The
man wore a pair of black sunglasses that were in all honesty too large for his
face. They were cheap looking, plastic
and crooked. Despite their limited
value they did their job well as he drove his old Volkswagen bus down the empty
desert streets. The unbearable sun
cooking the rest of his flesh upon his face but not the area surrounding his
eyes. Already his face was tanning a
pitch far passed necessity, so that the spaces around his eyes were pale in
comparison. This he did not care about,
whether or not his face was evenly darkened, and properly colored. He had to reach the other end of the desert
for the empty vast spaces of it all were starting to cause him to become
nervous. It was as though the apocalypse
had already arrived and he had not been aware.
As if all the life on the earth had been swooped up into the heavens by
the almighty hand of the creator and he had managed to slip through the crack
in the fingers.
A
clanking sound emitted from the engine block and the bus shook frantically for
a moment until he shifted into a higher gear and all went as quiet as it
could. It could never be too quiet, for
the bus had seen many days, in fact many years.
It was the product of a bye gone era, stinking of weed and piss. The only remnant of its previous owners. The carpeted floors were stained with god
only knew what but the man cared not to figure. There was only one reason to own it, and it
was that it was cheap, and it could get him to where he needed to go. His end destination he had nearly forgotten,
some new home he was going to, some woman he was destined to meet. None of that mattered either, for there was
only one purpose now to find civilization once again.
He
took a quick glance at his fuel gauge and satisfied with its place felt a
relief on his heart. There was nowhere
worse to be stranded than in the middle of this dust field where the only
company was the beating heat of an unforgiveable sun. He thought about the cliché’s of such a
place. The picked clean skull of a
bighorn, the heat waves upon the open air, a solitary vulture pathetically
eating the carcass of some mouse. He
saw the cacti and the cracked earth, a man dragging himself and praying for
water or a quicker death than what was coming to him. This place was a certain kind of hell, and he
would not remain any longer than necessary in its torturous climate.
Before
him the sun began to descend, and the passage of time seemed to quicken as the
light faded from bright to dusk. He felt
the cooling relief of the air that was once heated by the stars fire, but now
free to simmer down to its normal conditions.
Even though the cooling began to take effect, and even though the sun
was no longer burning his eyes he kept those large rounded sunglasses on the
bridge of his nose. They sat askew,
dangling to the left but he never adjusted them knowing that they would fall
right back to where they were. Into the
passing of the night he kept them on, and he kept his eyes glued to the headlights
beams as they guided his bus forward and onto the blackened wasteland. Both hands gripped the steering wheel in
iron fists, and he could not bring himself to remove the sunglasses, for out of
nowhere danger would reveal itself when he was but a millisecond distracted.
That
was when the deer showed itself. A large
buck with antlers that rose up into the void of black just on the edge of his
headlights. It only stood there a
moment, just in the man’s way enough that he had to swerve to the left to avoid
it. He muttered a curse to himself
toward the deer. The buck had been the
first sign of life that he had seen and while he was grateful that something living
would be out here, it had also startled him.
Though he knew he would not be able to see the deer in his mirror he
adjusted it anyway, staring into the abyss of darkness behind him. Then a flash of a browned body was in front
of him once again this time on his other side.
Another buck with antlers that vanished away beyond his high beams. A cloud of dust kicked up as he veered off
into the desert floor off from the paved way of the highway. The fist locked tighter on the steering wheel
as he found his place once again. Then
he found his foot against the brake, and the brake its way to the floor.
In
front of him a mighty buck stood with its deer horns pointing skyward into full
light. The tires squealed to a stop
just a couple feet from the deer and he jerked forward rattled against his seat
belt, his face swinging forth and the bridge of his nose cracking against the
steering wheel. He brought his palm to
his nose and the blood poured out against his hand. The red ooze interlacing his fingers. His right eye saw clearly into the spaces in
front of him as the lens had broken out save for a small dangling shattered
thing that rested in the corner of the frame.
The man could feel the blood dripping down about his mouth, he could
taste it seeping in-between his lips.
The deer stood demonic and frightening in what limited light his bus
cast. It did not move.
