Ry's father lost his job to machines that could weld parts faster than any man. Ry vowed to take a job robots could not, and stumbled his way into copywriting. Now, he'd lost his job to machines that could bullshit faster than any man.

His employer had been eager to take on AI, even as it only vomited overly-complicated sentences and nonsense scraped from better writers. Think of the money they will save, only needing one human around to constantly edit the shit spewed by lesser machines. Think of the money going to the top!

"This is the future, Ry." His boss told him.

Of course it is. Ry thought. The future was always changing, the vision adapting as it became clearer and clearer that only a select few could have one waiting on them. The rest would sizzle in the wet bulb heat. He scrounged enough to help make rent. While Erin taught at the elementary school, Ry cleaned out gutters, mowed lawns, and earlier today, was called to handle a snake.

Lagoe, Oklahoma was a collection of houses spread across a forest, the small businesses and banks that connected them long ago closed. Mrs. McWilliams heard he was doing odd jobs, and got his cell phone number from a lawn mowing client.

"I have a snake issue. $50."

That was all Ryder had to hear. He traded sweat pants for jeans and pulled on his cleanest shirt. He left the old travel trailer he and Erin were living in, officially known as Shaky Bolts for the noises it made when they fucked, and shut the door with an unsatisfying clap, and jumped into his '98 For Ranger, a red rattling machine with faded paint and a steadfast refusal to die. He kept the windows down, by the time the air conditioner cooled anything he'd be in the heat hunting down a snake.

Arriving at her property, he saw her waving him to the back towards a shed. She had magnifying glasses for lenses and a large tan hat. Bent with age, she never raised her head to meet his gaze.

"What are you doing out in this heat, Mrs. McWilliams?" Ry asked.

"Testing my limits, Ry."

"So, you got a snake problem?"

"You knew my husband, right, Ry?"

"Yes," Ry said. "Good man. Very sorry about his passing."

"He always said 'Melinda, I'm gonna come back as a copperhead and visit your garden'."

"He was a funny guy," Ry said.

Melina leaned down with a groan and pinched the corner of a piece of sheet metal lying on the ground. She pulled it up. Beneath it, a mound of copperhead snakes stiffened and pulled back their heads, some the color the name implied, while others were almost grey.

"I can't be sure which is him, so you gotta be careful when you catch 'em."

"Catch them?"

"I see it all the time on Instagram. People catching snakes and putting them in buckets. I don't got a bucket but I brought out some pillow cases."

"Mrs. McWilliams, what is the game plan here?"

"Findin' my husband."

"Have you considered therapy?"

"My sister tried that shit. Just gave her a bunch of five-dollar words to excuse being an asshole. Now, you gonna help me or not?"

Fifteen minutes later, Ry was back in the trailer, sans fifty bucks, and counting down the time until Erin would be home. He tried to do some laundry, but the washer always left him with a heap of sopping wet clothes. He started to look up how to repair it. As his dad always said, disaster strikes in $100 and $500 increments. Things looking up? Get ready for disaster in $100 and $500 increments.

Ry decided to go ahead and drop off rent to the landlord. They had been late a few times, but Jackson Meriwether never complained. Ry wrote out a check, the same checkbook they'd had for years as rent was the only one they wrote anymore. Jackson refused to set up a Venmo, and didn't even have a phone. He also refused to tell them where he banked. He wanted a check, and since he was charging them so little, they didn't argue.

The set up was this: Jackson needed someone to make sure groceries were delivered and packages protected. They hadn't seen the man since they shook on the agreement a year prior. He had his project. His habitation mission with the devils in the Wildcat Thicket.

"I'm gettin' to understand them. They're startin' to understand me," Jackson told Ry the last time they spoke.

"What are they like?" Ry had asked.

"They're like people," Jackson said. "You get complacent after meeting so many nice 'uns, the mean ones always take ya by surprise."

Jackson was a short man in a Carhart coat year round, his face stubbled and wrinkled, a pair of Jim Jones shades always on his face. Ry wasn't a tall man, but he sure felt that way talking to Jackson. His wife Erin thought Jackson was adorable. She just wanted to take him home.

"And what?" Ry asked.

"I dunno," she said. "Maybe make him a little bed at the foot of ours. Get him quality treats, the ones made with real chicken."

"He's a human being, Erin."

"I know, Ry. Hence the high-quality food, baby."

Outside, the air was thick. His eyes had to adjust to the unbridled sun. Summer laid low for much of June, until it decided to kick the shit out of Ry and Erin in the last week. The window unit clicked and shivered, but thank God never gave out. Ry looked down to grab his mud boots. They were gone, only thin footprints of dried mud in their place.

"West Donaghy, did you take my fucking boots?"

Ry looked around for the dog, which crawled out from under the wooden steps on his back. Tail wagging, the small brown dog, one who ran its head into objects when it sneezed and could not seem to close its mouth the right way. Every recessive gene in the pool, all molded into this shedding mess of a creature.

"West Donaghy, my boots?"

The dog titled its head, and sneezed its face into the side of the steps. Ry knew it couldn't be him. The dog was barely coordinated enough to eat, let alone steal his boots. And two bird feeders. And a box of bungee cords from the back of the truck. Nothing that could be sold for meth money.

