Smokehouse

2–3 minutes

spwilcen

Dark Flash Fiction

Triggers: Language, violence

Yancy stomped snow from his boots and closed the door against winds shoveling snow into Trabbert’s Trading Post.  

Whaddaya think of that, Louise?  Tell me what I can and can’t do.  Bossy bitch.

“What brings you in today, Yancy?”

“Supply for a short trip, Girreaux.”

Tell me I can’t do something I’ve been planning for two years, will she?

“No time to be out traveling, Yance. Don’t care how good a musher, how good your team, no time for any kind of trip.”

“Something come up.”  

Well, that damned woman’d stopped browbeating me, kept her mouth shut, things would never have gone south. I wouldn’t be headed north.

“Won’t wait a few days?”

“Nope.  Here’s a list.”

Wouldn’t have minded if she’da backed-off the least little bit, but no, she hadda keep flappin her gums. Pushed me too far.

“That’s it? Only take a blink to fetch, Yance.”

“Be obliged if you’d be quick.”

Can’t take it no more. Won’t.

“Some kinda hurry to get out in this blizzard.”

“Not really so bad just yet. Mounties say it’s gonna get worse before it gets better.  Two days, maybe, then a break before all hell breaks loose. Headed south anyways.” 

How about that Louise? Backed-off the least little bit you coulda sneaked off to visit your lover and no one’d been the wiser.

“Here you go, Yance. Three boxes of magnum cartridges, permatherm canvas, and a case of SR2A rations. How long you gonna be out there?”

“Today, tonight and early morning is all.” 

Two days northwest to make the airport, Louise, then I’ll never have to see your face again, never hear your screeching.

“What about the huskies?”

“Fifty pounds of game from the smokehouse loaded.”

Get ahead of the worst of it, make it north to Quatrain airstrip, sell the team, fly north to the cabin the first break in weather.

“Fancy eats for sledders.”

“They’ll earn it.”

Enough wood in the trench.

“My regards to Louise, Yancy.”

“Sure thing.”

Fire should smolder for two, three days. No one the wiser.

“Well Yance, you be careful out there. Find a place to shelter if this storm gets worse.”

“You bet.”

Fell like a sack of potatoes when the axe split her. By the time someone wonders why there’s no smoke, finds the cabin empty, gets to looking around, what’s left of Louise will be bloody icicles hanging in the smokehouse. She had it coming. Bossy, cheating bitch.