MOUNTAINS COULD BE TREACHEROUS. Darkness draping from odd angles, trenching you; inky black roads barricaded by fragmented guardrails, cliffside doom a worn brake pad away. If somebody had been trying to kill you...
Headlights flashed behind you. High. Bright. Flares erupting in your rearview mirror, snuffed quietly.
Everything a silky shadow-darkness as you crane to check, slowing, slowing... slowing...
Flashing in your side mirror, blindingly, closer, and you recognized its shape, dimming again, a low-lying Honda Civic. Somewhere between '00 and '04. Wes and Sky would be proud you'd listened years ago, listened while you all walked everywhere, scheming to pool for a cheap Toyota. I hadn't even thought of leaving yet, I don't think. Mostly, Wes and I wanted to make out, to drive around, to see if it took us anywhere else. He'd have loved Dirt Nasty.
Though it deteriorated significantly, I'd long lost sight of what I could remember about my '02 Civic, only remembered a grey-gold coat of paint, rusty patches, a long, deep, incisive crack in its rear bumper; a baby-blue sticker for Bernie 2016.
Everything blinked. White. Hot.
Honk!
My hands had been damp, rubbery, but I managed to swerve, blinking away a blinding beam: a glare passing by, passing away, dissolving quickly and quietly. Something ghosted by, blurry, foggy, a barely-there shadow disappearing.
Gone.
I shook myself awake violently. I cursed, blew out a harsh breath as I reached to crack a window, letting in a sliver of fresh air. Cold. Clear...er. Nothing was ever clear, I'd drive in a fog, unsure of where I was going. I couldn't shed it. Cloudiness. Murkiness. Sleepless, but drowsy; alone off Route 5.
When I can remember, I can remember. Before. I can remember you sitting on a curb behind Rick's Civic, behind Dirt Nasty. I can remember memorizing it—100AEA. A weathered sticker, peeling white tape leftover, beyond recognition of its old expletive against Trump.
Curves. In Arizona, caught off-guard by Emergency Runaway lanes for Semis. Everything ripped up from beneath you, skidding downhill, around, realizing humorlessly you're in unfamiliar territory.
We're not in Kansas anymore.
Never will you know Nevada or Colorado. Not really.
No, you were raised by the ocean, in salty breezes, on rocky cliffs, on sailboats, on piers, born and bred to the Atlantic. Mountains didn't do it. Beautiful, undoubtedly.
Not yours. Not your setting. Not your story.
Reception was fuzzy. You were deep in Arizona, inhaling fumes, knowing you couldn't afford to stop, stop, stop. Everything smoky and subdued, hazy. The sky was always dark.
Midnight. It had wound down, up, down, up, and you'd caught up to a streaking silhouette, a duct-taped headlight you didn't want to recognize, burning lowly. Nothing else.
My headlights were faint. A crack in its rear bumper, a baby-blue sticker for Bernie 2016.
Fuck.
Instinct forced you to brake, back off, slow down, and you let it ghost around a corner, disappear, before you picked up again, rounding, only to find it a few hundred yards down: a silhouette of a broken-down, grey-gold Honda Civic. On a mountainside road, abandoned, a carbon copy haunting you.
Whatever you're running from...
Everything charring, blazing quietly. Plumes. Rust coating a black sky. Orange. Flames licking up dry brush, blackened, curled corners of a bumper sticker for Bernie. 2016. Numbers. 100AEA.
You.
It was supposed to be you.
