Bent Highway: Chapter One

Zippo

I clacked open my Zippo and held it under the bent coffee spoon. I watched the thin blue flame dance, not thinking of anything, just following the reflections and the metal turning colours. Did I have the guts to put the hot spoon to the barely scabbed over gash that grinned at me like it was about to break wide open and gush red ants – I was going to cauterize the mother.

Crazy shit like that had been going through my brain for over a month, or maybe longer. For me, time was a dog’s breakfast shoved in a blender and spun out like a crazy woman’s quilt. I knew it had been at least a year since I first started driving. I think I had that right.

The handle of the spoon warmed in my hand, I’d have to drop it soon. It was ready. I'd make damn sure nothing would bust out of there.

"Honey, what in the hell are you about to do?"

I jerked back, slammed my lighter shut, and plunged the spoon into the coffee. 

"You need a warm up, you just gotta ask."

The waitress was pushing forty-five, but her hair spilled across her shoulders like she could still turn heads at the 7-11. A badge dangled off one of her pointed breasts and shouted at me Dandy Diner, and underneath in a curled script that made me wince, Janine.

She poured the coffee into the cup with my rocket hot spoon. It had made a little sizzle when I dunked it in the murky brew.

"Good and hot now. Anything else?"

I shook my head. I waited for her to say something about a rough night or some other corn-pone inquiry – you out slamming cougars against the rose bushes again? I shouldn't be hard on poor Janine. She probably had herself a trailer park boyfriend with a pack of cigs rolled up his sleeve, a tattoo that said bitchin' and a piece of shit car he treated better than her.

Here was the thing: between the black patches of my so-called memory and the pictures in my head that were soaked in fluorescent dye, I couldn't tell if I had a rough night, week, month or life. I sipped my coffee and considered that I’d finally lost it, checked into the faraway hotel, which was a helluva lot worse than the one in California, and a damn sight harder to check out of.

I finished the last greasy egg before it slid off my plate and guzzled the coffee. Okay, my body and mind ached bad enough for it to be a hangover. But where the hell did that cut come from? That was a big-ass scab. An image flashed through me of a dark animal with yellow teeth, snarling and snapping and then a flash of silver. Then it was gone.

I paid and left. My truck was still parked in front of my room at Dave's Lucky 7. I'd walked across to the Dandy after I woke staring up into the ceiling fan. I'd stared at the blades going round and round and thought, damn, I need to do something. Of course, that is what I thought when I left my job as a used car washer, which was after I left the job as the clean-up guy at the Burger Pit, right after I left the ass manager at the hardware store. That's what everyone called it, the ass manager, no abbreviation needed or implied. It was a big joke around there. Larry in plumbing said you gotta laugh at something or one day you're going take a #4 titanium large bore Phillips screwdriver and gouge your eyeballs out. Larry was one of the cheerier employees. So yeah, I woke up again to the thought of being thirty-three and not amounting to a damn. Each job I’d taken was lower in the evolutionary career chain – soon, I’d be begging to be the poop scooper in the Shriner parades. I had to do something to kill this boredom before it took my soul, my being, my everlasting sense of whoever the hell I was and flushed it down the crapper – one probably sold by Larry.

So I got in the half-ton and drove.

It was fun at first, just drifting around, a few changes of clothes in a red vinyl suitcase, a couple of books to read if the motel satellite wasn't showing anything juicy. I had a few bucks saved up, the rent was next to nothing, I didn't need much. That's what I told Harold, the only guy that even came close to the friend category.

"So you're taking off, just like that?" Harold took a slurp out of his lime Big Gulp. I swear he went through three of those a day and he had the skin to prove it. "You gotta job somewhere else M.?" Harold shortened everything.

"Nope. Just leaving."

"Alright then. Stay between the lines."

Pretty damn tearful farewell. That was a year ago, right, I knew that. Before the black-outs started happening I knew what month it was, and was running about fifty percent on the day of the week.

* * *

I was cruising at 75, the temp gauge crept up but behaved itself, when I came upon a black sedan. It looked familiar somehow. Maybe my dad had owned one. It shone in that vintage sort of way, the fins as sharp as spears. It flashed its brake lights and I hit mine in reflex. How come I knew that car? My father never drove anything that big. I was almost tailgating, so I figured I better ease up, get some distance or pass. A dark shape popped up in the sedan's back seat, filling the rear window. I strained to see through my bug splattered windshield. What the hell was that thing? A chalk white face appeared next to black shape, and a pair of bowed lips glowed against the woman's stark skin. The image hit me so hard I slammed on my breaks, fishtailing the truck, and even as a spun, I cranked my head to stare at her face. Those bowed lips swelled to the size of a bleeding watermelon, and I heard them speak aloud, not like a memory but like she was in the car with me her and that wolf mutt of hers. But the words didn't form sentences.

"Black…soft… earth…flesh…green…far."

The truck slid across the shoulder and slammed into the ditch. 

Like the holes in my brain, it didn't make sense, but it meant something. I was so mesmerized by the voice I barely felt the truck slam to a stop. My foot had been on the brake the whole time, my truck was old school, weighed as much as a Sherman, but it was still a miracle I didn't roll. 

My arm started to thob, and when I turned to look at it, I swore that the skin puckered up and grinned at me. A trickle of blood slipped under the scab and drew a serpentine line down my forearm. 

Last night I 'd talked to the chalk woman. That I knew.

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[Craig Terlson]

Well there you have it. Thank-you Mr. Spammy.