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Gun to my head, five minutes left.

The numbers shine out through the darkness from the raised, blood-splashed bowl in front of me, inexorably counting down to zero. 04:59. The wolf stands across from me staring hard into my eyes, sizing me up, tearing me down.

"There's not much time left fucker, so make a choice."

The wolf pushes the hard barrel of the handgun into the side of my head and grunts. I'm shaking, barely able to stand up straight and scared out of my fucking mind.

"Give me an answer," the wolf demands with a snarl.

The room is cramped, cluttered and lit only by rays of light shining through the cracks in the room's single door located directly behind me. If I turn my head it's over. I can only move once the choice is made. I flatten my ears and try to freeze my body as best as I can.

"I don't have an answer."

The wolf hits me hard on the tip of my muzzle with his free paw, nothing held back. Droplets of blood fly out of my nose, but I do the best I can to keep my head straight. I let out a suppressed whimper despite my best efforts. God this hurts so much.

"Why did you do it?"

The wolf sneers at me and my bloodied nose, eyes saying it all: I'm nothing but dirt. Despite his searing hatred the wolf speaks quietly. This is personal business. It would do no good for somebody to burst in.

Blood starts to drip slow and thick down my muzzle in silence. The only sound in the room is my ragged breathing. After a moment I lean forward just a little to allow the blood to drop into the bowl. I don't want to make too much of a mess. The timer reads 04:11.

"I didn't mean to... I would never mean to... It wasn't a choice, if it was... if it was, it would never have happened."

I stop, fight back a sob and take a deep breath.

"You know what I was talking about. Not that. Why did you start the fucking engine?"

It's all so obvious in retrospect. Time washes away the mud and leaves things crystal clear. Actions are actions until they were actions, and only then do they start to have consequences. Consequences make all the difference. Nothing is good or evil until it has a consequence.

"It's not like I meant for it to-"

The wolf laughs.

"It was fucking selfish, careless, and immoral and that's just the start of it."

You take your paw to your back pocket, pull out the keys, stick them into the ignition. That is an action. You pull out, ride down the road. That is an action. You roll around the corner, speeding up. That is an action. You aren't concentrating properly, you just had a few drinks, but you aren't completely off your head or anything. That is a description. Your senses are slow, there's something in front of you that you don't expect, your reaction speeds are dulled and... and...

That is a consequence.

I can't smell anything but blood. I can't hear anything but my own panting intercut with the wolf's snarls. I can't see anything but the hatred in his eyes.

One paw tightens on the handgun. The other the wolf raises in front of me, forcing me to look at the slash marks on his wrist, one of which is now oozing blood from it's freshly broken scab. The scab broke from impact once that paw smashed into my muzzle.

That is a consequence.

This whole situation is a consequence.

2:58.

"So first you drove over the poor fucking fox and then what?"

Somehow hearing it vocalised takes it out of the mathematical, out of the scientific where it was something to ponder and debate over, and makes it real. Tangible. Devastating. I killed somebody.

I killed somebody.

I can still remember the thud, the short scream that continues, even now, to drone on in the back of my mind. It was like kneading dough the way he bent and folded on impact. Then he rolled over the bonnet and back onto the road. The next thud - as he hit the road - I only imagined, but that made it no less real. I checked the rear view mirror. It only took me a moment to know that there was no way the fox was getting up. For another moment I slowed the car down. And then I... and then I...

"I kept on driving."

The wolf hits me across the muzzle again, causing more blood to spurt out. Moments later a steady stream of the red liquid begins to flow from my nose and into the bowl.

"Kept. On. Driving."

Rage causes the wolf's words to come out far louder than they should have.

"Jared?" A distant voice calls, approaching. "What's going on?"

"So, have you made a decision?" Asks the wolf.

I drove the car back to the apartment, riding round the block twice to make sure nobody was there to witness my next move. When I was sure I wasn't being followed I parked, sped into my home as quietly as I could and ran a bucket of hot water. While it was filling I grabbed a cloth, a sponge and some cleaning fluids and ran back outside with all of it. There was a small dent on the bonnet of the car, it didn't seem nearly large enough. If it weren't for the blood nobody would suspect a thing. While I scrubbed I tried to remember if there was surveillance in that area or if there were any witnesses, my strained memory told me that the answer to both was no.

I forget about somebody though. The wolf. The same wolf staring at me from across the room with the handgun to my head.

That was the night before last. It took this long for everything to sink in. For a moment the next morning I convinced myself that none of it was real. The news proved me wrong. Local fox Vincent Camile, on his way home on his own, was killed in a vicious hit and run incident.

