“Pelts”

This is a short story written based on a NYC Midnight prompt. This story involves some gore. Thanks for reading!

Via my Substack: https://substack.com/home/post/p-217845177

She began her work at a voracious pace, sinking her fingernails into fistfuls of fox fur. Anna worked, as she always did, by candlelight. The flame cast a flickering light across the walls, hung with furs of every type from floor to ceiling. Tails still attached to some, the black-tipped coats of foxes brushed up against the silvery grey of chinchilla to create a kind of once-living wallpaper. Today, her back beginning to ache, she worked with a collection of fox fur destined for a stole for Mrs. Carnegie (no relation). The fur itself had been sloppily tanned, and the skin around the bullet hole was warped, causing a ripple. Anna tutted under her breath and made a note to confirm the hunter’s name. No doubt, Mr. Carnegie had a hand in the slap job.

Anna Hanssen was the only daughter of the Swedish Hanssen’s, May and Lars. As long as Anna had been alive, her parents had led a modest yet successful furrier business, serving the community at large with an increasingly larger reach. As for the shop itself, the Yelp reviews sat at 3.4 stars, untouched since the last comment left by Sue B. (“Too hard to find, and I imagine there isn’t any parking. Will not try again. One star.”), yet the shop never depended on an online reputation.

Good things tended to happen to those who invested in a Hanssen. People knew the name if they knew anything of furs on the West Coast, and all one had to do was invoke the words for the almost magical quality of their coat to be understood. The soft gasp as the coat check girl accepted the garment, the compliments from the cousin who slipped the coat from a woman’s shoulders at the holiday party: the Hanssen’s needed no marketing. The women with manicured fingers pressed to their lips spoke in low whispers of their belief that the furs had something special in it.

“Nothing else on the market compares. Yes, that’s Hanssen with two ‘s’s,” the women say over martini glasses in far-away cities, diamonds glinting on their expressive hands.

To Sue B.’s credit, the shop was tucked away down a winding dirt road, lined by impossibly tall, green deciduous trees. The road and shop were perpetually cast in shadow. The family home was no different, hidden down another winding footpath behind the small parking lot.

Her nails ran along a small scar hidden beneath the thick, burnt orange coat. Maybe he had been a male who had been injured in an encounter with a predator on the hunt for food for his family, or a mother fighting tooth and nail to protect her young. From somewhere in the room came a quiet ha-ha-ha call, that of a fox. Anna lifted her head, listening.

She heard that improbable call for the first time as a child, fingers poised over the pelt of a chinchilla draped over her lap. When her mother held her hands up for inspection at dinner and noted that her nails looked nearly perfect for the job, she took it as her sign. She’d been ready to follow her mother’s movements, drawing perfect lines down the length of the fur until she lifted her head and claimed it was done. She counted 15 strokes before the shrill squeak seemed to rattle the walls of the house behind her. Pulling her hands from the fur and over her ears, she screamed for her mother, for anyone. The call was haunting, unmistakably the sound of an animal frightened for its life. The fading light of dusk in the forest that surrounded her seemed to tighten in around her.

Her mother wrenched the door open, her daughter’s name dying on her lips as she ran onto the porch and saw the pelt tossed down the steps.

“Anna, what are you doing?” she asked, reaching down to rub her arms, pulling them away from her ears. She had begun to cry, tears rolling down her face as she spoke in hiccupping words.

“Mama, it screamed,” she said, searching for the right words. “It cried out to me, like it needed help!” Her mother shook her head and ran her fingers over the top of her daughter’s hands.

“My darling, now you know why I tell you to wait, that you can help when you are ready,” she said, a soft lilted accent to her words. Anna sniffed hard, the tears stopping with her mother’s voice. “I hear them too.”

“It’s horrible, Mama. They’re in so much pain! How do you bear to hear that every time?”

“Every fur that we use is an animal who gave its life for ours,” she said, gesturing around at the house behind them, the car in the drive, the land surrounding. “We honor them by preparing them with love, by listening to their last calls. This is our duty as Hanssen women,” her mother said. “When you are a woman, you will join us. But you are still a child, my love.” She squeezed her hands tightly, past the point of comfort. Anna stopped herself from complaining at the pain, because what if this was what it was to be a Hanssen woman? To endure pain and bear it as if she were not, to hear the dying cries of an animal and pretend that her stomach didn’t flip at the sensation of holding its corpse.

