* Author : Dan Micklethwaite * Narrator : Austin Malone * Host : Setsu Uzume * Audio Producer : Peter Behravesh * Discuss on Forums PodCastle 638: Slipping the Leash is a PodCastle original. Rated PG-13. Slipping the Leash Dan Micklethwaite It is 1958, and Aloysius Proctor has survived a war, and survived the clap, and he is married to Delilah, with whom he has fathered two beautiful children, both of them sons, and he is the second-ranked salesman in the premier automobile showroom in town, and he should be happy with life, shouldn’t he, or at the very least content. He should have put this behind him; buried it deep with his friends from the Corps. You’re thirty-five, for Chrissake! — what his daddy had told him. You’ve got to grow the hell up! You’ve got to be a good family man, just like I’ve done. The belt-buckle scar tissue burns Louie’s torso, scorches his forearms, singes his back. The shrapnel scars too, on his upper right thigh. He tries not to laugh. He tries not to cry. Tries not to think that he should have stayed home, and spent time with his kids just to prove that he loves them. Shouldn’t be toting this battered black case, with the scratch-marks tattooed on the stainless steel clasps. Shouldn’t. Should not. All of these rules, these enforced expectations, they bristle the hairs on the nape of his neck. They carry him back to patrols in the forest, with gunfire and mortars, and the bark of trees splintering close to his head. Ears always ringing. Nose always streaming with the cold and the fear. Teeth always chattering, chewing through cigarettes before they caught light. And he couldn’t re-spark the Zippo, because what about snipers? Couldn’t retreat or go AWOL, because what about Freedom and what about God? What about whatever his daddy would say? His daddy knows nothing. Nobody does. They don’t understand that Louie can’t help it, that he cannot stop tracking the shape of the moon; all of the moons, a whole multiplicity. Nobody warned him there were so many out there, their gravities wrenching and leading astray. There’s the one in the chrome of a Cadillac’s hubcap. The three on the ’58 Thunderbird’s dash. The button on the front of his seersucker jacket, which pulls ever tighter the further he walks. Against ingrained discipline, he moves to undo it, and then the top two on his white shirt as well. At first, he just loosens his tie to make room, but then he removes it, slipping the leash. A trend of defiance that started with theft. There were souvenirs everywhere, even in churches — crosses they took for good fortune in combat, as they stood beneath angels that shimmered on glass. And sometimes they saved you and sometimes they didn’t. The ones left alive took from those who were dead. He had lifted the Zippo from a gut-shot lieutenant, and a watch from a sentry whose throat had been slit. Other men would pull teeth, which they studied like diamonds; they would claim a few fingers, which they planned upon rendering down to the bone. Would bear them around like the holiest relics, like pieces of saints in a pouch on their belt. Some even took skulls, so he’d heard, which stank to high heaven, and then worried which creatures the scent might attract. He sniffs the street deeply and stares at the sky. Feels the noise building,