Adam dropped the gas can on the marble floor. The hollow thump of the red plastic container echoed through the expansive foyer. The house–Adam hated the word “mansion”–was around six thousand square feet. It had taken eight 5-gallon gas cans and four trips to the Exxon station, so far, to cover enough of the place in accelerant to convince Adam there would be nothing left but ash.

He’d used the last gallon dousing the tall Christmas tree that was in the center of the foyer. The fuel had dripped onto the gifts below, soaking the festive wrapping paper. The presents were for his wife and his twin boys. Ex-wife. Adam still hadn’t gotten used to that.

A single gift, distinguishable by the wrapping paper that didn’t match the rest, had his name on it. The small package had come in the mail a couple of days before.

To Dad. From Tyler, Trey, Sara and Rick.

She had the audacity to put that assholes name on it. He could tell himself that the gift was an olive branch. That his ex-wife was letting him know that just because she’d bailed on their decade long marriage for someone who hadn’t lost all their money, she and the boys still thought about him. Adam could believe that she wanted to be a part of his life…

Bullshit. She wanted to hurt him. She wanted him to see his sons’ names next to their new step daddy’s name. The gift was far from a peace offering. It was a sharp blade that was meant to stake him straight in the heart. It was the cherry on top of the divorce papers that finalized the reality his wife and two boys were a part of a new family.

He never gave two thoughts about opening the gift.

For a moment, Adam considered just getting on with it and tossing a match into the tree and just falling into the flaming fir needles. There would at least be a joy in seeing the flames reach up to the foyer’s chandelier as he burned to death.

The fifty-thousand dollar chandelier that his ex-wife had just had to have.

He hated that crystal-laden abomination. Sara wanted a “statement” for guests to see when they entered their home. As if the outside of the large house itself wasn’t overly impressive as well as the fleet of high-end luxury cars she insisted on being on display around the front fountain when she had her friends over. But then, as things started going to hell and the money was drying up, he and Sara had dozens of fights about money beneath that gaudy chandelier. And during every one of those arguments about wasted finances, Adam couldn’t help but look up at that overpriced lamp and pray that it would fall and crush his witch of a wife.

It would be a deserving reward to watch the flames weaken the plaster around the gold canopy holding up the chandelier. It would be a fitting end to watch it come down and end his world. And it would be satisfying to think that some cop would explain to his ex-wife that his burnt remains had been found under the charred skeleton of her prized chandelier.

But there was something he hated even more than his wife and that tasteless chandelier. Something he kept locked away down below his feet. Something he would much rather watch burn alongside of him.

***

Adam stepped outside into the back of his house. Living in Wyoming was like living in a postcard. The Bighorn Mountains were practically in his back yard. Mule deer were a common sight around the property and the occasional moose would make the picturesque appearance. Adam loved that there were seasons in Wyoming. Seasons that all felt perfectly fitting of their respective reputations. The summers were warm, fall and spring were cool, and winter was cold, but none of them were extreme. The big, expensive house full of expensive shit was Sara’s dream. Setting roots in Cody, Wyoming had been Adam’s.

His backyard was an insult to the natural beauty that surrounded his home. It was a shrine to more expensive crap that Sara just had to have. They needed a place to entertain during the warmer months, she said. There was a pool that was built to look like a pond with a grotto made from real rocks she’d had shipped in from god knows where. Adam had tried to get his wife to understand that there were countless ponds and lakes in spitting distance of their home. But she was insistent on manufacturing her own false idea of a nature in their backward. It came out looking like a small resort pool with enough chaise lounges for fifty people though none of her dozen pool parties she threw every summer brought more than a couple of dozen people. She’d even had an outdoor kitchen installed for Adam to grill up steaks, burgers, and hot dogs for barbeques but they always just ended up ordering pizza and they whole thing went unused.

