Part One.

The first one came home in a glandstone bag. Fiona thought Franklin must have picked it up on hard rubbish day, or bought it from cash converters. He was always lingering around stores that sold complete crap. It sat for several days above the refrigerator where it warmed in the afternoon sunlight.

'Are you using this for anything in particular?' she asked, lifting it out of its musty lair and placing it on the dining table among the coffee cups and breakfast bowls.

It would, however, be some weeks before Franklin would tell his wife where he had found it.

While driving through the mountains on the old tourist road, Franklin had pulled over to take a leak, and because he'd always been a bit of a private wizzer, (even in high school preferring to relieve himself in the cubical rather than pissing in the urinal in view of others), Franklin, on that fateful day, instead of just ducking behind a bush, had to push on into the forest. Eventually, he found a spot behind a big tree stump. He unzipped his trousers, took out his worm, as his wife called it, and sighed with relief. It was as he was zipping himself up that he saw it. It would be an exaggeration to say that he fell in love, but it did seem to draw him towards it as though it had chosen him. He picked it up by the ears and with a cautious look back carried it towards the car.

In the trunk was a toolbox and a gladstone bag full of old baby clothes, some still with spittle encrusted into the fabric. Nervously Franklin emptied the clothes into the gutter and placed the head inside. A truck rolled by, shaking his nerves, forcing him to slam the trunk and swiftly exit the scene of the crime. Was it a crime? Franklin wasn't sure, but he certainly felt guilty.

As he rolled down the mountain, the head gently thudded against the walls of the trunk. It was a soothing sound, like the ocean, and Franklin felt awash with a new emotion now. Was this a sign that better times were finally approaching? He wasn't sure, but he certainly felt happy. But what would Fiona think?

When Franklin got home he sheepishly removed the gladstone bag from the trunk, carried it inside and placed it above the refrigerator. Fiona was at her dance class. He wondered if she'd ask him about it when she got home. She didn't.

Instead, Fiona went about her daily chores, humming and executing playful two steps around the house. After three days, Franklin had convinced himself that Fiona was avoiding the head. Sometimes he stood watching her for minutes at a time as she salted corn-beef and heated cheese sauce for the cauliflower. She never once glanced up at the bag above the refrigerator. But Franklin did. Every time he looked to the bag he was filled with that same warm feeling he felt upon first finding the head. Soon Franklin could not go an hour without visiting the head. During daylight hours he could only look at it from the lounge, or pretend he was searching for a snack. But at night, when Fiona was asleep, Franklin grew bolder as his desire to see it increased.

The next night, four days in, Franklin snuck the bag down to the laundry in the basement where, he thought, he could admire it in private. It was dark down there, but by the light of his old zippo the head shone softly with a quasi-spiritual radiance. Ah! Again, more than ever before, Franklin felt that he had been chosen. There was something ethereal about it, and in a moment of recklessness, he slid his hand into the bag and caressed the soft, cold fur between its ears. The wolf's eyes glinted in the light of the flame as though, Franklin thought, it enjoyed the union between them. How could such happiness last, Franklin wondered. The head would soon begin to decompose, to ferment. In the end, the stench would give the game away.

Inevitably, as he was contemplating the slow deterioration of his prize, Fiona, a basket of linen in hand, barged through the door, and reading the embarrassed look on Franklin's face concluded that Franklin was engaged in selfish acts of self pleasure. The look she gave him was full of patience and frustration.

'Do you think you and your worm could take it outside and clean the pool?' she asked before stomping her two step out the door.

Later that day, Franklin found himself apologising for his errant behaviour.

But why was it that the next day he found himself returning the bag to the top of the refrigerator? Did the wolf want to be found by Fiona? Was it bored of Franklin already? The wolf's head was bringing out all of Franklin's insecurities. He was losing his identity and his self assurance by the hour. When he farted he was sure he heard the wolf growl with disdain.

Fiona was curious. She and Franklin had been married for three years and although she had searched for them, she'd never managed to find the collection of pornographic magazines that she was certain Franklin possessed. Things however, became clear to her when she saw Franklin bent over his glandstone bag with an ecstatic expression. So that's where he's been hiding his loot all these years. Fiona liked breasts, and perhaps it was this weakness that lead her to sneak a look in the bag when she saw it, later that day, above the refrigerator. She was a little afraid, but also excited as she opened the catch on the side of the bag. But when the gruesome contents of the bag were revealed to her, she knew her relationship with Franklin would never be the same. So this was his private pleasure, she reasoned. How could she compete? And who could she ask for advice? Returning the bag to where she'd found it, Fiona sat down at the dining room table and for several hours was lost in thought. There were moments when she wept. At times she prayed to god. She was an atheist, but this new revelation had shaken her to the core.

It was with the utmost impatience that Fiona waited for her husband to wake. And when he finally appeared, dressed in the red bathrobe that she despised, Franklin immediately knew what had occurred. He looked from the bag to his wife. And from his wife to the bag.

'Are you using this for anything in particular?' she asked, lifting the wolf's head out of its musty lair and placing it on the dining table.

Franklin stood agape, while waves of anger visibly rose from where his wife sat. The wolf remained mute. They both avoided each other for the rest of the day. Franklin brooded in the basement, while Fiona furiously scrubbed the bathtub and prayed for answers. Then, above the fumes of cleaning agents, like a flash of blinding light, Fiona knew what she had to do, and with purposeful strides she headed for the door.

-end of part one-