She wiped her eyes and stood, collecting the fur from the ground and shaking it clean. Placing it in her mother’s outstretched hand, she nodded at the ground before looking back into her eyes. Now complicit in the cruelty endured by what was left of these animals hanging on the walls of her house, she felt closer to an adult than a child already.

“Yes, Mama,” she said, and her mother gathered her into her arms, kissing her forehead. The points on her hands ached where her mother’s nails had pressed into her skin.

From the time that she eventually joined her mother at the worktable, she heard the calls. Sometimes she heard the sound from the moment a bullet met skin, others a playful memory of youth meant to soothe in a moment of fear.

Thankfully, this fox call was playful, that of a mother cajoling her kits. Anna felt the natural lightness of a day spent teaching her young to wrestle, to hold their ground, to listen to their mother when she called.

The bell ringing from the front office pulled her out of the workroom. A man leaned against the desk, a bag nearly half as tall as he was slung over his shoulder. She stood silently in the doorway while he looked around the room, not yet noticing her. His gaze slid over the coats hanging on the wall, the vibrant colors popping against the faded grey paint.

“Hello there,” he said when she stepped out into the room. His eyes were appraising, likely expecting to see one of her parents.

“Welcome to Hanssen’s Furs. What can I do for you?” she asked.

He hauled the canvas bag from his shoulder with considerable effort. It collapsed on the ground with a thud, and he stretched his arm across his body with a grunt.

“I’ve got a project that I was hoping to speak with May and Lars about today,” he said, craning his neck to look behind her through the door she entered from.

“Unless you can commune with the dead, sir, that won’t be possible,” Anna said. He blinked as he processed her words. “My parents passed away earlier this year.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he said, struggling to find the words. He didn’t seem like a man who was easily flustered, yet a slight pink flush climbed up his neck. His fingers toyed with the straps of the bag, the other hand wiping up and down the leg of his khaki pants.

“I was hoping- well, this project of mine requires great skill and-” he stammered, and Anna realized it was disappointment, not a sense of social awkwardness at requesting to speak to her dead parents, that had him struggling for words. This ignorance marked him as an out-of-towner, as news of their deaths had spread quickly through the community. A small town like theirs rarely got a more dramatic story than a couple of controversial furriers being killed after hitting a family of deer. The officer, his hat held across his chest as he stood on her front porch, told her in quiet words that they had skidded off the road, an old oak tree splitting their car in half. They went quickly, he said, hoping to give her a sense of peace, but she was left with nothing but nightmares that still jolted her awake three years later. The man at the desk was now turning red with frustration before she let out a sigh and pulled out a pad of paper from under the desk.

“Sir, my parents trained me themselves, and I can assure you that your project is in good hands with me. May I see the fur?” She asked, uncapping a pen and peering at the bag. He pulled a hand reflexively over the top of the bag, which was secured tightly with a cord.

“Oh, I didn’t realize- I didn’t know they had trained anyone else,” he said, considering his options. “Honestly, I don’t know if I want anyone else handling this project. What is your name?”

“Anna, sir,” she said, resisting every urge to start tapping her fingers impatiently.

“Anna, speaking plainly, this fur requires a certain sense of discretion that I was assured your parents could provide,” he said with a meaningful look, asking silently if she understood the implications of his words. She understood perfectly; this pelt was that of an illegally attained or endangered animal. Her parents had accepted projects like these, of course. She recognized the words: “discretion”, “sensitive”, and “requires a delicate hand”. She would be shuffled from the high stool at the desk and made to play with her dolls in the back room, but she watched from the crack in the door as men laid exotic furs, once even an albino crocodile skin, before her parents. The men waited for their verdict with a blend of shame and pride, waiting to be chastised or praised.

Her mother ran her hands up and down the piece, searching for unworkable scars, and her father would hum and nod slightly before telling the men that they could absolutely accept; this would be no problem, but this sort of work always comes at a “particular price”.

