SNUFF (h.s.)

Chapter 42

Loretto

Posing on the side of the road, she had lifted her thumb like a thick fat match flame. She was wearing a stranger's costume. Automobiles were going their way. She had stuffed a couple of greasy clumps behind her ears. Her stinky bangs resembled used dental floss.

A vehicle drove ahead, on the face of the driver she saw a flare. She saw tombstones in her eyes. A woman. A living woman. A naked living woman. A gagged naked living woman. A gagged naked living woman from the commune. Her head. Her head was tied. Her head was tied with intestines. Her head was tied with the intestines of her husband.

Nora talks to herself as she hitchhikes. My consciousness has been deteriorating for years. Latent for years. My head turns like the moon. My shoulders spin like fishing line. The open highway was loaded with lone hearts. If I were an outlaw I'd let the dogs waste me. None of the desperados comes after me, am I a rustler? Am I a pistolero hiding in the hills? Am I a thief? Am I looking for gold? I strayed from the wagon train, I headed for California. I've never had a desire of this place. What is my name? Nora? Rosa? Jenny Blonde? Dorothy? Priscilla? Harry? Sergio? I was... Yes, I was. I was. I was. I was.

She was standing as if she'd crawled from her mother's womb exploring the creation, she was struggling to look and discover a young courageous world. Nothing wondrous and new did she encounter. The prickly pears rot, the cacti fade, the tangerine rinds are tossed on the soil as the lizards' scaled tails cross the wide indolent desert on Nora's chest.

The valleys and the hills, the canyons and the deserts, the plains and the narrow passages, the caves, the mesas and the hideouts could not hold that tedious breath. The rivers coasted faster. What kind of a girl am I who took on my shoulders all the vileness of the world? You who have lost your loved ones know how a heart aches. She strives to stare at her mirroring reflection and all she sees is the rotting ugliness – on the lake she appears handsome.

Once the heavens will become crimson and the sun will glaze red from the rich and eternal blood facing the centuries. The rain will diminish, the water will deprive, and all the lakes, with the rivers, the springs and the oceans will recharge with sublime blood. That thorned crown was deep-pressed on her forehead. The long lines resembled the red thread on the patches she sewed for her teenage blue-jeans – they were short and wouldn't fit now, somewhere stuffed in a chest like a treasure.

Oh, mother, sister, friend! At last! Take me away from here! She stood and opened her pleading hands like Jesus Christ at the olive groves. I gave in. Where are you to gift me jasmines? No hope for the moribunds it seems then. She must know how she dreams, how she envisions, how she endures to see what others would suffer to.

The sun was scorching, the cicadas were whistling their tune, the scorpions were lurking.

Listen kid, I have something for you. Holy water, rosewater, myrrh – it was human blood. The road doesn't head at a place, its finger is pointed across around. Without imagination the soul is annihilated. And so, I never existed.

A pickup truck slowed. Wrapped hay stacks were in the open back. The highway was azure and crystal. The side fields became lilac and velvet. Nora lowered the arm but kept her thumb erect and thirsty. A man with hair as blonde as draught beer foam braked. He leaned to take a look at her. He grabbed a plastic gift cup from a popular fast-food restaurant in the shape of a Looney Tunes character head to spit his brown spittle. He placed it between the two front seats. He looked as if he's been raised from native trackers. He had a lousy dog reclined across the dashboard on a Hawaiian patchwork wearing a collar with cowrie shells.

If she could distinguish the color of his eyes perhaps she'd be convinced that twenty years had passed and Harry had returned to find her after circling the earth to arrive at the point of his departure. His middle-aged voice would pronounce the letter of each word making it rough as the colorful canyons are. He must have built a ranch where he breeds horses. His tongue-pulling lines would resemble dragging footprints on the soil, his swarf speech wouldn't shine out of a spur turning like a windpump at dawn. The badlands had the shape of his face, their terrain didn't differ from his jaw.

Twenty years later he didn't seem to recognize her.

He took' er with him.