Before leaving for two weeks in Utah, Lynn, my civilized avatar, asked me if I would be writing a Halloween story this year, to which I answered limply, “I don’t think so,” evincing a slight squeak of dismay. There was, though, one story Idea I had long ago when watching a black kid in hip hop attire at a gay white bar listening to Kid Rock and Johnny Cash, about the possibility of a deer hunter and a rapper being caught in the bodies of animals indigenous to their setting through an act of shocking transmigration of human souls…

Drinking whiskey with these wise men and listening to the tales of Sea Daddy and the Checkered Demon, on Monday night September 11, I realized that I was among experienced hunters and shooters—gun collectors even—and blurted out the thought for the story. Fed with wit and rye, and finally titled Animal Control by Sea Daddy, the story grew and grew until the heavy lids of my companions drove them to their bedrolls and I stayed up under the starry sky—40 hours awake and good and drunk, having scrawled away the notes, inspired now to write a Halloween to Christmas narrative of a planet where “no primates are allowed,” according to the following form.

It’s the night before Halloween and Cooter Boone is driving his pickup along in a funk, as he can’t get off work for buck season and is good and drunk. As he crosses the county line into the city he spots a 7-point buck and attempts to cock and aim his loaded 30/30 and then sees a black fellow in the headlights and turns to avoid running him over, rolling his Dodge Ram over and over, being ejected, and landing right next to the startled kid in time for both of them to be squished by the tumbling truck—but a muricle of sorts occurs! As the two young men die side-by-side, their hats fly into the air, are caught by an unlikely breeze and land upon the heads of the two startled creatures who had been thinking better of crossing the road, what with this one fool walking along in the drive lane chanting his angry anthem and the other trying to ride and shoot on darkened Oakliegh Road.

At length, Cooter Boone’s unwashed and much worn John Deere hat falls incongruently upon a timorous antler spike, and the skittish creature takes heart, experiencing anger and cogent awareness for the first time.

Next to him, skulking by the useless guardrail, a large, greedy raccoon has watched all of this with interest and, upon seeing the dying rappers’ fitted hat, stamped with the legend of Tommy Sotomayor, and emblazoned with “Fuck you and goodnight!” above the rim, floating overhead, reaches up with clawed hands, like some naked white man floating on a cloud and reaching out his finger to touch white Jesus’ daddy’s hand, seizes Fate on behalf of all urban animal kind; for henceforth asphalt grazing deer, cats, dogs, raccoons, rats, dumpster crows and even zoo prisoners shall know the mind of Man and rise up to take his place.

Not only do Cooter and L.L. Koon-Jay inhabit the bodies of animals regularly persecuted by man, but their lives had been lived at the bottom of their various demographics, one the reviled rural white man who is the villain in almost every horror flick, the other a socially conservative black rapper who can’t get no traction and no respect among his peers.

The following tale will be told primarily from the viewpoint of L. L. Koon-Jay, with some cameo perspectives from the various doomed humans who shall cross the path of two bitterly transmigrant souls.

Animal Control will run through Christmas Eve as the nasty primate rulers of Harm City get what they good and deserve.

Skulker Jones is the sequel to A Hoodrat Halloween and an urban horror tale of a failed man looking for a final saving grace.