The men always agreed readily, some pulling out a checkbook without a second thought. From her place behind the door, Anna saw relief flood their faces, mouths pulled into the wide, toothy smiles of naughty children having gotten away with something.

“Will you be able to provide that discretion?” The man asked her now, moving to center himself in her view. At her discretion, her mercy. The idea swelled in her chest, and she imagined speaking in the voice of her father when she answered.

“While there is a price for situations like this, I think we can come to an agreement, Mr…?”

“Wilson. Leo Wilson,” he said, his large, meaty hand dwarfing her own in a handshake.

“I look forward to working with you, Mr. Wilson,” Anna said, already thinking of how a large enough check could go a long way with the back window, single-paned and already a problem in the chill of the unusually cold September.

“Excellent! I need a coat, something unlike any other Hanssen ever made. Can we not start now?” He asked.

“Well, Mr. Wilson, I have other projects and our hours are almost complete for the day-”

He scoffed and began to untie the cord holding the bag closed.

“I’m sure I’ll be paying out of my ears already, so you may as well charge me extra to move this to the top of the queue,” he said, rolling down the fabric. “I bet you’ve never seen anything like this.” In a flash of white and black and grey, he laid out the pelt across the table, knocking over the mug of pens in the process. Anna’s heart started to race as she took in the fur of a white tiger, dark grey and brown stripes slashing dramatically across pristine white. It was massive, the edges of the pelt spilling off the sides of the table. She struggled for words before swallowing a lump in her throat and meeting his eyes. He looked at her with expectation and, with a sinking sensation in her stomach, a hunger for her reaction.

“This will certainly be a first, but I’m confident that we-” she said, swallowing hard and stopping before correcting herself. “I’m confident that I can provide a satisfactory result,” she said, reaching for the keys to lock the front door. Her parents had never seen any project like this, and she wasn’t sure they would have accepted it if they had. She felt childish and stupid for not asking to see the fur before agreeing to work with the man.

“Pretty unbelievable, right?” He said, settling his hands on his hips. “I moved heaven and earth for the opportunity to hunt this majestic creature.”

All she could manage was a nod. She could see that it had been expertly tanned, so she wasn’t the first professional to swallow their morals for a paycheck. The thought brought her no comfort. Touching what was left of an animal that had been questionably secured would be difficult for any furrier with any sense of right and wrong, but she knew that she had much more to worry about; she wasn’t sure that she could handle what this animal had to tell her.

“I’ll admit, I’ve heard about the Hanssen method from reliable folks of good taste,” Leo Wilson was saying, smoothing out the edge of the pelt. “With this particular combing technique, my friends say that every coat has an incomparable magnetism about it.” His eyes dragged down what he could see of Anna behind the desk as he paused. “A woman’s touch, no doubt.”

His gaze felt oily, leaving trails where it lingered on her. She tried to fix her smile into place.

“We haven’t traditionally needed an expediting price, given the speed of our typical turn-around,” she said. He sighed, letting an exasperated puff of air. This man, Anna decided, would have been walked out of the store by her father, politely but briskly, after speaking to her mother in this way. Now, she had no backup, a severe lack of his six-foot-five Scandinavian stature. Any foot that she tried to lay down would be far less convincing than his.

“If you can put a large percentage down now, I can guarantee a delivery date within the week.” She grabbed her pen from the floor and tapped it against the guest check pad as she pretended to calculate the price. Really, she was dreaming up a number that she thought would be preposterous enough to send him storming out the door without another word of negotiation. He stayed silent as she wrote a line of numbers, watching her. Tearing off the sheet and sliding it to the man, she met his gaze.

“Half down now and the other half paid after the project is completed,” she said, calling on her mother’s gentle confidence. He looked at the paper in front of him, only moving his eyes to read the numbers. She had hoped for a slight movement of his eyebrows, a bulge of his eyes, something to indicate that he could be scared off by the impossible figure. Instead, he smiled, his delight feeling indecent. She suddenly felt very alone with this stranger, no one easily reachable for miles.