After that I called in sick, drove the car out of town and sold it to a used car dealership at a criminally low price. The man working there gave me a funny look when I accepted his offer, but with a shrug he stopped caring, or wrote me off as incompetent, or whatever, but I got the cash and I got out of there. It took me hours of bus riding to get home.

01:45. These are the consequences. These shining, uncompromising numbers are the consequences. The seconds are ticking away.

"No. I don't know."

The wolf points at the timer and shrugs.

"Well then, you know where this ends."

The wolf thrusts the gun hard into the side of my head. I grunt, louder than I wish I had.

"Jared, what's going on in there?" The voice comes from just outside the door now, the concern in her voice is evident just below the confusion. It's Helen.

"Helen, sweetie, could you just give me a minute?"

"What's wrong Jared?"

More than can be said in a few words. More than can be said in 01:20. I ignore her.

The wolf didn't even have a gun this morning. He and Helen were peaceful people, never saw the need in it, until now. But here I am under threat of death by that very weapon. 01:16 until the trigger is pulled and my brains go splat. Fuck it, what brains? Anybody dumb enough to do what I did doesn't have any.

Maybe that's unfair. It was only an action, a risky action, but it was only an action until it had consequences. The fox shouldn't have been there. The fox should have been looking, should have seen my speed and ran, or heard me from blocks away, but, for whatever reason, he didn't. He walked across the road and it was only an action, a risky action, but it was only an action until it had consequences. The only difference is he ended up dead and I'm still here. That's on me. His action is irrelevant, the consequence is all that matters.

"So are you going to tell the world?" the wolf speaks in a whisper now. "Or are you going to live your miserable life in guilt and secrecy, always looking over your shoulder, wondering who will expose the truth of what you did, and when, and what will happen to you, wanting to throw up every time you look at alcohol, too scared to put your paws on the wheel of a car ever again. Or, option C, do you want whatever is inside of that thick skull to be spread all over these walls?"

00:36. I have to make a decision. Well, that's a lie. I can let the time run out and the trigger be pulled. The real question I'm asking is how exactly do I want this life I know to end? Do I want to go to jail and destroy any prospect of a simple life? Do I want to drown in paranoia and guilt? Or do I want to simply greet oblivion? (Hell? Nothingness? Something else entirely?)

Oh, these options all sound so fucking enticing.

I point a finger at the wolf.

"You got me into this!"

"Jared, what's going on?" Helen voice calls out. "Who's in there with you?" The sound of paws slamming against thick wood. "Open the door. You're scaring me! Open the door!"

00:10. Ten seconds left.

"It's all your fucking fault!"

The wolf raises his free paw and balls it into a fist.

"What's the answer?"

00:04.

The fist clenches even tighter, claws digging past the blood matted fur and into skin. The wolf strikes out, hard and fast. There is no answer but this.

00:02.

The mirror smashes on impact, the wolf disintegrates into a hundred pieces, I screw my eyes shut and brace as fragments of glass whiz past me. My balled fist screams out in pain and for a moment I do too. When I open my eyes again I see several shards of glass lodged in fingers and besides knuckles. The sink bowl and my phone are so covered in blood they look like a scene from a Hollywood slasher flick. 00:00. The phone beeps out a shrill, repeating sound. Time's up. And above that there's another shrill screech. Helen is smashing paws into the door, pleading with me to talk to her, asking me what's going on, what the sound was. The feeling of cold metal disappears as I lower the gun, place it in the sink and pick up the phone, wiping blood from it with my shirt. I turn off the phone's alarm and drop it back into the sink bowl, then I start picking bits of glass out of me. Once the worst of it is gone I reach over for a small towel and wrap it around the damaged paw as best as I can. I block out Helen's voice. I take a deep breath.

After a minute of doing nothing but trying to slot the pieces of sanity I still own back together, Helen stops shouting and starts crying. I didn't pull the trigger, but life as I know it has ended today. Actions are actions until they have consequences. If I ever want to forgive myself and live a life anywhere near resembling normality I need to accept that. I need to face the consequences of what I did. The consequences of killing a man, the consequences of trying to sweep away the evidence, the consequences of putting a gun to my own head.

"Helen?" I call out calmly.

"Jared?" She says the word incredulously. Of course she's confused. To her a whole lot of nothing happened and then there were sounds of arguing, then a smash, a scream, some beeps, then silence. "Jared, what happened?"

"Do you remember that news story yesterday? Vincent Camile."

"Yes. Oh my God. Did you know him?"

"I killed him."