***

There were closer places to his house to fill up on fuel given that the Exxon station he was driving towards was about fifteen miles away. It was a small, two-gas pump operation that was more of a bait shop that just happened to sell gas. But it was secluded from town and Adam liked that. It was void of the kind of prying eyes that might get suspicious of a guy making multiple trips to fill up a bunch of red gas cans in a single day. He also didn’t want to risk running into anyone he knew who might start asking questions about what he was up to with all that fuel. It did work in his favor that Cody, Wyoming was the kind of place where a lot of the residents lived on expansive ranches that might require work trucks, ATVs, and a fleet of mowers and weed eaters. So, stocking up on fuel wasn’t exactly taboo for the area, but he knew that he was going to be pushing the limits of normal gas consumption, even by local standards. Maybe it was paranoia but he was positive that the teenage girl working the register shot him a quizzical look as he paid up on his last trip. As Adam pulled up to one of the pumps, he was hoping there’d been a shift change and a new worker would be manning the counter.

As reached in the bed of his pick up and pulled out the single gas can he brought with him (one would be enough to finish up the job) he peaked towards the shop window. The teenage girl was still there. And now he was sure she was staring at him too much curiosity in her eyes.

The bell above the door ringed has he walked into the station. Adam already had his wallet out in hopes the transaction would be swift and he’d be on his way.

“That’ll be $21.78,” said the cashier.

Adam dished out two twenties from his wallet, the last remaining dollars of what was once a large fortune. He handed them over.

The cashier pecked at the buttons on a cash register that was old enough to have at least twenty years on her. The change drawer shot out and tapped her on the hip. She fished out his changed and slapped it on the counter without counting it out.

Adam swooped up the bill and left the coins. Technically, he couldn’t afford to turn his nose up at a penny but money troubles were tomorrow’s problem and he didn’t intend to be around for it.

As Adam turned to make his exit the cashier finally gave in to her curiosity. “What’s with all the gas cans? You burning down your house?”

Adam stopped in his tracks. He tossed a look over his shoulder. He studied the girl’s blank face looking for any clue that she was joking or genuinely concerned he was an arsonist. Unfortunately, like most kids her age, social media had robbed her the ability to emote on his antiquated plane and he was just too damn old to try and crack the code of Gen Z socialization.

Adam turned back. “Can I grab a pack of cigarettes?”

The cashier help her silent position for a moment, as if she might demand an answer in exchange for the cigarettes. “What brand?” she finally asked.

“Cheapest ones you got.” Adam threw the last of his net worth on the counter.

The cashier reached behind her and pulled a pack off the tobacco rack behind her. She tossed them on the counter. Adam grabbed them up and stashed them in his shirt pocket without even looking at what brand they were. He turned to rush out of the store. The bell rang once again as he pushed the door open.

“Sir,” the cashier almost shouted out.

Adam could have ignored it but he didn’t. He was sure he wasn’t looking for anyone to talk him out of what he was doing, but he couldn’t help but look back at the young girl–the girl with a hell of a lot more life ahead of her than Adam was looking toward.

She was holding out a couple of dollars. “You want your change?”

“Keep it.” Adam watched her stuff the money into her pocket as he turned around and bolted to his truck.

***

Adam pushed the truck just five miles over the speed limit. He was in a hurry but didn’t need a cop pulling him over and prolonging his life any longer. He was anxious to get back to his house and extinguish his existence. Something about that cashier probing into his business left him with something uncomfortable cramping up in his gut. Something was eating at him. He didn’t think it was fear or doubt, but something similar.

He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the pack of cigarettes. He’d bought the pack in a panic just to get the cashier off of his back. He hadn’t actually smoked a cigarette in almost a decade, but now he couldn’t help but figure ‘what the hell?’ Kicking the habit had been easy. But that was back when most things came easy. For a long time, obstacles were nothing for Adam. His every desire was at his fingertips. But that was before the rot had set in.

He slid one of the cancer sticks–that’s what his wife had called them– into his mouth. He fished the small book of matches he’d been carrying around all morning out his other shirt pocket. The thin cardboard of the matchbook was a little damp with sweat.