The
bus’ horn blared out; its annoying screech beckoning the creature to leave but
the deer remained. He laid down his
hand upon the steering wheel several more times but the creature was not
hindered. It stared empty toward the
windshield and the man stared right back at it. He relented that the noise would do a
thing. He revved up his engine and when
it did not move, he push on the accelerator taking it out of park and he moved
toward it. But it did not move. With the blood drying on his face he
rotated the wheel so that he could bypass this obstruction but then the deer
moved in front of him. It eventually
came to the point that he rested against its fur.
The
deer blew out a mist of fog from its nostrils to signify the degree in which
the temperature had fallen. And it
stared. The man looked about him into
the darkness, and he was afraid. It was
as though it were some apparition from the bowels of hell, and he began to
figure that maybe the apocalypse had begun that he was indeed in the final
stages of the human race. This was his
tormentor his accuser for the rest of eternity.
He
shifted into reverse and slammed his foot down peeling out and leaving a black
streak from his tires down the length of the highway in front of him, and then
when he was satisfied he’d cleared enough space he forced it back into drive
and began his escape. The man left the
road and bounced about in his seat as he navigated the cracked and empty earth
driving at excessive speeds, praying it would free him from this place. The void had to end at some point; he had
driven all day, for most of the night.
At some point he had to come to freedom, to civilization, his silly
notion of the end of the world could not be truth.
Then
the buck stepped into his light, and he moved his steering wheel and hit his
brakes so that he slid to a stop on his side so that the deer was just before
him against his driver’s window. He sat
still as the beast moved forward its head tilted so that its antlers pointed
out as if to skewer the man. A tip
scratched across the glass and the man sat in a trembling trance. But he waited a moment to see what would
become of this action. The deer tapped
the glass again, and again. Its tapping
quickened until it flailed like mad against the window and then the barrier
began to crack. Then it cracked until it
shattered into a hundred pieces, and the cold desert air moved against the man’s
face. His breath pushing out before
him.
It
was then that the deer stopped. The
demon quit its attack and simply walked away into the night. The man was dumbfounded a moment, his mouth
releasing his labored breaths. The
blood was crusted against his hand, against his face. He moved his fingers around in front of his
eyes, and felt his face. He turned and
looked at the shattered glass upon his seat and his missing window, and the
absent animal who had accosted him. His
fear turned to fury and he threw his bus into drive and he wheeled himself
about so that he faced where the animal had gone, and he drove in search of it
now. That son of a bitch wouldn’t get
away with it; the animal had messed with him long enough. Somehow it’d found its way in front of him
all those times. Somehow its speed was
superior to his vehicle, that its four legged hooved feet could move it faster
than his engine.
The
sunglasses barely stayed on his face, his one free eye un-obscured by the tinted
hue of the frames. While his other eye
was half in darkness, facing into the darkness, but he still did not care. If by chance the thing jumped in front of him
again he would not stop. When he was
satisfied he’d exhausted one direction he began to move the vehicle to face
another. It did not even matter how far
removed he was from the highway now, for now there was only one purpose to his
existence.
That
was when he struck the beast. As if an apparition before him it was there, and he struck it hard but it did nothing to
it, and his van flipped over its back and he was deposited upside down with a
shaking crash, and the engine hissed, and the tires turned feverishly against
that cool desert air, and the sunglasses fell from his face against the roof of
the bus. He coughed and groaned against
the dust and through the pain. A
bloodied hand found his seat belt clip and he released himself, just barely
catching himself as he fell from his suspended state. Out of the broken window he pushed himself
with each foot, barely able to use his hands, forced to do his best his elbows
and he lay there against the dirt. It
was freezing cold.
The
buck walked about to him, and it sniffed at his bloodied face. The man noticed an antler was cracked off
from its head, and then he noticed the pain that seemed to pass through his
stomach, and he lifted his head to see the long piece of horn cracked off into
his body. The deer licked his face, and
tasted the blood on his lips, and then it licked again. The man noticed that it stank as the pairs
breath meshed together in the cold. It
wasn’t just the air that was cold, the man noted that his body began freezing
as well, as if something inside of him was ceasing up.
He was well enough
dead before the mighty devil began to devour him.
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