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    Among Wolves
    Among Wolves
    Among Wolves
    Ebook51 pages42 minutes

    Among Wolves

    By Scott O'Connor

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    About this ebook

    Midway through his summer vacation, eight year-old Huddie Blaylock suddenly realizes the reason for his recent, nagging paranoia: his normal, if slightly dysfunctional family has been replaced by imposters. Possessing the inflexible determination of the young and/or mentally ill, he embarks on a decade-long, cross-country search for the truth that will carry him through second-rate amusement parks, nightmarish nursing homes, 24-hour adult novelty shops and the wilds of Midwestern suburbia.

    "O'Connor is one to watch." -- The Los Angeles Times

    "Funny and harrowing...A vigilant search for belonging." -- Natalie Nichols, Los Angeles CityBeat

    "Mesmerizes...O'Connor knows how to spin a tale." -- Judy Moffett, Small Spiral Notebook

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScott O'Connor
    Release dateJan 28, 2011
    ISBN9780974847924
    Among Wolves
    Author

    Scott O'Connor

    SCOTT O'CONNOR is the author of A Perfect Universe: Ten Stories and the novels Half World and Untouchable, which was awarded the 2011 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Fiction. His stories have been shortlisted for the Sunday Times/EFG Story Prize and cited as Distinguished in Best American Short Stories. Additional work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Zyzzyva, The Rattling Wall, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He teaches creative writing at Cal State Channel Islands.

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      Book preview

      Among Wolves - Scott O'Connor

      AMONG WOLVES

      A STORY BY SCOTT O’CONNOR

      Published by The Swannigan & Wright Literary Matter.

      Henrickers Swannigan: Publisher and Co-Founder

      Oscar Wright: Publisher and Co-Founder [deceased]

      Copyright 2011 Scott O’Connor

      Also by Scott O'Connor:

      Untouchable (Published by Tyrus Books)

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in review.

      This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters herein and any persons, living or dead, is unintentional.

      This book is also available in a print edition.

      Book and cover designed by the author.

      Smashwords Edition, January, 2011

      ONE

      Here among wolves, here among pigs. Here among dogs and pirates. Here among dragons. Here among ghosts. Here among screaming children I sneak my first cigarette of the day.

      I smoke it up in my head, so no one can see. I’ve taught myself to drag and inhale and exhale inside the big, fuzzy head, without raising a paw, without ever having to touch the cigarette.

      Smoking in costume, on the midway, in sight of the visitors, is frowned upon. Is obviously not the best idea if you want to keep your job. Your job as Diggity Dawg. So I smile at the kids and wave at the kids and bend to the sides, left and right, left and right, in a rough approximation of diggity dancing, while inside my giant head I exhale smoke in tiny streams through the holes in my sad, dopey eyes. No one’s the wiser.

      While I’m smoking and dancing, left and right, left and right, I keep an eye out for him. Always looking.

      That could be him, standing over by the pay phones. The tall older gentleman, with the lean, military build. With the brush cut, with the neatly-trimmed mustache, with the aviator sunglasses. With the pipe in his mouth.

      I move towards him to get a better look and the cigarette slips. It falls into the seam where my dog head meets my dog body.

      This is not good. My dog head’s filling with smoke. I shake both my heads, one inside the other. I box my floppy ears as if my entire head is on fire.

      Everything’s going gray. I’m choking on the smoke. A cough sneaks up from my chest and out of my mouth. One of the kids in the crowd stops screaming and turns and looks up at me. Smoke is coming out my ears. I can see it curling back around into my rapidly diminishing line of sight. The kid’s about to scream again, a new scream, a scream about the smoke coming out of Diggity Dawg’s ears. I hold a fuzzy finger up to my mouth and blow. Shhhhhh. A stream of smoke exits the head’s mouth hole with the shush. The kid’s eyes go wide. He takes a deep breath, holds it, and screams bloody murder.

      Parents turn. Kids turn. Wolves and pigs and dragons turn. I’m wobbling around, lightheaded, nearly blind. The kids run out of the way, afraid I’ll topple. It must look like I’m about to explode, like I’ve got a bomb with a sizzling fuse in my head.

      A hand on my shoulder. One of the pirates. He grabs hold of my right paw and drags me off the midway, away from the kids. I can’t see a thing. I’m staggering drunkenly, twisting and trailing smoke like a failing plane. I try to find the man by the pay phones. The man with the pipe. I shake my heads again, moving smoke around, trying to clear my vision. The pirate is pulling and it’s hard to keep my feet.

      As we get to the door of the office, I find him again. Over by the pay phones, watching the commotion, tapping the stem of his pipe against his bottom teeth.

      It’s not him. I thought it might be, but it’s not.

      The pirate pulls me into the office and slams the door behind us.

      I don’t really know what he’d look

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