Adam rolled down the windows in the truck. It was amazing how the habits of a smoker just seemed to turn back on. He pulled one of the matches and went to strike it. Something stopped him. It was one of those primeval survival instincts that screamed an alarm of danger.

The smell of gasoline.

His clothes weren’t soaked in it but there was enough of it on him that striking the match might send him up in flames. Adam had determined the best course of action for his life was to just burn it down, but it would be a waste to accidentally light himself on fire now, speeding down the road in his Ford. Especially after all the work he’d done that morning covering his house in fuel. And he still had the basement to douse. And those cursed things decaying away down there.

Adam put the cigarettes away but kept the windows down. He let the Wyoming hair fill his truck. He tried to capture all of it in his lungs.

***

The basement of the house was Adam’s sanctuary. Though it wasn’t a set-in-stone house rule, Sara and the kids had rarely ever gone down there. It had always been understood that the basement was an escape for Adam, but he never abused that understanding. He was never the guy who needed to hide from his family in some ‘man cave’ with a ‘No wife or kids allowed’ sign on the door. The basement was just his place. The fruits of his labor.

The carpeted steps soaked up the gasoline that Adam poured from the final gas can as he made his way down the stairs. He’d descended these steps countless times, many of them to go and see his most prized possession, but this time was different. With each step lined with the accelerant of his doom, he was reminded of the day he found the very things he was going to destroy.

The horns.

He’d gotten into cave diving. It was a cheap hobby for a kid that had dropped out of college with zero ideas of where to go in life. Going underground had just felt natural. It had been in some cave system in Kentucky, part of the Appalachian mountains, when he’d stumbled across the black horns.

Adam couldn’t remember what friends he was with or much else about that day, just the horns. He’d come across a very narrow hole. There was faint recollection of one of his pals telling him the tunnel was too small to go down. And that would have been more than enough to push Adam to go for it. Adam was never a big guy and so any inclination towards the idea of sports were pretty much dead on arrival by time he hit high school. There was never an opportunity for him to be the star quarterback or make the game winning basket. The chip on his shoulder was gargantuan by his graduation. Adam was in a constant state of feeling like he had something to prove. That was the draw of the subterranean hobby. It was perfect for a smaller guy and gave him ample opportunity to be the best at something. He was also a college drop out and rudderless. Caving offered up some purpose–a reason to get off the couch. Whatever fueled Adam, he was determined to challenge every cave to take its best shot at killing him. Suffocating to death while wedged in a claustrophobic tomb between two rocks below the rest of the world seemed as good as any other way to die. Almost everyone ended up below ground anyway.

Cremation was an option too.

The basement was just a hallway with three rooms–Adam’s office was to the left, a game room to right, and the vault was at the end of the hall. The vault would be his final destination, the end of the road. He kept the fuel flowing until he got halfway down the hall, right outside the double doors that led to his game room. Above the doors was a large wooden sign he’d had custom-made for the room that read ‘Black Horns Saloon.’ He set the can down and pushed the doors open.

Black Horns Saloon was more than just a typical man cave with a mini fridge and a TV surrounded by old couches that were a dime a dozen in any given suburb. It was Adam’s present to his younger self who never dreamed of having any sort of wealth. His youth had been nothing by hand-me-downs followed by a line of minimum wage jobs just to keep his car fueled up and fast food on the TV tray. So, when success hit and the money started flowing in, he and Sara started talking about building their dream home. Sara naturally took the reins and started building her dream house, but Adam was quick to make sure that he carved out a little space for himself.

The Black Horns Saloon was fully stocked bar in the center of the room. It was a smaller replica of the one from “Cheers”, one of his favorite TV shows. There was a home theater on the left side of the room with enough seating for him to host a fight night or Nuggets game for over a dozen of his buddies. He’d finally determined his twin boys were old enough to join in on the last Super Bowl party he’d thrown in the saloon. They didn’t even make it to halftime before zonking out.

