his wound and, drunk and bleeding, he began to think of those times with Grandpa, about the summer hikes up and through the forest and along the wild goat trails, about the fishing in the lake, the camping out at dusk, about the cooking of the day’s catch above the gathered kindling, when together they’d watch the stars and the rising moon and Grandpa would drink a can of beer and he’d ask his grandson what this wonderful world might have in store and the boy would laugh and he’d point a stick at the moon and he’d wave it at the stars and that’s where I will be, Grandpa, that’s where I will be, for I have so decided, he would eagerly reply, smiling, shrieking, transfixed by the grown-up’s beer and thinking what a brave and dashing spaceman he would surely prove to be, an explorer of the moon perhaps or a whiskey runner between the planets or maybe an interstellar buccaneer, and he’d shriek again and then they’d listen to the wolves. But they were louder now, and here.