souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 128: time is coming

Sam kept her hands on the wheel and her foot hovered above the gas pedal. Tall banks of snow lined the sides of the highway as they made their way over Donner Pass. Another few hours and they would be back in the Bay Area. They were allowed to go over just so long as they were able to keep it all together along the way.
Everything she had heard about driving on an icy wintry road was not to slow down. Not too fast, though, but do not, under any circumstances, slow down.
She couldn't hardly shake the fact that she was driving a two ton coffin made of metal which in turn towed a single ton projectile of cold metal and plywood.
Eric and Alex were silent the whole way over the mountain pass: at one point during a flat stretch of road, she peered over at the former there in the front seat next to her and the fact that he was hunkered down in the seat a little more than before they began the ascent into the mountains. She took a glimpse into her rear view mirror over her head at Alex hunkered down in the back seat there.
Either they were in fact nervous or she hadn't turned on the heater all the way.
She took a glimpse down to the dials: the heater was in fact on.
"Are you guys okay?" she asked them with a slight clearing of her throat.
"This is crazy," Eric confessed.
"Yeah, this is something so bizarre," Alex added.
"It's okay—Alex, you and I have been on this road together before." She took another glimpse into the mirror over her head at him.
"Yeah, but it wasn't like this, though," he pointed out.
"Push comes to shove, we'll bunk in the trailer until the clouds clear out some more," she assured them, "because you fellas look like you're about to get beaned in the head with something hard and heavy." She returned to the road and that time around she felt so much stronger and more powerful than before.
Two boys, both of whom she had her tongue wrapped around, right there in the car next to her. She had it right there as she walked the fine razor's edge with the faint glimmers of obvious black ice upon the pavement all around them. The road wound up ahead of them.
Miles and miles of it all.
Something so intense about it. Intense, and rather erotic.
The possibility that the three of them could go off the road, or that the trailer could jackknife and pull the whole thing sideways, and they could die together. The three of them, dying together. Eric's words rang through her mind right then: death and desire go hand in hand.
As they rounded a bend in the road, she caught something out of the corner of her eye. She took a fleeting glimpse down to the center console and Eric's hand there right next to his thigh, as if his hand was cold.
Another curve in the road, followed by a grand view of the mountains and the thick layer of pure white snow.
She swore he moved his hand a bit to the parking lever: meanwhile, in the back seat, Alex hunkered down inside of his jacket as if he was freezing. Sam peered into the rear view mirror once again, at the sight of the little gray plume atop his head and his sharp eyebrows.
"Warm enough back there, Alex?" she called to him.
"My feet are cold," he confessed, "I've got my blanket over my legs, but my feet are absolutely freezing, though. I'm also feeling a draft back here, too."
"Aw—you got the window rolled up?"
"It's cracked a tiny little bit," he said with a bit of a grunt. She peered back at him again, that time to watch him roll up the window a bit more.
But within time, the road sank down into the snowy hills, there on the other side on the way over to Sacramento and right in the face of the setting sun. If nothing else, they could stop there for the time being and hang out over the night in order to rest their minds and cold bodies. Eric shivered and shook in his seat right there next to her.
Sam took another glimpse at him once they reached another straight stretch of road, albeit a surprisingly dry one.
"You alright, Eric?" she asked him.
She returned to the road for another moment and then she came back to his hand, which he had put there right above the parking lever and he never moved for a second.
"I'm freezing," he confessed.
"Are you getting any heat?"
"I am, but I'm still utterly freezing."
"Okay—we're almost into the valley. We'll stop for the night and then we'll hitch up the trailer somewhere—"
"Um—Samantha?" Alex called to her.
"Uh huh?" She took a glimpse into the mirror and the reflection of Alex's grimace.
"What's the matter?"
In the reflection, he peered over the backs of the seats and into the rear window.
"Alex? What happened?"
A sinking sensation emerged in her chest.
"No," she breathed out.
He pursed his lips together and his face turned the same color as fresh porridge.
"No, no, no, no, no, no—no—no—no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—no, no, no, no, no—no—no—no—no—no—no—"
She paused for a second to find Alex's eyes wide like big marbles.
"No!"
Eric shuddered in the seat and brought the lapels of his coat up closer to his face.
Sam peered into the rear view mirror to ensure that no one was behind them. She then merged over to the right lane and she took the next exit into Colfax, there in the snowy hills of the Sierra Nevadas. She pulled over there right off of the offramp and she yanked on the parking lever and killed the engine. She buried her face in her hands and groaned in her throat.