The walls were covered in the same caliber of cliched sports memorabilia that a lot of middle-aged millionaires accumulated for their own high-end entertainment rooms. But considering that Adam’s vast wealth had started in sports betting, he felt he had more of a justified reason to be a cliche. Most of the pieces came from the games he’d made big bets on and come out on top. He’d always come out on top.

His favorite piece was a signed football jersey from a quarterback for a college he’d never stepped foot in. The kid didn’t even make it two seasons into the pros. For all Adam knew, that kid who signed the jersey was selling Chevy’s back in his hometown with cheesy commercials themed around his glory gridiron days. The signature was worthless. But that was the game that changed everything.

Once upon a time, things had been tough. Adam was jumping from job to job, scraping by to live on peanut butter sandwiches (jelly was luxury) and keep the rent mostly paid. One of his coworkers had turned him on to placing bets on sports. Adam didn’t remember which one out of the countless many, more than likely some guy that was just smart enough to deep-fry the french fries, but they had a cousin that ran a small book out of his mom’s garage. Adam didn’t know shit about sport but he’d occasionally get lucky enough to get ahead of the rent for a couple of months. That was until the horns started speaking to him.

There was no audible voice. More like a concentrated, cerebral feeling. Adam could only compare it to shooting a basketball and knowing that everything executed perfectly and the shot was a sure thing. It had been that feeling to place a big bet on that mediocre quarterback from that underdog college. Back then, the horns just set on a bookshelf in that drab one-bedroom apartment. Adam couldn’t recall how he knew it was the horns that pushed him to make that bet. But the best hit, hit huge. It was only a few months later that Adam moved on to bigger bookmakers and started making real money. He transferred the horns into an old Adidas shoe box and began stashing them in the back of his closet.

Adam hopped up on the bar and reached for a bottle of anything. He came up with a bottle of Jack Daniels that was three-fourths full. He cracked it open and took a swig. He fiddled with the cap in his hand as he took a second gulp of the whiskey. He cocked his arm up and tossed the bottle cap towards a billiards table on the far side of the room, trying to sink it into a corner pocket. The cap took a couple of bounces but came up short.

Adam polished off the bottle and took a long look at the empty amber glass as if he had something to say to it. He chuckled to himself. Sitting there on the bar, Adam couldn’t ignore that he’d flushed his own fair share of money down the drain. Money he desperately needed back. He’d been sad when he first entered the room knowing that some real important pieces in sports history were going to proverbially go down the with the ship. But now, Adam felt nothing but a shameful disdain for all of it–a room full of shit he didn’t need. The bank was coming for it tomorrow. But none of it would be here. The Black Horns Saloon was his fifty-thousand dollar chandelier. More like a million dollars. A million dollars worth of shit. Soon to be zero dollars worth of ash. The debt collectors were welcome to whatever they could salvage.

The empty whiskey bottle met the back glass encasing that first jersey with a violent crash. Shattered glass flew through the air like confetti on New Years. He grabbed another bottle and chunked it at a wall filled him home run balls from a dozen different World Series. A euphoric jolt of life zipped through his body from the destruction. Bottle after bottle started flying through the air, smashing into the many pieces of his once-prized collections. The fury couldn’t have lasted more than a minute, but the room was nothing but broken glass and the strong aroma of liquor when it came to an end. Adams’s chest rose and fell as he fought for breath. A smile escaped him knowing that once the flames hit the Black Horns Saloon, nothing would survive them.

Back out in the hallway Adam picked the gas can back up. There would be just enough to get to his destination. His office door stared at him. Adam stood silent for a moment, contemplating whether or not it needed a splash of gas. It wasn’t like he needed to make sure any incriminating documents or hard drives needed to be eradicated. His entire professional life had been completely legal. All of it was on the up-and-up.

Debatable.

Adam cleared half-a-million in two years of betting on sports. It was around this time that he bought his first home, in cash, and the idea of taking the horns on a test drive on the stock markets came to him. His first million came in just the first month. It was long after that Adam bought a safe, not for his money, but for the horns.