“Throw in a live viewing of the famous Hanssen method and you’ve got a deal, Anna,” he said, sliding his hand into his pocket for his checkbook. She forced a smile, knowing that she had no choice now, though innumerable questions she should have asked were running through her head. The first and most pressing: how did a man come to have this much disposable income? The longer he stood in this room, the more she doubted his character. His pen scratched across the thick paper, and he flicked his eyes up at her while he slowly drew the three zeros, nearly perfect ovals in the wet, black ink.

“When do we start?” He asked as he ripped the check out and held it out to her. As she took it from him, careful to avoid brushing his fingers with hers, she cleared her throat at the sight of the number. Her parents could have only dreamed of a project of this magnitude, and after all their years of building the family name and business, she had simply stumbled on the opportunity. She hoped they were looking down on her fondly now, pride rather than shame of the “sensitivity” of this project. Now, she would have to work with the fur of this poor creature who had faced an end only God knew how terrible. For the legacy of her parents, for the legacy of the Hanssen fur, she could find a way to handle the pain.

“I can do a short exhibition for you, Mr. Wilson. I’m thinking 10 minutes will be a good display without becoming monotonous,” she said, carefully placing the check in a drawer at her left hip.

“Whatever you think is best,” he said. “Though I’m fascinated by expertise, so I doubt I’ll be bored.” She shut the wooden drawer firmly, and the remaining pencils on the desk rolled onto the ground. His demeanor was becoming unbearable. She smiled curtly, laying her hands on the table on full display.

“Wonderful. Now, a brief history on the Hanssen method,” she said, watching his eyes move to her fingernails, now on full view. Clean and painted with a pale pink layer of polish, each nail extended two inches past the end of her finger, ending in a knife-sharp point. She thought back to the way her mother wove the story for unconvinced clients, willing her voice to be as enchanting when she spoke now.

“My mother was known for her nails throughout her life, growing more extreme with her obsession as she grew older. When she met my father,” she said, unable to stop the small smile at the memory. “He said the extreme was what attracted him to her. The dedication and the strangeness of her nails drew him in, eventually charming him completely, and she soon began to help in his new business as a furrier. The small northwest town where they settled down had once been a fur-trading hub in the time of the gold rush, yet the crazed desire for high-quality fur had long since died down. They struggled for a long time, unable to find their audience, but as fate would have it, a wealthy client from the East wandered into the shop and found my mother at the desk, idly combing through the pelt of a chinchilla with her head in her hands as she watched the clock tick slowly to the end of another fruitless day.” The man hummed at the pause, willing Anna to continue. She turned her hands over, folding her fingers onto her palms.

“She asked my mother what she was doing, and she panicked, beginning to tell her the false story of the ‘Hanssen method’, how the personal touch imbued every piece with an almost magical quality. The woman bought two stoles and a jacket on the spot - you understand the desire to possess magic whenever one senses it to be close, of course - and my mother, being an honest woman with the slightest lapse in judgement, combed through every pelt before my father assembled them. He disapproved of the exaggeration but couldn’t afford to turn down a sale of this amount at the time. When they stood back from their work, the pieces seemed to glow with the exact quality that my mother thought she had invented mere days before.”

“Word began to spread; by the time they had my sister and then myself, a Hanssen fur was a prized commodity, a household name, a gift sure to delight any mother, sister, or spouse. We were trained to care for our nails in the same way, and my mother measured, cut, and cared for our nails until we were 12, deemed old enough to do this for ourselves.” Anna left out the beatings that would accompany a broken nail after a fall or too much playing in the forest, the blood beading at her cuticles as her mother dug too far with the trimmers. Quiet down, she would hiss when Anna opened her mouth to cry out. A steel glinted in her mother’s eyes as she yanked her hand down so Anna’s face was close to her, her breath hot on her daughter’s reddened cheeks. We owe our lives to these nails, Anna. We can withstand a little pain.

“This tradition continues in this way, guaranteeing the same Hanssen quality even though my parents have… moved on from this world,” she said, letting the words hang. Mr. Wilson had placed his hands on the desk, leaning forward in interest and anticipation.

“Safe to say, Anna, I’m waiting with bated breath for the demonstration. I feel in the presence of a larger force now,” he said, his voice breathless. Her eyes fell to the shock of white fur between them.