"Oh my fucking god," she blurted out in a muffled voice. She peered out the windshield at the buildings there on the sidewalk on the other side. The gray cloud cover on the sky began to turn an even darker shade of gray. At least they were out of the mountains.
"Where do you think we could've lost it?" Alex asked her in a small voice.
"God, I don't know," she confessed as her heart hammered in her chest. "At least it wasn't over Sonora Pass or, god forbid, Tioga."
"What do we say to Chuck, though? That's what I'm freaking out about."
"Let's just tell him the truth," Sam assured him. "We were going over Donner Pass and you just happened to look out the window and you saw that the trailer was gone. Hope he didn't have an attachment to that thing..." She fetched up a sigh in hopes to calm down her heartbeat. "Well, we've gotta do something, though, Alex. It's getting dark and Eric is a popsicle."
Alex leaned forward and he looked over at Eric himself and the blank expression on his face.
"Hey—" He reached over and tapped on the side of Eric's face. He never moved. "Hey!"
Nothing. Eric sat there with a look on his face as if he had seen a ghost.
"Too bad I don't have my amp with me," Alex told her. "I'd plug in my guitar and rip some Mercyful Fate for him. That always wakes him—"
He abruptly stopped and his eyes widened even more.
"Oh, no, don't tell me!" Sam exclaimed.
Alex bowed his head and rested his forehead on the top of Sam's seat.
"NO!"
"Mine was in there, too," Eric finally said in a low voice.
Sam clasped her hands to her mouth. The three of them sat there in stunned and horrified silence. Wherever the trailer went, there was no way they were finding those little amps again.
"I've had that amp since I was taking lessons from Satch," Alex groaned out as he lifted his head. "Fuck—"
Eric closed his eyes and sighed through his nose. Alex ran his fingers through his dark hair.
"But you know what I am glad about?" he told her in a low voice.
"What's that?" she asked him.
"That I wasn't in there."
She gaped at him and her heart sank once again.
"Oh—right?"
She let out a low whistle and her breath appeared right before her in the form of light wisps. It was getting cold again.
"Okay—um," she began again as she returned to the steering wheel, "well, we're in Colfax, almost to Auburn no less. We're almost home and it's not like when you and I—" She turned to Alex again. "—got stranded at Tahoe. We're actually near civilization this time, you know, not just a bar and a bunch of houses."
"It's not snowing either," he muttered as he peered out the windshield.
"Right, and it's not snowing. And we're almost home, too. Don't worry, I have some money. We'll stop and get dinner—I don't know about a room, though."
She froze right in her tracks.
"What's the matter?" Alex asked her.
"Oh, no."
"What?"
"My mom's tupperware was in there, too!"
"Oh, man!" Eric declared as he clapsed a hand to his head.
"Her tupperware and the pot she lent me, too," Sam added. "But like I said before, though."
"Just tell the truth," Alex sputtered.
"Right."
"Let's get moving again," Eric advised her with a shiver.
"Yeah, now you're looking cold," Sam told him.
"I feel like I'm gonna puke, too," Alex groaned as he leaned back in the seat again.
"Don't blame you, dude," Eric said.
"Just don't do it in here," Sam advised him as she started up the car again. "Too bad neither of us have beepers 'cause I'd call up Chuck right now and tell him what happened."
"Marla has one of those bricks, though, doesn't she?" Eric asked her as she turned the heat back up.
"But that's Marla, though," Alex pointed out.
They rolled forward into the darkening street and towards the restaurant there at the end. All Sam could think about was how she lost her mother's containers and that one pot, but she need not stay wrapped up inside of it all as the three of them huddled into the far corner of the room.
Alex turned his head to the right side of the room.
"Samantha, do you see this over here?" he asked aloud, and he glanced over at Sam with a twinkle in his eye.
"What is it?"
He gestured over to the black and white photograph hung up on the wall right next to him. It was of a statue, which appeared to be a small cherubic angel that danced with a devil. The stone it had been crafted out of was smooth and polished to the point it resembled to soap.
"Wow," Sam muttered. Eric looked up at the photograph as well. Alex stood to his feet for a better look at the label underneath the actual photograph.
"Taken from the Metropolitan—back in New York City—a marble statue of an angel and a demon, titled 'the Dance of Heaven and Hell'. Artist unknown, but supposedly from the Italian Renaissance."
"It looks Italian," Eric declared.
"Purchased by the museum for only a hundred dollars!" Alex chuckled as he returned to his spot right next to Sam.