Part of him was a little embarrassed that his financial ruination had come from an anticlimactic run of bad investments and not some fraudulent scandal. If he’d been some tax-evading crook caught with his hand in the company cookie jar to fund some debaucherous lifestyle of drugs and women, his suicide would make more sense to the people who’d wonder why he did it. Instead, he would be seen as just another cowardly chump jumping out the skyscraper window because a bit of bad luck drained him dry, too afraid to go back to the life of the average Joe. Once you’ve lived on the other side of a 9 to 5 life, there was really no going back.

Adam spit on the office door and he felt that was enough. There was nothing on the other side of that door but a reminder that he’d once had some value. He tipped the gas can and made sure he poured where he left off, connecting the lines of the accelerant.

The door to the vault had cost him a pretty penny. The whole vault itself hadn’t come cheap, but Adam had gone the extra mile, taking no chances, with the door to his most prized possession. It looked like a normal, wooden bedroom door you’d fine in any home, but it was infused with bulletproof steel. To access the vault, there was a key pad that required a nine-digit code. This unlocked the next security feature, a biometric fingerprint reader that required a scan of every digit on Adam’s left hand. The final step was a retinal scanner, something Adam thought only existed in movies until he jokingly asked about one to the guy he’d hired to design and build the vault. It was another extravagant expense that Adam couldn’t help but cringe at now that he was dead broke with nothing but a half gallon of gasoline left to his name.

Sara had only ever asked him once what was in his vault. Adam joked that it was a collection of vintage Playboy magazines. She never loved his sense of humor. He assured that the room was just a secure storage space for his gun collection. Sara hated guns and Adam knew she wouldn’t press much about the subject any further. She definitely wouldn’t argue about the overkill on the security feature with the boys running around the house. In all honesty, Adam didn’t have much of an affinity for guns either, but he bought a small collection to store in the vault just in case Sara ever did get suspicious enough to want to see inside.

The room was a perfect circle. The ceiling and floor was ringed around by an annular lighting. A small arsenal of weaponry that Adam knew nothing about wrapped around the entirety of the cylindrical wall. It all came together like something out of a spy thriller where the secret agent pulled on the right hammer in their garage to trigger the false back of the tool rack to spread open and reveal a cache of deadly weapons. For Adam, it was all show, a reason to justify building the vault to his friends and family. There wasn’t even any ammo on his entire property. He wouldn’t even know how to load any of the guns if there were.

On the far side of the wall, there was a display case of handguns. Most of the guns were antiques, more assets on a list that the bank was coming for. There were a few modern pieces, but all of them were real. Except for one. In the top left of the display there was a pair of old Schofield revolvers. The one on top was the genuine article, just like the ones used by the James-Younger gang. At least that’s what the gun dealer had told him. But the revolver just below it, thought it looked identical to the other, was a fake. Adam reached down to the fake revolver and pulled back the hammer on it.

Behind Adam, the small circle in the center of the floor popped up, a latch having been activated. He walked over to the center of the room. He sat the gas can down and took a seat next to it. He lifted the hatch and reached down inside of the small hole to retrieve a small box. Despite the fact that he was sitting in a room that had cost him deep into the six-digits neighborhood, he still kept the horns in the old Adidas shoe box he’d put them in twenty-some-odd years ago.

A deep breath escaped Adam as he threw open the lid of the fragile cardboard box like he was ripping off a band-aid. He forced himself to look inside.

The horns were still there.

There was always a catch in his throat when he laid eyes on them. He had to remind himself to breath. The pair of horns were both about a foot long and a shade of black that was darker than anything Adam had ever seen. Just touching them made Adam feel like his finger might just pass on through, sucking him into a pitch dark black hole. A subtle spiral ran from the tip to the base of each horn. They were hauntingly beautiful once. But now, less so.