“I believe that as well, Mr. Wilson. If you wouldn’t mind helping move the pelt into the workshop, we’ll go through this door in front of you.” The fur was heavier than it looked, half of it draped over Anna’s arm and the other over Mr. Wilson’s. She walked backwards into the room behind the desk, and his eyes began to roam over the dark walls as he ducked into the workspace. Tools were lined up on her desk, a collection of pearl-handled knives with their little humpbacks, heavy leather scissors, spikey wheel of the leather punch. Anna laid the fox pelt, half-completed piking and all, over the back of the chair with her free hand, and together they laid the white tiger fur over her desk. At least three times larger than any other pelt on the wall, the fur had an imposing energy that took over the room. Only Mr. Wilson seemed unbothered, turning on his heels to take in the walls.

“There must be hundreds of furs on these walls,” he said, his voice low with reverence.

“My father was a hunter as well as a furrier,” Anna replied, walking around the desk to arrange her space. “He tanned his own hides for many years, and he used them in larger pieces when needed.” The tiger’s pelt seemed to hum as her hands hovered over it. She drew in a deep but silent breath, preparing for whatever she would encounter on contact. I can handle a little pain, she thought.

“Mr. Wilson, if you would, I’m about to begin,” she said in the steadiest voice she could manage. The end of a few long bristles brushed against her thumb as her hand wavered, and the sound of a tiger’s roar filled her head, a guttural hissing and snarling. She gasped and resisted the urge to clap her hands over her ears. Mr. Wilson snapped to attention at the sound, the glint in his eye almost as terrible as the roar. He walked to the desk, the pelt between them.

“Ready whenever you are, Anna,” he said, his voice almost a growl. Her heart was pounding, loud claps in her ears, and she found herself forming a prayer for protection, not from the strained cries of the tiger, but from the man standing across from her. Still, her eyes flicked to the window, the gold lettering of the Hanssen name barely visible against the darkening sky. She drew in a long, slow breath and nodded before sinking her fingers into the thick fur.

The skin beneath was flawless, the underfur soft beneath the thick bristles of the guard hairs, once the tiger’s protective layer. The coarse hair slid between her fingernails, her fingers brushing her palms as she started to comb down the middle of the pelt. A snarl came through at her left side, but this was a quiet, almost playful version of the first sound. A flash of white and grey, bright green and the deep red of blood. A tiger cub hunting with her mother, pouncing at movement in the brush as her mother called for her to eat. Now Anna was the tiger, scenes of running through tall grass and napping under the sun beating down unrelentingly, indistinguishable from her own childhood memories. She forced her fingers to keep moving, staying silent as the images kept coming, yet this embodiment was new. The separation between Anna and the animal seemed paper-thin, and the tiger was trying to punch a hole through to the other side.

“You seem to be getting pale, Anna. Is… everything ok?” Mr. Wilson’s voice did little to bring her back to the present, but her view seemed to split to focus on his form. His expression was hungry, seemingly less human than he had been seconds - minutes? - ago. She didn’t trust her own sensations, too many inputs to understand what was her own and what was not, but the understanding that danger hung in the air of the small room had only intensified. A punch through the boundary threw her head sideways: the clang of metal, the sharp stab of something entering through the tiger’s side, the sensation of the world going black. She had been captured, Anna thought. Waking up to the swaying side to side, the cage being carried, the sun blotting out with a screech of more metal.

“I’m quite alright, Mr. Wilson. All part of the process,” she said, her voice coming out weakly. A flicker of anger stronger than anything she had ever experienced. Her own hatred for the actions of this despicable man, the wild rage of this animal, caged and stolen from her home. He nodded, entranced by the motions of her hands, moving faster and faster now. The coarse bristles began to scrape painfully, but she couldn’t stop as she saw light again, the clanging of bars as she was released. The ground beneath her paws was unfamiliar, sharp with small stones and unrecognizable trees above blocking out the sun. Terrified, she began to run as fast as she could from the stench of the humans who had taken her away, trying to run back home. One of the creatures made a loud sound, like that of the foxes - a ha-ha-ha. She knew this creature would hurt her if he could catch her. Reaching the end of her strength, she found a wall of metal. Too tall to climb over, with spikes that gouged holes into her paws. She ran along it, finding no end and no way through. She spent days hiding among the strange trees, new smells and sounds confusing her. She felt her nerves waning and the sharp animal instinct honed by her mother and her homeland begin to wear down. Anna felt exhausted, drained of all energy and hope, on her last ragged nerve. Mr. Wilson was shaking his head, an awe-struck look on his face.