"Imagine if you had something you made purchased by a big museum like that for a tiny price tag like that," he said to her.
"What if it isn't worth much, though?" she asked him.
"Great art transcends price," he told her as he took a sip from his water glass. "If you had it bought like that for a couple of bucks and gets valued, and the value is huge, that's where the bank comes in."
"Really?"
"That's what I've heard, anyways—and just from reading about things like that, too," he continued. "But when you're a great artist, though, that's when none of it matters."
"You think I'm a great artist?" Sam asked him with a small smile on her face.
"You think she's a great artist?" Eric echoed her.
"From the pieces I've seen, anyway," Alex said as he set his hand on the other side of his glass.
Within time, the waiter returned for them: she asked for a big bowl of clam chowder, complete with all the bread and crackers. The boys both asked for stroganoff, something to warm them both up as they sat there in that chilly restaurant together. The clouds outside the window collected some more and Sam knew more snow was upon them. At least they were headed the other way that time around; she yearned for the warmth and the safety of a trailer.
Eric adjusted the lapels of his jacket. It wasn't that cold in there, but she wondered if he had an extra chill that time around. Alex even shivered himself right there next to her: he shook his jet black helmet of hair and the little plume of gray wiggled a bit.
"What exactly quantifies a great artist, anyway?" Sam wondered aloud.
"A great artist not only makes you feel something but takes you out of the world a bit," Alex replied, "I dunno, that's my definition of it, anyways. I would think it's something that's completely based on other people's interpretation of the phrase."
"A great artist mops the floor with all the other run of the mill artists and the supposedly good artists," Eric said in a single breath.
"Exactly!" Alex bowed his head forth and belted out with laughter.
Within time their food arrived and those two boys were quick to wolf down their stroganoff: Alex almost dropped his fork on the floor while Eric already down two bites of beef and egg noodles.
"My goodness, you fellas are hungry," she noted as she set her napkin down on her lap and picked up her spoon.
"Hungry and cold," Alex corrected her once he swallowed down a large bite of pasta. He drank down another gulp of ice water as if he was dying of thirst.
But then again, Sam didn't realize how hungry she was, either, as she took a bite of chowder, with all those cubed potatoes and fresh clams with a touch of herbs. The bread was soft and fresh right out of the oven. The three of them feasted on their dinner and all the while Sam wondered where they would go for the night.
Alex did have the blanket there in the back seat with him. At least that time around, they were in fact closer to civilization but there was no way Sam could pass up the chance to be nestled right in between those two boys, especially with their stomachs warm and full: Alex himself was enjoying his stroganoff a bit too much as every time he took a rather large bite, he closed his eyes and tilted his head back.
Joey burst into Sam's mind right then. It felt so long since she had seen him or even heard from him. She hoped that Anthrax were doing okay over there in New York and she wondered if they were in fact about to do their new album like Charlie had promised. It would in fact be nice if they made the new one with all five of them, and she knew they would come on strong just so long as Metallica kept it together there as well.
If nothing, she could search for a payphone there in Colfax and call him up to check in on him. She also needed to call both of her parents to tell them that they made it to the other side of the Sierras.
Sam ran her fingers through her dark hair as she took another bite of clam chowder, followed by another. Within time, she had finished her soup as well as the bread.
"So you boys wanna bunk out in the car or should I get us a room?" she asked them.
"I'm afraid that, by the time you get us a room," Alex began as he took one last sip from his glass of water, "I'm gonna fall asleep standing up. I'm sure Eric is about ready to, too."
"Yeah, I pretty much am," Eric confessed as he fetched up a yawn.
"Okay, but I have to call my parents first, though," she pointed out as she finished off her glass of water as well.
"Think I better call mine, too," Alex confessed; he rubbed his eyes and he slid out of his seat and onto the floor. He was so full that he almost lost his balance, but Sam was quick to capture him. Eric lingered back with his face propped up in the palm of his hand as the two of them made their way across the floor to the payphones by the bathrooms. She brushed hips with him and he almost staggered back a bit. Alex chuckled and he reached for the phone on the right.
"You got any change?" he asked her.
"I've got tons of change," she told him as she reached into her purse for her wallet. She handed him a few quarters and he turned back to the phone on the wall. Sam turned to the one before her and she inserted a couple of quarters for herself. She dialed Ruben's number first: he wasn't home and thus she left a quick message for him. The same went for Esmé. Another pair of quarters into the phone and she dialed Joey's number: at that point, Alex had already hung up the phone and he turned to Sam, complete with his right hand up on the wall above him and his left hand on his hip.