For no reason that Adam could figure, they’d begun to decay. To rot. One of the horns had rotted down enough to break into two pieces. The other had a crack running the length of it that was threatening to split the horn right down the middle. Their surfaces were cracked and pieces had started to fall off. This had all started about six months back. And whatever magic they’d possessed, had died with them.

Despite a lot of research, he could never match them to any animal. He’d even reached out to a couple of local zoologists and they were baffled by the horns. But that was before Adam knew what they could do. Before he locked them up. Before they’d given him everything. Before the rot began to take it all back.

There had been a life before the horns. But that was all a distant memory for Adam. Those years felt repressed–buried away like the horns in the shoe box. Not that there was any great trauma in his life to run from. His upbringing had been middle class and void of any real tragedy capable of long term emotional damage. The most abuse he was subjected to in the home was a strict 9 p.m. curfew that lasted until he turned eighteen. His parents were still together. His older sister and younger brother were both still alive and healthy with families of their own. His had been an extremely pleasant home life. But after finding the horns, his life had been something beyond any measurable pleasure. Everything had been so otherworldly, so incredible. So much so that he guessed he must have just let all those early memories fade to the back of his mind until they simply vanished into an abstract neurological haze. It was only now that the horns were sitting in his lap that he wanted to remember a time before them.

Adam pushed the gas can over. The remaining fuel splashed across the cold, metal floor and began to flow in the direction of the vault’s entrance.

Adam brought his index finger up to the horn that was still whole. A small piece broke off and fell onto the bottom of the shoe box. It was strange. Technically speaking, there had never been any life inside the horns since they’d come into his possession. They’d already detached from the skull of whatever animal, or creature, they’d originally belonged to. But Adam had felt some force emanating from them. He felt it that day in the cave. As if, maybe, they called him to them. Maybe they’d always been speaking to him. Now, in their shoe box coffin, they seemed lifeless. Rotting away. The only thing Adam felt from the now was something like death.

The vault was an artificial cave. Almost the same size of the one he’d stumbled across below the Kentucky earth that day. Maybe that was coincidence. Or maybe the cave had subconsciously always been living in its own dark, hidden cavern in the back of Adam’s mind. Sitting in his final moments in the vault he’d built below his house, Adam let his mind wander back to that place where he’d found the horns.

***

It had taken Adam over an hour to squeeze himself through that tiny passage that day. It wasn’t more than sixty feet long, but the tunnel had gotten so narrow in places that it felt like it had come alive, like an esophagus that had started to constrict its muscles around the prey it had swallowed. He’d have been lying if he said he hadn’t been concerned more than once while traversing that passage. A wave of relief coursed through him when he spilled out the other end and into the small opening. When he hit the ground, his head lamp slammed into the rock floor and busted the bulb.

There was no way of knowing the exact time that passed down in the dark, but Adam recalled just laying on the damp ground of the cavern for a long time, taking deep breaths and letting his heart rate fall back to a normal rhythm. The problem was that all he could think about was having to go back through that same tunnel. It took awhile for him to calm his nerves.

The echo of his name came from the small opening he’d just been birthed out of. Adam had broken one of the cardinal caving rules, forgetting to let his buddy on the other end know he was still with the living. Adam fished for one of glow sticks out of the cargo pocket of his pants. The cracking sound of the glow stick bounced around the cave as the chemicals reacted together and the fluorescent green light began to fill the cave.

There were a dozen or more other openings puncturing the walls of the cave. Some of them appeared to be much bigger than the one he’d just fought his way through and that was a relief to Adam. That comforting feeling was short-lived.

Rocks. That’s all they were.

The horns were sitting in the center of the cave. All these years, Adam had told himself that they’d been sitting on a pile of rocks. Knocking on the doors of death allows a person to really be honest with themselves. And now, knowing that his life was coming to its fiery conclusion, Adam could let himself believe what he knew to be true.

A chair. The rocks had been stacked like a chair. No. A throne.