“I must say, this process has been more fascinating than I could have ever hoped. You are truly an artisan, my dear,” he said. Anna opened her mouth but found her voice scratchy and nearly gone.

“My mother- my mother trained me well,” she managed to say before, with a wave of new horror, she felt a tear drop down her face. The exhaustion and pain from the wounds in her paws had worn her down, and she had spent the last day still, hiding under the roots of a massive tree, though her fur stood starkly out against the damp brown and green of the forest floor around her. She heard a rustling above her but was shocked by the sensation of a hand touching her face before she could look up.

“Fascinating,” Mr. Wilson was saying, his thumb catching the tear as it ran down Anna’s jaw. Somehow she hadn’t noticed his movement to her side of the worktable. Hot rage cracked like a whip through her, and a sound, a snarl, traveled up her arm, into her chest and out of her mouth. The tiger snarled, or rather Anna snarled for the tiger, and both relished Mr. Wilson’s face as he took a step back, hand raised in protection. He recovered quickly, his lips twisting as he looked at the wet traces of Anna’s tear on his thumb. “Incredibly fascinating.”

Another rustle above her, and she saw Mr. Wilson, recognizable only by his dark and shifting eyes, dressed in perfect camouflage for the environment. Another release of a cackling ha-ha-ha, and there was a crack, a vision of red that came with white-hot pain, and she howled, crying out for her homeland, her mother, anyone who could help her. She could see only through the eye not pressed to the ground, and black boots surrounded her head. She swatted weakly at the arms that reached for her body, and one creature jumped back, clutching at his chest. She fell back to the ground as the creatures made louder sounds, no more ha-ha-has but sounds of distress like her own. Mr. Wilson dropped his face to hers, and Anna recognized him fully with his mask off, the same twist to his lips as he began to advance on her now.

“You’ll regret that, bitch,” the two men said in unison, and Anna heard another loud crack as her ring finger found the smallest flaw, the single missed stitch in what remained of a bullet messily through skin. The boundary between was buckling and flailing, the fear and anger and confusion and sadness boiling in both of them. Let me in, she seemed to plead.

Can you sense that he’s here? Anna asked back, feeling him close to her now, the heat of his body close and expectant. Can you forgive me for my part in this?

Let me in, she said again, demanding now. For your part, you will let me in.

So Anna did. Strength flooded her, the white fur climbing up her arms, taking over her shoulders and neck. Slashes of grey slid over her ribs, and the two bloody holes appeared at her neck.

“Oh-” was all Mr. Wilson could manage as he stepped backwards and tripped over a box of blade replacements.

“You took me from my home,” Anna said, but it was not her voice. She spoke in growls and snarls, barely managing her words at first. Hissing intakes of breath and the sensation of teeth too big for her mouth, she felt unlike herself, too big for the room. When she looked at the worktable, the pelt was gone. She caught a glimpse of her hand, a mangled mix of paw and hand, her Hanssen fingernails protruding like claws. Settling into the form, she knew that she was not alone. Embodied after such a long time, she was nearly purring with the sensation. Calmly, she turned her transformed head to face the man shrinking away from her on the floor.

He screamed, scrambling for a knife and cutting his palm in the process. “What the fuck are you?”

“Apologize,” she said in a voice that was mostly her own this time. He thrust the knife at her, but she shook her head and batted it out of his hand with her paw, now dwarfing his.

“You’re not listening,” she said, a growl shadowing her words. “Apologize for what you did.” He shrieked obscenities, pressing himself against the wall and hiding behind his arms. Small trails of blood ran down his arm, dropping onto his pressed khaki pants.

“You gave him his chance,” the voice hissed to her left. “My turn.”