She turned to him with the phone receiver up to her ear. His eyelids drooped a bit from the warm sensual feeling inside of him as well as something else. He nibbled on his bottom lip when Joey's voice crackled on the other end of the phone.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Joey."
Alex raised an eyebrow at her.
"Sam?"
"Yeah. Who else would it be?" She giggled at that.
"Oh, just kinda sorta playin' wit' ya."
She giggled at him when Alex reached for her hip. She swerved back a bit when he cracked her a devilish smirk.
"What have you been up to lately?" she asked him.
"Oh, my god—about a month ago, I got a call early in the morning from Danny—Danny Spitz—tellin' me that the studio burned down."
"Holy shit, really?"
"Yeah."
Alex raised both eyebrows at her.
"Yeah, we lost like a hundred grand worth of stuff in the whole thing," Joey continued. "So we've been going in and out of the whole thing just to make sure the master tapes are still intact when we take 'em into mastering. We've all been kinda freaking out because we're like, 'oh, fuck, what if it's rushed', you know?"
"Oh, absolutely," she replied as Alex lingered closer to her. He showed her his tongue and he wiggled his fingers at her. She showed him a little grin.
"Squeeze me," he begged her in a low voice: his chest lingered right there before her face.
"Our new album is going into mastering, though," Joey continued with a clearing of his throat.
"Squeeze me like you're squeezing a full ripe avocado."
"What?" Joey demanded.
"Nothing—" She swatted at Alex, who snickered at her. "It's just—somebody behind me—getting all naughty and shit."
Joey chuckled at that. Alex showed her his tongue again and that time he put both hands on his hips.
"Going into mastering already?" Sam asked Joey.
"Yes! No clue when it's supposed to come out, though. Thinking maybe this summer? But who knows, really?"
"It comes out when it's done," she said.
"It comes out four weeks after it's done," Alex corrected her in a low voice.
"What?" Joey laughed.
"Yeah!" she declared with a chuckle.
"I mean it is true," he told her. "Anyways, sounds crowded in there. Go and rest in a place that's nice and quiet. I'm all wrapped up in my pajamas and a blanket and I'm ready to jack off to you being all naked and shit. You go to bed and have some sexy dreams later on."
"You, too," she retorted back.
"Sam?"
"Yes?"
"I love you."
She nibbled on her bottom lip as she locked eyes with Alex, and then she turned her head in the opposite direction.
"I love you, too," she mumbled right into the mouth piece.
Joey chuckled and then they hung up at the same time. Sam returned to Alex and the smug look plastered upon his face.
"You horny bastard," she scoffed.
"It's gonna be even worse with you and me nestled up against each other again," he told her with a little rub of his belly.
"Well, at least this time we've got Eric with us," she pointed out as the two of them padded back to the table.
"Nah, that's why it's gonna be even worse," he insisted with a chuckle.
At least he wasn't full of alcohol as she paid the bill and left a tip for the waiter. But they were going to be nestled up against each other in the back seat of the car with nothing more than the blanket and a few other things however.
Indeed, once she had pulled the car around the corner, and the three of them had lay down the back seat flat, and they snuggled up against one another to keep each other warm, Sam had a feeling that things were going to be rather intense right then and there. Just like that night in Tahoe, they had their makeshift pillows made of their jackets.
Alex snuggled closer to her with his hands right before his face: even with nothing more than a few inches of clearance between them, she could feel the soft silken warmth from his body. Eric lay on her right side: he, too, felt so soft and warm even with a bit of a gap between her and him. In the darkness, she made sight of the inky black hair spread across his round full face. Nestled in between two boys with their stomachs absolutely full of stroganoff. Quite the life she found herself wrapped in at the moment.
She thought about Scarlett and if and when she would hear back from her about her art.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Alex licking his lips.
"The little man wants it," Eric noted as he shifted his weight on the side of the seat.
"The little man can't have it," Sam teased as she rolled her head over for a look into Alex's eyes, shrouded in shadow and yet they twinkled with mischief. She gazed at him right in the eye for a whole minute before she felt her eyelids growing heavy.
Within time, she fell asleep right in between them.
For a few moments, she swore she saw the mysterious man in her dreams once again, but he appeared to her as nothing more than a dark silhouette in a white pillar of light. He was slender and delicate in appearance, as if he had lost all of his extraneous weight and awaited her at the gates of dawn. He set his hands on either side of the doorway and his hair billowed all around his head even though there was no wind there in her dream.