Maybe Jackson wasn't so crazy?

"Come on, West Donaghy, let's go pay rent."

Ry's grandfather had a dog named Ditch, because he was round in a ditch. His father had a dog named Walmart, because he was found in a Walmart parking lot. Ry and Erin found West Donaghy abandoned on the side of the West Donaghy street, and Ry decided to stick with the naming convention.

The dog trotted behind, his tongue unrolled and flapping like a wet flag. The trailer sat on an empty lot in a circle of moved grass, an attempt to keep the ticks at bay. If you took the dirt path from the trailer to the road and turned left, you would find another trail entrance. A metal gate closed it to trucks, which in rural Oklahoma was the equivalent of a moat and gator. A small plastic mailbox was nailed to the post. The box was open, and the mail overflowing.

Ry also saw a cloud of flies engulfing the bag of groceries he dropped off the week prior.

"Not good, buddy."

He approached the metal gate and rested his hands on it, then pulled them back with a wince. The sun did its work, you could cook an egg on it. Behind it, the trail shot straight ahead, the trees looming over it, so the path was one that faded into darkness on the brightest summer day, only dapples of light making it to the ground.

"Hey, Jackson!"

No response. Ry looked down at West Donaghy, who had rolled on his back and was snapping at flies. Jackson was clear. They were never to go past the gate. Before his mission, Jackson ran a garage in town. There were two shops, one crooked and Jackson's less so. But one day he didn't open the shop. He vanished. Later rumors would spread. Jackson saw something, and locked the path to his house. He rarely ventured into town. Some said he was secretive, but if anyone asked he would tell them straight away.

The stories about the devils in Wildcat Thicket were true. Hell, all the stories were true. The lion, the birds, all of it. Jackson was going to prove it. Ry assumed he went crazy, like that Bigfoot hunter in Nobility, who eventually vanished into the woods never to be found. But Jackson kept on his habituating project going, year after year. When Ry lost his job and he and Erin were soon to lose their apartment, he offered them an old travel trailer and cheap rent. When people laughed at Jackson, Ry understood, but it still pissed him off.

The craziest son-of-a-bitch in town was the only one to offer a hand to him and Erin, and Ry would never forget it.

But Jackson had been firm.

"You just steer clear, okay?" Jackson told him. "You spook the Watchers, and that's years of work down the drain. You can laugh all you want, but I ain't playin'."

"The Watchers?"

"That's what the Indians called them."

"Wait, you mean Duane?"

"Yeah. That's the one."

But this seemed different. Something was wrong. When Jackson dropped off the rent check, held never seen even a single piece of junk mail. He honestly assumed Jackson was watching from the trees, and would scramble down like a squirrel to retrieve his food and money before Ry or Erin made it back to the trailer.

"Be right back, buddy."

Ry crawled over the gate and jumped onto the other side. His knees shook and he stumbled forward a few steps, barely stopping his fall. His late-thirties were hitting him hard, one ache or pulled muscle at a time. He was just glad Erin wasn't there to witness it.

He squinted, looking down the path ahead of him. At one time the road was a clear one, the years of car and truck tires keeping it rutted and open. But now grass encroached, slowly burying the way. He started down the path. As a child, he remembered walking down the creek, exploring on a blistering Saturday, when his hair on his neck rose. He almost felt a whisper in the wind, like a voice telling to turn back. Later, his father would find mountain lion tracks.

"Just a regular ol' mountain lion. Not THE lion, ya know?"

"I thought the lion wasn't real?" A young Ry had asked.

"It's real as shit. Keep your head on a swivel, boy."

Even when we don't see the danger, our bodies do. We were food millions of years before we were a hint of apex, and some instincts never die, they just go unrecognized.

Now? The hair on Ry's neck rose, and a whisper tickled his ear. He felt antsy. The darkness ahead seemed darker now, behind him the sun was subdued. He could hear the light crunch on the white rock of West Donaghy walking behind him. Then the dog stopped, shaking.

Ry stopped too. He saw someone ahead of him stand on the trail. Ry exhaled. Jackson. He called out to him. The figure remained still. He called again. Ry waved.

The figure waved back, slower, the movements exaggerated. Jackson seemed taller.

West Donaghy growled. Ry glanced down at the dog, his head low and hackles raised. Ry never heard him growl and didn't know the dog had it in him.

West Donaghy watched the waving man. The dog opened his mouth and barked between snarls.

"Hello?" Ry called out.

The figure stopped waving. It called out hello. But the voice warbled, like someone speaking through a CB radio. Ry stepped closer, West Donaghy did not move. Ry called out again. The figure stepped closer too. Whoever it was, the man was tall. Really tall. Seeing how much of the path Ry and West Donaghy took up, he realized the man was big too. Simply larger than was to be expected by anything on two legs.

The figure moved closed now, walking without pause.

The warbled, static hello echoed again. Ry blinked. He shook his head slightly. The whisper was louder now, but in his head, the droning fuzz of an old TV signal.

The smell, a mix of rot and piss. Ry stepped back, and the buzzing in his brain wavered. He stepped back again and again until it passed.

Silence now. The figure was gone.

"Jesus, I hope Erin is having a better day than us, buddy."