Anna felt her right arm bat Mr. Wilson across the room as if he weighed nothing. He hit the wall, knocking pelts pinned to the wall. A cacophony of calls and shrieks and cries joined in the triumphant growl that left Anna’s throat. Soon the room was filled with the sounds of countless calls from all the animals left to hang on the walls, tails swaying back and forth so strongly that the walls shook.

“Do you hear that?” Anna asked in a voice that was just her own, looking expectantly at the man crumpled on the floor, groaning loudly.

“You broke my fucking ribs,” he gasped. “You’re insane.”

Anna pounced, dropping to all fours and springing forward with a speed she couldn’t comprehend. She was on him with her fingernails sunk into his chest, sinking deeper until she felt a crunch.

“Now I’ve broken your ribs,” Anna said in her own voice before closing her eyes to release all she still held onto to keep her out. The boundary ripped into pieces, she came flying through, taking control of Anna’s arms and hands, and then her whole body. The sensation of release, a syrupy-sweet film over her perception of time, of action, of the things now happening in the workshop. She could feel dull moments of pain as nails caught on a hard chunk of viscera and ripped from her hand, the first time being without a perfect set since she was a child. The tiger raged, acting on every instinct that she’d been kept from since being captured, hunted, shot, and then shot again. A paw raised and then lowered, claws tearing through flesh and bone. She bit down, and then Mr. Wilson’s ear was no longer attached to his body. Anna could feel the need to make him understand the pain he had caused in the way that only an animal, this powerful animal, could.

As she floated in the back of the tiger’s mind, she saw the foxes, chinchilla, and minks seeming to wander around, in their full bodies again, just for a moment. She tried to shy away, cringing at the memory of her hands running through their fur, cutting them apart and then stitching them together. But they ran playful circles around her, squeaking and purring and teasing. Whatever damage she had caused, she had also liberated them, if only for this moment. They began to flicker away like little puffs of smoke; the tiger must be nearing her end, this one final. Hesitant to return, Anna reached out a hand to the little fox closest to her, almost able to imagine the softness of his fur on his belly as he floated by. He, too, flicked away and she sighed deeply before willing her consciousness back to the boundary.

The tiger’s movement grew slower, but there was not much left of Mr. Wilson that was solid enough to properly slash or puncture. His face was a cavern, his chest flayed and open like a body sold to science. She grew still, and Anna waited by what was left of the boundary, her hands extended. A low grumble, like a sigh of relief, left Anna’s lips, and she slid back into her body. She drew in a sharp breath and began coughing violently, choking on something in her mouth. The copper taste of blood drew bile to her throat, and she covered her mouth with her hand, a hand that she no longer recognized. The pelt was completely gone, her skin now stained red with the man’s blood and flecked with what could be any part of his decimated torso. The wall against which his body was slumped looked freshly painted in the color, and as she looked around the room, every surface had Mr. Wilson on it.

His blood dripped from the ceiling and down the tiny window, stripping away what was left of the Hanssen H lettering with it. Ripping off the bottom of Mr. Wilson’s pant leg, the only part of the room left untouched, she spat onto the floor and wiped her face. The tiger’s pelt was in shreds, white turning to red as it lay scattered in collecting red pools. All the other pelts, too, lay shredded around the room. Everything is unusable, she thought, but barked out a laugh at how far removed she felt from the version of herself who might have cared. Looking at the scrap of fabric in her hand, she registered the pulsing ache at her fingertips. Her nails were gone. Some were ripped down to the quick, others gone to the nailbed, all of her fingers bleeding regardless. The pain was getting worse, and she winced at the pressure of dropping the bloodied fabric to the ground.

She looked from the knives on the desk to the door to the front office, left ajar. After a deep breath, she removed her apron, now heavy with blood, from around her neck and threw it towards the body. It landed partially across his decimated face, the most he would get from her in the way of a dignified disposal.

Overcome with a stiffness throughout her body, Anna stretched, her arms extending straight out to her sides and then meeting above her head with clasped hands. A contented sigh left her, and she dropped her arms, letting them swing freely. Then she bounded out of the room without looking back, closing the door behind her.