Confronting Uncle Ron, that was easy. The big man bowed to Dor’s threat, which was good because Dor knew just how hollow his threat actually was. He did not want to die but had no problem twisting Uncle Ron’s sentiment to suit his needs.

‘And I thought I was an evil bastard,’ Mr. Body told him. ‘You’d blow your brains to spite your family.’

‘What else was there to do?’ Dor replied.

‘The worst part…the worst part being this was your plan all along.’

Dor couldn’t find the words to argue with himself. His reaction to the dogs’ attack even surprised himself. With a plan in mind, he took quick decisive action; albeit, completely single-minded action. The prompt, rawhide, saving my monster…I’m not wrong. I know it. I’m not wrong.

“Son, you’ve really gone off the rails,” Uncle Ron said as Dor and Eta slipped by. “Think about it. Really think about it. This ain’t right. If you gotta put a gun to your head to get your way, it ain’t right.”

Dor knew that. He pushed the monster towards the car, instant death to his temple. When he arrived at his idling Trans-Am, the look his old man gave him…it was pure disappointment. He’d never seen that face on his dad before.

‘What was I supposed to do? I’m not a monster and this ain’t Hell!’

‘You took the easy route.’ Mr. Body replied.

Clarity smacked him hard. Right now, he only wished he’d bowed to the temptation of a good solid drunk earlier. He felt like shit. It was so easy to keep it together by himself. Even confronting Uncle Ron didn’t bother him. But his dad, that look, Dor really struggled with that.

“Get in the back,” he told his monster. “Don’t scratch nothing either.”

Fortunately, the way the car fit in the kitchen, only the driver’s side got blocked off by the cramped quarters. That was the Bo Duke side. For him and Eta, the passenger door opened just fine. He scooted the seat forward, leaving a crawlspace for Eta to climb in. Tight as the backseat was, it functioned better as a luggage rack than an actual seat. Eta crawled inside and slid over behind Dad. She hugged her knees to her chest, though this time it had more to do with necessity than self-comfort. There was no other place for her legs to fit.

Uncle Ron shook his head and returned to man the draw bar over the garage door.

After Dor put a gun to his head, the shame wouldn't allow him to look his Dad in the eye. Just one day is all it took. It only took one day for his two worlds to collide. His ideal life back at Rose Valley Park shattered against the insanity smoldering inside his seedy Chinese restaurant. All his dark secrets laid bare for his family to see.

He was a child and had no place telling the adults what to do. Dor crawled into the backseat after Eta and hugged his knees tight. Even when Dor holstered his gun, Dad didn’t utter a word. That hurt most of all.

Whaa-aam! Whaa-aam! With the passengers secure, the big V-8 roared as Dad primed the engine. He popped the shifter into reverse. In a situation like this, Dor really regretted not backing his car in. If he’d had a bit more foresight, they wouldn’t have to escape blindly in reverse. Dad’s got this. He knows what he’s doing.

Dor realized just how childish he was, just a kid huddled in the backseat with his slumber party monster. His monster covered herself with the comforter and clamped it shut with her oven mitts. He reached over and patted her on the head, but her nerves must have been fried. She didn’t lean into the affection.

Whaa-aam! Whaa-aam! “You ready, Ronnie?” Dad hollered out the open passenger door.

“Give ‘er Hell, Mannie” Uncle Ron yelled back.

Dor watched out the back window as Uncle Ron lifted the draw bar and flung it aside. Uncle Ron knew enough to not bother opening the garage any further than that. His hulking frame lumbered straight to the car and swung into the passenger seat. Before he could even close the car door, dogs knocked open the garage and poured inside, snarling and barking with their vicious maws. Dad popped the clutch and the car lurched backward. Unlike Dor's previous escape, this time the tires didn’t peel out on the kitchen floor. Somehow Dad knew just how to feather the controls for the optimal grip.

As the car lurched backward, the rear end smashed into a pile of dogs crowding the exit. Before they stalled out against that pile, Dad popped the shifter into second gear and retreated back into the kitchen. For a moment, Dor couldn’t understand Dad’s plan, but then the car braked to a halt and they lurched backward once more. The rear bumper smashed into the pile of dogs again, making a bit more progress through that wall of meat.

Over and over, Dad rocked the car back and forth, cool as a cucumber the whole time. With all the sudden jolts, Eta and Dor kept knocking into the seat-backs, unlike Uncle Ron who held tight, stoic as a statue up front.

One last push and Dad broke through the wall of dogs. The car rattled and bounced over their corpses, some of the mutts yipped and yelped, but Dad didn’t pay it any mind. As soon as the tires rumbled over the heap and touched the solid pavement of the parking lot, he mashed the gas. Without even bothering to turn around, Dad tore the car through the lot in reverse.

Outside appeared to be the beginnings a zombie apocalypse, except instead of zombies, packs and packs of wild dogs horded all around them. Hundreds of snarling greyhound monsters crowded every spare inch of the lot. They stood on Lulu and Jimmy’s old cars, Uncle Ron's Windstar, and a few even perched on the roof of the restaurant. Seeing that, Dor knew they’d made the right decision. There wouldn’t be enough bullets in an armory, let alone his pocket to face that horde. God in the ceiling was just fucking with them.

