Joey Rodriguez was a certified “city-boy”. Born and raised in Newark, N.J., he’d never been west of Pennsylvania. Yet now, because of his eccentric new boss, he found himself in the freezing tundra of the Montana mountains. Misery was his new reality. Ass-deep in snow, feet soaked and frozen, nose dripping, carrying a riffle which he’d never fired, with a non-functional sat-phone. Neither was his new kook-boss anywhere in sight. Dying in the woods wasn’t the end he’d ever envisioned after surviving the hood and all its urban delights. He sat back and pulled out a small roll-up blunt and began having a puff, trying to relax as he wondered if some red neck would find his body next spring.

He started descending a small hill and turned to see a giant buck with bloody antlers leaning against a tree with a large cigar in his mouth. Immediately, Joey wondered what his blunt had been laced with.

“Gotta light, Joey?”, The creature uttered in perfect English. Joe’s mind was stuck in the mud of disbelief between a talking deer and his demand for a light, while also wondering whose blood was dripping from those giant antlers. Nervously, he reached out and lit the cigar in the creature’s mouth. Joey’s eyes were then drawn to a camp at the bottom of a hill and a site much more disturbing than a deer with powers of speech. Several deer were walking in a circle around a fire. Above that fire hung a naked, screaming, man, wearing only the bright orange hat of a hunter. The butt of a rifle seemed to be protruding from his rear-most orifice. It was Joey’s new boss. Several other deer where there laughing, smoking, drinking liquor pilfered from his boss’s cooler and occasionally stabbing the howling man with sharp antlers.

The dear leaning against the tree had a distinctive nose, quite red and almost giving off a glow. His eyes rolled toward Joey as he intensely puffed the cigar and then exhaled into the air. “You with this clown?”, He posed. Joey was now at the intersection of fight or flight. He had no idea how to operate the rifle in his hand nor did he entertain the notion of a chance at escaping this troupe of murderous herbivores on the side of a lonely mountain that they ruled.

He opted for the truth. “Yeah, I’m with him. He’s my new boss and no, I didn’t want to come up here.”, he blurted out. Steely, too-human eyes weighed Joey’s words on some internal scale. The Buck almost seemed to sneer and then smile as the smoke of the cigar rose skyward.

“Last question, Joey. Have you ever shot, harmed, or eaten a deer?”, The buck said as he put the cigar out against the tree. “No, never. I grew up in a concrete jungle, I’ve shot humans and done all sorts of other bad things. Also, I prefer chicken or beefand wouldn’t know what deer meat tastes like.”, He inwardly hoped this response was enough while wondering how this abomination knew his name.

“Good answer Joey. I think I’m gonna let ya live because you shoot humans, a great past time. Start walking that way, there’s a cabin there with everything a human needs. We’re gonna keep your boss. He killed my wife last year and then hung her antlers over his stupid fireplace. Never come up here again if you know what’s good for you. Oh, and by the way, no one will believe you if you’re stupid enough to utter a word of this. Go back to your ghetto and stop smoking, bad for the lungs.”, The buck let out with a menacing tone as he flicked the cigar toward Joey’s boss.

A few steps later Joey fell and went unconscious. When he awoke. He was in a trailer with his boss. “Ya ready Joey?”, He said. Joey looked out of the trailer’s window and saw a giant, red-nosed buck at the crest of the hill. “No Sir, I quit”.