can sit here, wait for a kindly soul to drive by, flag them down, and beg for help. Problem is that I haven’t seen a car go by in...well, ever. I’m not even on the main highway, just a road to nowheresville.
Option two: I can walk through the storm back to town. Problem is that I drove for an hour to reach this delightful spot of nothing, and that’s a damn long walk through air thick enough to chew. At best, it will be uncomfortable with the dust flying in my eyes and nose and mouth. At worst...it’s freaky how shrouded and hidden the world is. I can’t see more than a few feet in any direction. The idea of walking into that nothingness makes me feel like I will dissipate into the dust.
I wonder what a horror-movie heroine would do, stay in the car or get out. Girl Scout training says stay put and someone will find me. But that only works if anyone has a clue where I am. As far as anyone knows, I could be home on a sick day or off on a spontaneous beach vacation or away on an impromptu business trip. I doubt anyone would guess I’m here.
Yesterday was not a terrible day. I woke up, brushed my teeth, showered, and dressed. I had a slice of cinnamon bread for breakfast as I dashed out of the apartment. I locked the door, shoved the bills in the mailbox, and sidestepped the pile of dog poo left by the neighbor’s evil yap-yap dog that I had twice threatened (under my breath) to drown when it decided to take up operatic howling at 4:00 a.m. Then I got into my car. It started with its usual not-quite-dead-yet lurch, and I drove toward work. I hit two red lights and at the second, when I should have turned left, I didn’t.
I simply didn’t.
That was all.
I skipped three nonessential meetings, the usual lunch with my coworkers Angie and Kristyn, and dinner with Mom after her doctor’s appointment, which may or may not have included positive or negative test results. There was nothing that would give anyone any hint that I would have driven east for hours, and no reason for anyone to guess that I would ever do this, even on a bad day. I don’t even have a reason to tell myself. Just...a hunch that the day was going to turn bad.
I was a particle of dust that a breath pushed eastward, and so here I am inside dust. If I step outside the solid car, I’m afraid I’ll dissolve into the air and float forever, shifting across the desert... Stop with the bullshit, Lauren, I tell myself.
I fling the car door open. The town is back the way I came, unless I’ve mysteriously circled toward it again. I don’t know which is the quickest way, but I can’t stay here and stew in my own melodramatic miasma. Swinging my purse over my shoulder, I step out of the car. The dust pricks my eyes. Coughing, I hold my sleeve over my mouth. I turn to shut the car door behind me. And I scream.
A man dressed in black crouches on the roof of my car.
Screaming, I retreat so fast that I stumble off the road and onto the dirt. I keep backing up until I smack into a fence post. The barbed wire snags my clothes.
It’s the man from the dust storm yesterday. He wears the same black trench coat, open in front to display a bare chest with black feather tattoos. His hair and eyes are black as well, and he has a claw-shaped earring curled against one ear. He is so beautiful that he looks like artwork posed on top of my car, and for an instant, I am convinced that he is a sculpture.
He grins at me.
And my nerve breaks completely. I run. My feet slap the pavement. I hear my breath loud in my ears. I feel my heart thud in my chest. Dust swirls around me, stinging my eyes and drying my mouth. It feels as if the dust is tightening around me, even coiling.
I see a shape ahead of me. It hulks, monsterlike, a shadow in the dust.
I skid to a stop as the shape of a car emerges. My car, impossibly. The man is no longer on its roof. The door is still open. I slow to a walk, my heart fast, and approach the car slowly, nearly tiptoeing. I peer through the
Option two: I can walk through the storm back to town. Problem is that I drove for an hour to reach this delightful spot of nothing, and that’s a damn long walk through air thick enough to chew. At best, it will be uncomfortable with the dust flying in my eyes and nose and mouth. At worst...it’s freaky how shrouded and hidden the world is. I can’t see more than a few feet in any direction. The idea of walking into that nothingness makes me feel like I will dissipate into the dust.
I wonder what a horror-movie heroine would do, stay in the car or get out. Girl Scout training says stay put and someone will find me. But that only works if anyone has a clue where I am. As far as anyone knows, I could be home on a sick day or off on a spontaneous beach vacation or away on an impromptu business trip. I doubt anyone would guess I’m here.
Yesterday was not a terrible day. I woke up, brushed my teeth, showered, and dressed. I had a slice of cinnamon bread for breakfast as I dashed out of the apartment. I locked the door, shoved the bills in the mailbox, and sidestepped the pile of dog poo left by the neighbor’s evil yap-yap dog that I had twice threatened (under my breath) to drown when it decided to take up operatic howling at 4:00 a.m. Then I got into my car. It started with its usual not-quite-dead-yet lurch, and I drove toward work. I hit two red lights and at the second, when I should have turned left, I didn’t.
I simply didn’t.
That was all.
I skipped three nonessential meetings, the usual lunch with my coworkers Angie and Kristyn, and dinner with Mom after her doctor’s appointment, which may or may not have included positive or negative test results. There was nothing that would give anyone any hint that I would have driven east for hours, and no reason for anyone to guess that I would ever do this, even on a bad day. I don’t even have a reason to tell myself. Just...a hunch that the day was going to turn bad.
I was a particle of dust that a breath pushed eastward, and so here I am inside dust. If I step outside the solid car, I’m afraid I’ll dissolve into the air and float forever, shifting across the desert... Stop with the bullshit, Lauren, I tell myself.
I fling the car door open. The town is back the way I came, unless I’ve mysteriously circled toward it again. I don’t know which is the quickest way, but I can’t stay here and stew in my own melodramatic miasma. Swinging my purse over my shoulder, I step out of the car. The dust pricks my eyes. Coughing, I hold my sleeve over my mouth. I turn to shut the car door behind me. And I scream.
A man dressed in black crouches on the roof of my car.
Screaming, I retreat so fast that I stumble off the road and onto the dirt. I keep backing up until I smack into a fence post. The barbed wire snags my clothes.
It’s the man from the dust storm yesterday. He wears the same black trench coat, open in front to display a bare chest with black feather tattoos. His hair and eyes are black as well, and he has a claw-shaped earring curled against one ear. He is so beautiful that he looks like artwork posed on top of my car, and for an instant, I am convinced that he is a sculpture.
He grins at me.
And my nerve breaks completely. I run. My feet slap the pavement. I hear my breath loud in my ears. I feel my heart thud in my chest. Dust swirls around me, stinging my eyes and drying my mouth. It feels as if the dust is tightening around me, even coiling.
I see a shape ahead of me. It hulks, monsterlike, a shadow in the dust.
I skid to a stop as the shape of a car emerges. My car, impossibly. The man is no longer on its roof. The door is still open. I slow to a walk, my heart fast, and approach the car slowly, nearly tiptoeing. I peer through the
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