Creature on the Road by Mr. Mittens
“Creature on the Road-Part One” - by Mr. Mittens
I pulled my cargo van off the old paved road that wound through the miles of gold and green pine trees and turned left onto uneven ground hidden beneath a thin but persistent fog. This road (if you could call it that anymore) had once been a two lane asphalt strip that had been built to allow passage through a bog and the fetid swampland that surrounded it, but of course that was all gone now. My mom would tell me how cranberries were farmed out here, harvested in the swamp water tinted rust by the pine trees that circled both sides of the bog, but that was before I was born. A chemical spill and the runoff from it had caused the bogs to steam and churn, making the water too acidic for any vegetation to withstand life inside of it. This was the toughest part of my haul, the road sloped and dipped, big chunks of asphalt had been swallowed by the water on either side turning the two lane road into a treacherous and uneven strip with hazardous water on either side desperate to pull you in.
If the van slid or leaned too far I could kiss my ass goodbye. I could likely escape if the van submerged, but there was no wading back to land safely through toxic sludge like this. The only way to make it through the next 10 or 12 miles was to drive slow and keep my eyes open. When I was young and the bog road had still been reasonably wide, my mother would take me riding out here, she preferred it to the highway and all of its cameras. She would speed over the dying bog, a William Onyeabor cassette wedged in the player. The chemical fallout worsened however, and the state finally marked the entire barrens “at your own risk” meaning they had no desire to police it, and so if you found yourself out here, expect no punishment or assistance. Still, she’d suit herself up and go for a spin. She’s actually out here somewhere between the tip of the fourth submerged streetlight and the seventh. Her car, her cassette and her body forever dissolving into smaller and smaller unseeable pieces beneath the egg colored water. I find it brings me a weird sort of peace to drive this road, despite its dangers.
I unbuckle my seatbelt and turn the headlights up as high as they’ll go. The sun is low, hovering red and orange like an autumn leaf over the water. The fog’s clearing up nicely too, which will hopefully take some time off of the trip. As a driver, I don’t have to answer to anyone about time. There’s no guarantee for the recipient when I’ll arrive, but I still take a certain amount of pride in making sure the wait on the other end is as short as possible. Still, there’s no need to be risky on this leg of the drive, I could make up the time on a better road down the line.
The sun would set in about half an hour or less, and then the fog would clear once the ground cooled down. The sun was always too close and too hot nowadays, sometimes it felt like a dragon that lived directly above your shoulder, but out here near the bogs, the heated water turned itself into a toxic vapor during the day time. It smelled of rotten trash and rotten meat and it could slither its way into your vents causing you a terrible headache or spine cracking nausea depending on how your body tried to purge itself. I had no plans to spin out into the bog because of a migraine or spend another month over a bowl. I’d already lost too much work and I was down a pant size. But this time of year, when the moon brings cool air, it pushes itself back towards the bog and keeps it there as though someone had pressed a big pause button. There was no better time to take this delivery job, the weeks in between the heat and the ice are the only time to drive this road and I needed the work.
I idled along the road keeping my eyes ahead of me, feeling the sunset on my cheek. Soon, I’d see some Pineys catch up to me. They loved drivers, or more likely they loved headlights. There was a mutually beneficial relationship between the Pineys and the drivers, the Pineys got the benefit of a well lit walk and they kicked any debris out of the driver’s path all while keeping the speed of the vehicle in check. Any driver who would dare to fuck with them didn’t appreciate keeping some karma in their pocket for a bad day. When the chemical spill grew too large to contain, most of the remaining residents around this area finally relented and left. Most of the animals who’d lived here before the first human had given it a name, either fled or died out succumbing to disease after disease.
My mother had told me that when she was young and her mother would drive this road, she would watch jewel eyed crows with pieces of cranberry on their beaks sit like kings on the strange bent branches that grew straight up from the bottom of the bog. She had witnessed foxes and raccoons scuttle along the pine needles as they crossed the ends on either side of the bog road. Once, she’d watched a white bird with wings like a bed sheet and long legs sun itself under the November sun, as a stretched possum smashed by the wheels of a car bled out into the bog on the other side of the road. Nothing much with four legs or fur lives out here now, not even flat toads or birds with wings of any shape. There’s only two species that still remain in live numbers out here in the barrens, bats and Pineys. Both existing this far out in stubborn defiance of the evacuation order.
The bats have found survival by escaping the heat and the vapor by living deep within the abandoned factories that dot the barrens. I’m not certain what they used to make, even my mother didn’t know. I asked her one time why they didn’t rebuild them or build something new in their place but she’d laughed and said “there’s not a lot of love for the future out here, and not nearly enough respect for what has passed, some places prefer to stay in the worst of their moments Creature.” She had a way of phrasing that I’d always liked, even if it made no goddamn sense to me.
The Pineys, like the bats, hiding out in the daytime and living huddled in the deep dark tunnels they’ve built under their homes, returning to the surface in the evening to congregate and cook under the moon. The state had tried to use a bit of force to drive them out, but real born Pineys are a stupid and secretive group of people with a long history of handling threats with over exaggerated retaliation. They burned three troopers alive nailing their melted corpses forever glued inside their radiation suits to the first, second and third streetlights. The state left a tractor trailer full of supplies open on the road, and the world as it was moved on without them. The Pineys had simply receded further and further into the pine trees rebuilding cabins above cool dark trenches. Their homes were made from the scraps of old ones and reassembled like the pieces of a puzzle. Everyone assumed they would die, there were so many threats to living this close to the epicenter of the spill, cancer and other diseases let alone the threat of water and food shortages. Don’t get me wrong, cancer and hunger had culled the families by a wide margin, but in the past decades their numbers had steadily increased.