Sam awoke the next morning with Eric's head upon her shoulder and Alex's body pressed up tight against her: that inky black hair spread over the former's face such that it hid his eyes and the bridge of his nose. Meanwhile, Alex had lay his head on her chest so that little plume of gray rested right on her collar bones. A part of her wanted to plant a soft kiss on the crown of his head, but for all she knew Eric could wake up right then and there.
Another part of her didn't want to get up, either: she was nestled in between two boys on a cold blustery winter's morning.
But then again, they had to head on back to the Bay Area, especially if the two of them were about to make an album themselves. It was still early but she knew that these two boys would want breakfast and coffee at some point. It took a bit of struggling but Sam managed to wake the both of them up: once the back seat was back upright, she and Eric returned to the front and Alex took his spot in the middle of the back, and they headed on out of Colfax.
Lucky for them, the snow had passed them over the night, but that wasn't to say more headed their way once they reached Auburn.
Alex never took off the blanket from his lap, even as they descended into the Central Valley, where the tule fog had collected all around in a thick heavy woolly blanket in its own rite. At least that time around, they had a bit of extra warmth in the car and so they could hunker down with the heat on part of the way up the dial. Eric finally put his hood onto his head once they reached the intricate web of an interchange in the heart of Sacramento, whereby Sam was careful to take the next exit, the next road which wound out further west to the Bay Area.
Sam felt the hunger creeping up inside of her once those hills emerged in the terrain once again.
A break in the clouds over their heads and she knew that it was about time for breakfast. Every time she took a glimpse into her rear view mirror, Alex's head was bowed a bit and his eyes drooped closed. Indeed, Eric had fallen asleep at some point right outside of Fairfield. They were within the home stretch, and she could see the high spires of the Golden Gate Bridge off in the distance, and yet the two of them were still drifting off to sleep all the while.
She knew a place where she could take them to that would wake them up, especially if Ruben didn't pick up at any given time the night before.
The dense cottonlike tule fog melded into the thick but wispy San Francisco fog as Sam wound her way through the northeastern rim of the Bay Area and all the way down to Castro Valley. They passed the place where James and Lars had scattered Cliff's ashes and she knew that they had to stop there when they had the chance, and when the fog had finally given way to the summer sun overhead.
They reached the cafe by her father's house but given it was still early, it wasn't open yet. The two of them were still sound asleep by the time they rolled up there to the curb.
She returned to the freeway and they continued onward to the studio down in Berkeley, where Sam recognized a familiar head of smooth black hair and a slightly heavier body even from a distance, but she didn't recognize the young guy right across from her with his head of long luxurious smooth black hair down to his back: he had that thoughtful look on his face that made her think of both Joey and Chuck.
Sam brought the car up to the curb right before her and that was when Eric and Alex both jarred awake at the same time.
"Aurora," Eric blurted out in a broken voice.
"With some other guy," Sam said as she climbed out first. The two of them followed suit right behind her, and Aurora and the guy both turned for a look back at him.
"You must be the cousin!" Alex declared.
"Yeah—I'm Stephen."
"The cousin?" Sam wondered aloud.
"Yeah, I'm Chuck's cousin," he replied.
"Stephen Carpenter, you said your name was?" Aurora asked him.
"Yeah—by the way," he turned back to Eric and Alex, "I love you guys, and also Metallica and Anthrax. I pretty much the past two years playing guitar along to Master of Puppets, Among the Living, and also The Legacy."
Sam turned to the two of them, the two still very young boys.
"Did you guys hear that?" she proclaimed to them. "You guys are now influential in a way."
"I hope my band gets accepted," Stephen confessed as Aurora held the door for the four of them. The whole front hallway of the studio smelled a bit musty, as if someone left a window in there.
"And Anthrax is working on a new one, too," Sam remarked once they were in the main room. "Boys are busy as all hell."
"Did you hear what happened to their studio last month?" Aurora said with a look of concern on her face.
"I did, yes!" Sam exclaimed. "I called Joey last night and he told me. Lost like a hundred grand worth of equipment."
"Holy shit," Eric blurted out.
"Yeah—Yeah, I was gonna tell you but this one over here—" She nodded at Alex and the twinkle in his eye. "—was so busy wanting to touch me and get close to me that I forgot about it."
"There's also this," Aurora declared as she picked up what appeared to be a blank cassette tape from the shelf on the side of the room. But Sam recognized that name on the side of the label.
"The return of the Cherry Suicides!" she exclaimed.
"Aw yeah!" Eric cheered with a pump of his fists.
