The Vacuum

Part 1

Chapter One

Fraying rope, burning skin, the cherry of a cigarette sizzling once sensitive flesh. Electrical wires. Everything smelled fried. Not the kind of fry you get at a block party or chicken shake either. The kind of fry that lingers for years; stuck in an oven burning for hours fry. The kind of fired smell that comes from sockets with too much voltage. The kind of pain that you feel when you have your finger too close to one and don't yank it back quickly enough.

The ropes...well they were there just to make sure that you couldn't get away from it and couldn't ignore the situation. The digging wouldn't let you forget...wouldn't let you ignore. But you could ignore them...it was hard not to with the smell of greasy rotisserie meat drowned that out.

Alexandra took a long breath as she snapped out of her minds spell and looked out over the endless expanse of deserted road in front of her. She had zoned out...road zone. Driving for hours did that to you. She didn't like the chatter of the radio. Even if she did her black Subaru SUV's radio had long turned into more brain-numbing static. She had flipped it off when the white noise began speaking to her; screaming at her in her own pleading voice.

Exhaling the breath she had just taken she pulled the car over on the side of the stretch of highway and lowered the mirror, glancing at her green eyes reflection for a brief moment before pulling out the white, hand-rolled object waiting for her.

Grabbing her lighter, tucking it behind her ear she slipped from the car and walked over to the dulled silver barricade separating the road from the desert. On second thought, she went back to the car and opened the back door, pulling out her large SLR camera. She slung it over her shoulder and resumed her previous position looking out over the desert. She pulled herself up onto the railing and planted her jeans on the burning metal, barely feeling anything. She'd feel even less in a second.

She pulled the joint from behind her ear and brought the tip of the torch lighter to it. She took a long hit and brought the lighter back down. She liked the desert....it felt nice. It played tricks on the brain. A vacuum of nothingness and everything at the same time.

And this place...it was safe. She couldn't feel it but she knew it was safer than her last assignment over a year ago. Nothing like that would happen here. Not in the good old USA. This was the kiddie pool and she needed to get her feet wet before she could jump back in.

She could do this. She had to do this. She didn't want to be sick anymore. She didn't want her peers to think that she was. After a year nothing had really changed. She could live life in normalcy and that was all that mattered. The memories weren't going away...they weren't ever going to go away.

"Please let this be different?" She asked no one and nothing in particular.

Bringing the joint to her lips again she let the numbness of that marijuana, desert, and nothingness re engulfing her. Closing her eyes she let the hot sun beat down on her back, soaking into the black tank top she wore.

Sighing at the universe's lack of response she lifted her head and swung the camera off her shoulder, taking a wide shot of the extensive vacuum before her. She checked the viewfinder and gave a little smile to herself. "Beautiful." She murmured before taking another hit.

Pulling up in front of the cantina, Alex looked at the map again, spread out on the wheel with the creases pressed down. The house wasn't far from here and she was dehydrated. Everyone could use a drink in this kind of weather.

She smiled to herself as she parked the now dusty SUV beside a red pick up truck and pulled herself out. Checking to make sure that her clothes were mildly presentable after the 3-day drive, she walked over towards the doors, pushing the screen open to the local looking eatery.