A chill ran down Adam’s spine. His mind threatened to take off running, conjuring up a score of monstrous images that would haunt the mind of Lovecraft. His body shuddered from the core with fear. He tossed the shoe box off of his lap and backed away from it in a hurry. Adam’s hand swatted through the air, searching the ground next to him for the gas can. He came up with it and he was grateful to feel there was a little fuel left. He reached his foot out and nudged the shoe box back into the hole. What was once the horns’ safe would now be their tomb.

Adam rose up and finished the long line of fuel that led out of the vault, through the hall, up the stairs and to the Christmas tree, where a half a dozen more gasoline trails branched out to the rest of the house. He connected the trail of has to the hole and emptied the rest of the can down into the dark depth. He tossed the empty red container down into the hatch when he was sure it was completely drained.

Adam pulled the cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He slid one into his mouth and tossed the pack down into the grave of the rotting horns. He dug out the matchbook. His clothes hung off his body, drenched in a brew of sweat, booze, and gasoline. Adam pulled a match. There was a good chance that he’d light up like a bonfire the second he struck it, but he really hoped to for at least one good drag off the cigarette.

The subtle pop and hiss of the match lighting entered Adam’s ears. His eyes tightened shut. He tensed every muscle in his body in anticipation for the flames that were meant to swallow him.

Nothing.

A single eye opened to see the small flame dancing at the end of the match. He slowly brought it to the cigarette dangling from his lips. His lungs sucked in the smoke and death that the warning label warned of. The taste was intoxicating.

Adam’s eyes rolled back into his head from the euphoria of it all. The rush of the nicotine, the destruction of his home, the end of his life. The death of the horns.

Adam was filled with the first bit of happiness he’d felt since the horns had begun to rot away his life. A smile escaped his lips as the cigarette fell down into the hole and erased Adam from the surface of Cody, Wyoming.

***

It would be hours before the flames were completely extinguished. A call was made to Sara to inform her of the death of her ex-husband. The officer making the call would note that she didn’t cry and that she hung up the phone in less than twenty seconds. It would be days before the authorities would even get to what little remains of Adam there were left in the rubble of the basement. They’d uncover the gas cans throughout the house and the death would be ruled a suicide eventually, but Sara already knew that was the case long before that. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing in that house that didn’t belong to the bank already and Adam had already been dead to her. She wouldn’t attend the funeral or even send flowers. She intended on lying to her sons and telling them that daddy had runaway to Europe or Australia or Neverland. It didn’t matter. They were young enough to fall in love with their stepdad as their true father and Adam would be an ugly truth to uncover way down the road.

The collectors showed up from the bank. They were scavenging for anything of value that might have survived the fire. But it appeared to be a total loss. The collection sports memorabilia, the cars, the art…all of it was gone. A single paramedic would bring them the only thing in the house that survived the flames, though they would all scratch their heads for weeks wondering how gift wrapping around that single gift managed to survive with only a few singes.

One of the bank collectors opened the present, mostly out of curiosity. He didn’t think it contained anything of value that might actually be worth claiming against the debt owed. The paramedic that had found it watched as the collector tore at the paper and looked inside the box. A quizzical look passed across the collector’s face for single instant before turning into a sneer and the man tossed the box on the ground and walked off.

“Nothing,” the man grunted as he shoved past the young paramedic.

The kid was new to the paramedic gig. He’d worked just a couple of car accidents so far and seen just one dead body so far, which had been one enough to convince him he’d picked the wrong profession. The pictures in his textbooks were one thing, but the real thing was on a level he was prepared for. It was the smells. They couldn’t teach you that in a classroom, the aroma of tragedy and death.

The paramedic looked around. Everyone was busy and caught up in their respective tasks of trying to piece together the madness behind the fire. He bend down and picked the box up. The gift tag said the present was for Adam, the owner of the house they still hadn’t located. Inside the box there were two horns. Their smooth surface glistened in the sun and both were perfectly intact. The young paramedic had never seen anything like them. They were gorgeous. And blacker than anything he’d ever seen.