From his eyes shone a flaming, baleful light.

The rotisserie chicken spun in lazy circles as Clyde drooled onto the linoleum floor. He hadn’t eaten in three days and the lemon pepper flavored skin called to him with a mighty cry as the skin sizzled.

He could feel the pitiful outline of three dimes in his front pocket. Not enough to even buy a nibble of that delicious entreaty of meat and salvation.

Clyde had barely been out of the mountains for a week and already he knew he had made a grave mistake. It wasn’t much to live off squirrels and pine needle tea, but it was better than looking like Sasquatch suspended in motion.

It was those wretched bounty hunters. They crushed his lean-to and stole his supplies before ferreting back into town. Clyde had followed their clumsy trail through the ferns and came upon the town of Abendale. Truly, in another age it would have been called a village. Maybe even an outpost. Now? It was called “The Home of the Northernmost 7-11.”

A shuffling gait announced the presence of another. “Hey man, you’re gonna have to buy something or uh… get out,” the scratchy voice of a young man trying not to piss himself snapped Clyde out of his fugue state. “Please…”

Clyde stared the gangly, freckled young man down, “Hmm. Fine,” he said before snatching the chicken out of the case and walking out with it.

“Hey! You..can’t do that,” the voice behind him trailed off as Clyde stepped back into the frozen landscape.