I have a dead raccoon to thank for this one. He was lying, paws up, in the driveway of a house on Provincial Route 9, somewhere between Fergus and Orangeville, Ontario. I surmised that the owner of the house would have to come out and scrape the dead animal off the driveway, and I wondered if this was a regular task — if perhaps that section of Route 9 was a hotspot for roadkill. Then I wondered what the owner would do with the unfortunate raccoon. He’s going to eat it, I thought immediately, and imagined his freezer stuffed with dead woodchucks and squirrels and skunks. I danced with the idea, feeling the rough edges of a story — hopefully a good story. However, after Googling ‘roadkill’ I discovered, to my horror, that eating roadkill is nothing new; people do it on a regular basis. There are even roadkill cook-offs, for the love of God! Needless to say, my idea was somewhat deflated by this discovery. But my mind would not stop dancing. What happens to the roadkill? Have you ever noticed how it always disappears inside of a day or two? Where does it go? The questions persisted and my mind kept grooving, and before long I had the basic steps for Old Man Scratch. So, what happens to the roadkill? Well, chances are it’s either scraped away or thrown in a pot, but I like to think that my novella provides the true answer.