"It's actually a single," Aurora explained, "their very first one, no less. A brand new song called 'Girlfriend.' 'Cut me up and make me your girlfriend, baby!'"
"Morbid and lovely—just like the girls themselves," Alex said with his eyes gleaming.
"Also—we have a friend here," Aurora continued, and the door of the pool room swung open behind them. Yet another young guy with long hair down past his shoulders, but with the first sprigs of a beard around his chin and his upper lip.
"Hey! Gary!" Alex declared.
"Gary from—Exodus?" Sam asked from out of the blue.
"The same!" he said with a smirk and his hand extended to Alex. "Hey, little man. I was wondering where you ran off to after the tour."
"Camping over in the eastern Sierra," Alex replied, "with dear Samantha here and also Eric."
"Cool! Well, I hope you guys saved up some juice because a little bird told me that you—" Gary gestured to Sam, albeit with a serious look on his face. "—wanna visit Cliff's burial site."
"Where'd you hear that?" she asked him.
"I'll tell you later," he said.
"Well, you guys better make it quick because Ruben's gonna be here any second now," Aurora advised them, and without another moment's hesitation, Sam, Alex, Eric, and Gary returned to the car outside.
"What happened to the trailer?" Gary asked them.
"You—really don't wanna know," Eric told him as they climbed back inside: that time, he took the spot behind the wheel while Sam took to the back seat next to Alex.
A little turn around and then a trek back up to Castro Valley, to those same rolling hills there. At that point, the clouds overhead broke and the gray morning sun shone down on them. Sam hoped they would get breakfast at some point: not that she wanted it, but she wanted Alex and Eric to have a bite to eat for themselves.
"I feel like I haven't been up here in ages," Gary confessed. "Let's just say it's been a long time coming for all of us over in the Exodus camp."
Alex ran his fingers through his inky black hair. Sam huddled closer to him just to feel his warmth.
They came to that familiar stretch of flat ground there in the hills, and that low building where they held the memorial.
"Samantha—look!" Alex declared with a point to the field.
Sam turned around and followed his gesture. On the field there, right in the exact same spot where James and Lars had scattered Cliff's ashes, stood a small complex of lush dark green shrubs. Even from the road, she could see those small flowers that lined the highways in the valley and down in the south land.
"Oleanders," she breathed out; she thought about Louie and if he had seen those flowers himself at any given point. Even though it was still very early in the year, she could see they were in full bloom as if the springtime had bestowed upon them once again.
"Right where they spread his ashes, too," he added.
Alex climbed out of the car first and Sam followed suit. Eric and Gary stayed behind there in the car; those shrubs were much larger than either of them had seen before, such that they looked as though they had been transferred from some place on the side of the road to there in the middle of the field. They rounded the edge of the building together only to be met with a heady gust of wind from the ocean, but neither of them let it slow them down. Alex kept on running to the shrubs, to which he skidded to a stop before them and he crouched down before the branches that faced him. Sam lingered behind him for a better look at the flowers, even though she stood several feet away from them.
Eric called out something from the car but she couldn't hear him over the winds at their back.
"Don't touch them, Alex," she advised him. "They're poisonous."
"I won't—I'm just seeing how white they are."
As white as the top layer of hair on the plume on his head.
He lingered right before the fledgling shrub for a better look at those little white flowers as they bloomed up from even the lowest branches, the ones closest to the ground. Their five petals were pristine, like that of a daisy or a hibiscus, but they were oleanders, the plants that grew everywhere there in California. The poison that ran within the roots of the earth and brought back poison for the most unsuspecting of souls. Sam crouched down closer to him as the cold moist breeze from the ocean fluttered the shrubs a bit.
She need not the gray morning sun to show her that the pedals had not a single speck or imperfection on them.
Alex peered back at her and the sunlight shone onto his face to wash out his skin and the gray hairs there over his brow: for a few seconds, he appeared far more ghostly than she had originally imagined before. Sam glanced over at the rest of the barren field. Cliff's spirit was among them, and he made something beautiful and morbid sprout from the depths of the earth in his wake.
"Like—perfect pearly white," she noted. "White and clean."
"They really are!" He turned to her with a bright twinkle in his eye, when a chill swept over her. "It's like Mother Nature knows."
"She does," Sam said with a nod of her head.
The two of them there back at the end of the world, caught in the midst of something humongous there on their horizons.
Little white flowers to follow them into the next round of spring, and that time was coming upon them. No more time left to dawdle: they all had to move with the poison sands of time.