Dad showed no mercy. He was pissed. The rear bumper knocked mangy greyhounds out of the way. Their swirling teeth gnashed at the windows, but Dad scissored the wheel back and forth, keeping the car from stalling on top of their corpses while he avoided attacks. As Dor and Eta knocked around the backseat, Dor realized what a childish moron he was being. He clamored for a grip on Uncle Ron’s seat and shoved his Glock into the big man’s hands. This was no time for childish power trips.

Uncle Ron didn’t even hesitate. Bang! Bang! Bang! The cramped cab reverberated with deafening roars. Dor’s ears stung as Uncle Ron shot every dog trying to claw its way to them through the smashed passenger window.

As Dad somehow brought the careen under control, the rear end threaded into the narrow alleyway leading out of the parking lot. The worn suspension rattle across dogs' corpses, knocking the car side to side in those narrow confines. Tall brick walls scraped against the Trans-Am, screeching and throwing sparks as they bounced around like a pinball machine. If they stalled out here, they’d be trapped. There was no room to maneuver at all, just a straight sprint to freedom. Dor knew the sound of his engine well enough to notice how his old man worked the throttle up and down, avoiding wheelspin over the gory mess beneath them.

Finally, they rattled onto 31st street wobbling in reverse. Not a single street lamp lit the road out here. The storefronts and tall buildings loomed to either side as shadows. Even the inside lights had been cut-off. God in the ceiling is just fucking with us. He enjoys the struggle. Fortunately, these streets were clear of dogs. Their only pursuers poured of the alleyway they'd just escaped from. The yellowed headlights illuminated hundred of dogs flooding onto 31st. Seeing that, Dad didn’t even bother to turn the car around. He sped blindly in reverse through the blackened streets.

Without all that maneuvering going on anymore, Dor and Eta were able to regain their balance in the backseat. After that escape, those were all tangled up. Dor praised his luck that her claws never grazed him; though, he hoped the credit could truly go to her mindfulness rather than pure luck. That would be real progress for his monster.

As Dad sped the car backward, the engine roared louder than it ever revved before. His old man milked every ounce of speed he could. Dor had an inkling of what would come next. “Dig your claws into the seat and hold on, Monster!” He told Eta.

She didn’t respond.

“Fucking do it, stupid!” He yelled. “Take your mitts off and do it!”

Slowly, her head turned towards him and she gave a few subtle nods. The oven mitts flopped to the floor and without a shred of resistance, her fingernails sunk straight through the upholstery. It appeared more like a pair of hands gliding into a pool of water than faux-leather. “And hold on,” he reminded her.

She nodded. Dor held on, too. He hugged the back of Uncle Ron’s seat. Without claws of his own, that was the only handle back here.

Dad glanced over. “How we looking on your side, Ronnie?”

Uncle Ron stuck his head out the window. “Can’t see shit. Ride the brakes a bit, give me a glint of something.”

A few moments later, Uncle Ron found what he was looking for. “Half a block we intersect with MLK. Ain’t no one out here but us, so crank that bitch hard.”

“Just say the word,” Dad replied.

Hearing those two talk, Dor knew this wasn’t their first rodeo. He doubted they’d even been chased by monster dogs before, but they’d certainly done the next maneuver a time or two.

“When!” Uncle Ron yelled.

Dad jerked the wheel and Dor and Eta clung tight to their flimsy supports. Then Dad jerked the wheel back the other direction. Those two in the back resisted the centrifugal force, clinging tight to their handholds. Finally, after Dad loaded the springs just right, he timed the recoil and cranked the wheel all the way around. The headlights whipped aross the intersection, tires screeched, and Dad fiddled with the gear selector before roaring the engine to life once more.

At the end of his crazy maneuver, the rear end fishtailed out a little wide, but Dad lightly corrected it and sped the car away traveling forward instead of in reverse. That amazed Dor. Somehow, not only did Dad spin the car completely around, he’d also made a left-hand turn at the intersection in the process. It was some kind of wild 270 degree turn that honestly would have been a blast without the monster dogs nipping at their heels. No wonder it seemed like him and Ron had done that before.

Dad glided through the gears and left the dogs far behind.

“You alright, Eta?” Dor asked the girl next to him. Shit, I slipped up. I meant to say Monster.

She nodded.

“Just you hold tight then,” Dor said. “That’s the best place for them claws. They can’t hurt nobody buried in the seat.”

Uncle Ron grunted up front. Dad didn’t say a word.

Still, with how it all worked out in the end, Dor wasn’t entirely convinced he’d made the wrong decision bringing his monster along. Had he left her there, then right about this time, she’d be getting ripped to shreds by feral dogs, their monstrous swirling teeth grating through her skin like a hacksaw through tungsten. Dor shuddered. Hell’s a dark place, but she ain’t there no longer. That’s My fucking monster, now.

Uncle Ron turned around. “So, what’s your plan now, boy?” He asked.

Dor swallowed hard, then reached for Sargent Berry and swallowed harder. Fact was, he hadn’t a clue what to do next. With the dogs after them and all the power out, he hadn’t a clue how to find an unanswered prompt on a random computer.

Can’t the grown-ups figure this out? I do something dumb, they fix it. Ain't that the formula? At nineteen, solving his own mishaps really was too much pressure.