the series of r/nosleep | volume one: the {smile} series

{R}adio

"Did you hear that?"

He grunts from the driver's seat, his eyes slits to the early morning sun dripping over the horizon onto cracked blacktop. I rest my head against the passenger window as Dio whispers through the speakers, "Don't write in starlight / 'Cause the words may come out real. You're alone."

I blink and shift in my seat. My back still aches from Friday's job and today came much faster than I'd wanted.; an entire weekend gone before I had a chance to do anything.

"I coulda driven to Louisiana and back," I say to myself.

"Why would you wanna do that?" He reaches over my lap, fumbles through the glove box and pulls out a pair of battered sunglasses. A wrinkled picture of a teenage couple hugging in front of an old movie theater falls to the floor. I pick it up and push out the crease.

"'Cause Pantera was playin' the Roadhouse, and it's the closest they're gonna get to home."

He shakes his head. "I don't get you and that glam shit," he says with a laugh. The smile on his face looks exactly like the boy in the picture, same glasses and everything, just older. "This," he taps the cassette player. "This right here, man. Dio is the future. In a few years no one's gonna be talkin' about that other stuff."

I want to argue that Terry Glaze's vocals are just as good as Dio's but then Vivian Campbell's solo kicks in and I find myself nodding my head in silence.

"Don't dream of women / 'Cause they only bring you down. You'll die alone."

"What's up with your girl?" I blurt out, surprising myself.

"Wife," he corrects me.

"Fine, what's up with your wife?" The last word falls out of my mouth like a hot stone.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you sure as hell aren't talkin' my ear off this mornin'. And you're listenin' to the soft stuff." I point to the radio as Dio belts out, "Hey you, you know me, you've touched me, I'm real. I can comfort you." My head feels foggy for a second, but I shake it away.

"I'm just tired, that's all. It was a long weekend."

"Well, look at you, brother. Finally letting that hair down." I playfully punch his arm and the car swerves over the yellow line. He turns and glares at me. For a second I see my reflection in his sunglasses. My face is distorted into a funhouse mirror's smile.

"I picked up an extra shift, Jon. I needed the cash." He notices the picture in my hand and snatches it away. He steers the car with his knee as he takes a long look and pushes the photo into the visor. "She's pregnant."

"Oh."

Ronnie James Dio punctuates the silence with, "And I, I'm darkness, I'm anger, I'm pain / I am master. You're not alone with me."

"Oh? That's it? You're gonna be an uncle and all you got is 'oh'? You should be excited."

"I am," I lie. "It's just..."

A white deer walks into the road ahead of us and Cal slams on the brakes. I have to put my hands on the dashboard to keep from sliding into the windshield. The deer doesn't flinch. It just stands, backlit by a new sun, and tilts its head like it's studying us. There is no one else on the road and the smell of hot brakes and smoking rubber seeps through the car's vents. The world seems to freeze like the last second of an ending dream as Vivian Campbell breaks into another solo. It's cut short as Cal turns off the car and kicks open the door.

I rub my eyes with the back of my hands and then look out the glass. "Just flash your lights. It'll go away," I say. Cal turns halfway in his seat and gives me a weird studying look and then pulls himself out of the car. He walks the ten steps it takes to get to the deer and then stops. The white buck doesn't move. It stands at nearly eye level with Cal and stares past him back towards me. Large antlers cast forked shadows the reach like crooked branches over the hood of the car.

Cal turns and waves me to come over. The radio clicks on.

"Protect your soul," Dio sings. "Kill them all."

It clicks back off.

I blink away the fog again and swing my door open. Rusty hinges squeak and an old suspension sighs in relief as I stand up.

"Help me with this," he says looking back at the animal.

"Help you?" I'm five feet away now. "Just clap your hands, it'll run off."

He gives me that queer look again. I take a few more steps and then stop a yard behind him. The buck glimmers in the sunlight. White hair twitches and expands over muscles that roll in corded waves over the shoulders. The deer shuffles its front feet on the blacktop one after the other, then drags its right foot back. Click click scraaatch. The sound echoes across the empty road. It repeats the movement. "Is... is it dancing?" I ask.

"What is wrong with you?" Cal asks. He crouches down and stares at the deer's hooves as it continues its dance. "Who would do this? What would do this?" He rubs a calloused hand across a stubbled chin.

I hear the radio click on behind us.

"There's something wrong with your car –," I start to say but the fog seeps in like brake smoke through air vents.

Cal looks up at me, stands, and has his arm around my shoulder turning me away. "My fault," he says. "You shouldn't have to see things like this."

The fog is making me dizzy. Nausea washes over me and I vomit onto the road leaving a wet splatter over two nearly identical shadows. I hear the car's radio click off. Now I'm embarrassed and pushing him away. "Must still be hungover," I lie and wipe my mouth with the bottom of my shirt. I force a smile, but it feels twisted and wrong. "See things like what?" I ask. "Albino deer ain't anything new."

"Albino deer? What the hell are you talking about – ?"

"That," I say and turn back towards the white buck. It's gone. In its place are the maggot-infested remains of a charred turkey vulture. Its wings spread outward like an ashen angel as its red head stares into the cloudless sky. A long serrated line bisects the center. Guts and organs spill out onto the street. One long cable of intestines wraps around the sole of my shoe. I feel the bile rolling over itself in my throat.

"What... what is -?" I stammer and back away. The radio behind me clicks on and I swear the bird's blue and brown eyes blink at me as Dio screams for me to run.