Mario's Pizzaria, Part I

She knew it would be her last opportunity to have him before he was taken away for an eight year stint upstate. Armed robbery. In truth he had been at the end of a 48 hour meth binge and rather out of sorts when one of the patrons at Mario's Pizzaria reached for a butter knife in lame effort to foil the unsteady and quite unplanned burglary that was going on before him. In a panic our man had grabbed a pizza slicer off of the closest table and held the circular blade to the hero's throat, demanding the night's earnings from the cash register and whatever change remained with the attempted hero after paying for his medium cheese pizza. His getaway was cut short, and he had only made it about two blocks before the police intercepted him staggering down the street, pizza slicer still in hand. She had called them while hiding with the bus boys in the kitchen.

And now it would be her last opportunity to have him. His lawyer had arranged a private room for their goodbye. The least his lawyer was able to do; though he had been able to lower the charges from hostage taking and assault with a deadly weapon to armed robbery, he had failed to take up the issue of his client's mental state before the jury, saying nothing of years of addiction or even mentioning the troubling results of initial psychoanalysis. Early schizophrenia.

These things all at once flew threw her head as she entered the small, windowless room at the back of the police station. His addiction and her own, his fragile mind soon to be rocked by prison, and of course her ultimate betrayal. She reasoned to herself that it would be for his own good, they would put him in a hospital, help him break his addiction and perhaps treat his developing mental illness. He knew she had made the call that would send him away for eight years. And still he had to have her.

No words were spoken as she advanced towards him. There was nothing to say. He grabbed her and threw her on to the interrogation table. She screamed. More of delight than pain, though pain is good she thought.

The Wolf, Part 2

I quickly returned to my desk and finished up what I had been working on; filing some business papers by date last modified. There were four more tall stacks of files on my desk that I was scheduled to tackle next. The work of a filing clerk is never done, but I could think of nothing other than finding The Wolf.

Out behind the office was my car, a 1939 Ford. I had saved up for four months to get that car- the entire time I had been a file clerk. It was only a few weeks old: jet black, chrome bumpers, and whitewall tires. Looking at it, I knew that after this coming encounter with The Wolf, the car was likely to be either totaled or vanished.

Starting up the car, I peeled out of the office driveway, spraying pebbles all over the beaters parked underneath the faded mural advertising Wonder Bread. I headed east, out of town--no wait! I needed to go home and pick up a few essentials before setting out to find The Wolf. Flinging the wheel around, I sent the car into a U-turn, tires screeching. There was a kid in the middle of the road, walking home from school no doubt. I didn't stop to see if he was still alive: just another casualty in The Wolf's game.

After a quick stop at home, it was off to the great unknown.

The Wolf, Part 1

It had been an otherwise normal day. I took my lunch at the Squeaky Wheel Diner around the corner from my office: Turkey club sandwich, black coffee, and a slice of apple pie. Leaving the diner, I buttoned my coat up to protect me against the cold as I lit my cigarette.

As I returned to the office, I sensed that something was about to go terribly wrong. I'd seen my fair share of trouble; two years in a muddy trench in western France, a stint in jail after robbing an old woman outside her church, and a series of failed business ventures had left me in dire straits. Finally, I had landed a job as a file clerk at a small architecture firm and was living in a small apartment on the outskirts of Kansas City. Missouri.

Immediately upon taking off my coat, a co-worker raced over to me looking very concerned.

"Hey Pete, a guy was just in here asking about you. Looked weird. Said his name was The Wolf. Said you'd know where to find him."

The Wolf.

So the game is back on, I thought to myself.