The Pineys, like the bats, seemed to have adapted to the toxicity and scarcity out of sheer force of will. Their lives seemed pitiable, but hell if I didn’t respect it. Several of the drivers I’ve talked to think that over time the toxicity has made them impervious to thirst or hunger, a few staunchly believe that the Piney’s have always had a sort of magic passed down in the blood. There’s a story my mother had been told when she was young about a monster who’d claimed the bogs and the land around it as its own. When the Pineys arrived out here in their carts and carriages the monster tried in vain to push them out but the Pineys wouldn’t go. They lost children, they lost livestock, all plucked like fruit from a tree by the monster, but they refused to be told what to do or where to go. In the end, they agreed to give their next life to the monster in exchange for the promise that they would never be moved again. Eventually, the monster moved on but those stupid bastards remained.
I don’t particularly believe in any sort of magic, but who knows, maybe they do have a bit of it in them. They’re certainly an odd group, made even more so by a couple generations worth of poison and bat meat. It’s hard to find any of them with hair anymore or fingernails. Most have visible tumors or growths on their faces or under their clothing. Personally, I haven’t seen a Piney that was more than five feet tall since before the last guardrail spray painted a neon yellow, had finally dissolved into the bog. They moved slowly and talked as little as possible. Gangrene- my dispatcher, said that it’s because their brains had been turned to mush by the inbreeding and sickness. I think they’re just hyper focused on survival, and they limit their energy to only necessary tasks. What the hell does Gangrene know anyway, they live in a school bus.
…to be continued.
“Creature on the Road-Part Two” - by Mr. Mittens
I was halfway across the road now, my van hitched and bobbed as it slowly trampled up and down over the broken asphalt. I could hear my delivery wobbling from the back of the van, it made a sort of scuffle and scrape along the metal edges of the van walls. I didn’t like to haul things this precarious or this large, not usually anyway. My favorite type of haul was the kind I could keep in a little envelope on the seat beside me or tucked neatly inside my vest pocket, but I was getting extra on this run just for the inconvenience of its size. Still, it didn’t mean I couldn’t be sore about it. I’d spent an hour of my driving time just getting the fucking thing into the van and sent off with strict instructions not to damage it on my trip. Seemed to me like a lot of fuss over what looked like just a big black box, but the man I picked it up from said it was rare and though not technically illegal, it was highly frowned upon.
“They’ll smash it to bits- the man had said, his hands shaking “if those fuckers in the red suits stop you I just know they’ll smash it.” I’d nodded my head and kept my voice low and calm just to steady him. He wasn’t wrong though, every red suit I’ve ever met on the road out here loved a good smash up. They had laminated sheets tacked to every checkpoint with large glossy pictures of what was deemed illegal for transfer, but damned if they didn’t find loopholes for confiscation and damned if they didn’t love smashing whatever they took right in front of you. I once saw a group of red suits - all boys, they couldn’t have been older than my jean jacket, set fire to an old piano right there on the side of the highway. The poor woman who’d owned the instrument had screamed as the flames ate the instrument bit by wooden bit. I remember watching her face as the boys pissed on the fire, if she’d managed to keep all of her rotten and righteous thoughts to herself they probably wouldn’t have thrown her into the flame as well, but that uniform eats away at you. Once you put it on, you are dissolved of empathy, dissolved of individual reason, and worse you’re dissolved of consequences. I’d rather melt inside the fucking toxic water licking at my wheels right now.
There was a sharp thud against my van’s backdoor breaking me from my thoughts. I put it in park and waited for a second thud. It must be the Pineys, that was their usual greeting. Some of the drivers didn’t like them banging on their rigs, but I ask you what the hell else are they going to do to let you know they’re out on the road with you? They’re not shooting flares into the night’s sky for fucks sake. A second thud confirmed their presence and so I stopped the van and put it in park to let them pass. It was a miracle quite honestly, how they managed to edge along the narrow gap between my rig and the water. I’d told some of them before that they had my permission to climb over the van and slide down the front windshield to get ahead of me, but they never took me up on it and they never said why. I could hear their breath now as they pressed themselves lungs tight against the van and slowly inched past. Scooter the maniac, a redheaded driver with zits and a pet mouse in the glove box had tried to argue with them once about coming to the road early and getting across it without the need for her headlights. She’d told me about the fight weeks after it had taken place, framing it as though she’d given them a gift and received piss in return. She was young and still prone to misunderstanding the complications of obvious solutions. It took a solid hour or more to explain to her that any Pineys crossing the bog road at night are usually just checking their traps and it doesn't hurt to give them a little help with the light. I mean, I’m sure they could shimmy up those streetlights in the dark, a flashlight in their gummy mouths, but damn it doesn't hurt to give them some space and some bright light. I don’t want to feel on the hook for someone splashing to their death.
“It’s like everywhere, Scoot, just don’t be a dick, especially when it doesn’t cost you anything. You’d be surprised at how far not being an asshole can get you.”
To be continued…
“Creature on the road” -part 3 by Mr. Mittens
I dimmed my headlights as the Piney’s snuck out ahead of me onto the road. Too much light and they would be thrown off by the brightness, hell any of us would. No one these days spends much time in the sun, even those fuckers that guard the main roads spend most of their days cooling their red booted heels inside an air conditioned monitoring station, and as a consequence of our collective nocturnal transition, our eyes get more and more sensitive. There were four Pineys, a slight and gangly bald headed man with sunken eyes and a chest that had been carved from the inside out. He was joined by three much shorter members of the group covered head to toe in green hazmat suits.
It was rare to see a Piney tower over the others, and even rarer to see one in just a pair of jeans. It could only mean that this was an old timer, they didn’t cater to the hazmat suits like the youngest crop did, and they hadn’t been as cut down by the chemicals and lack of sunlight that seemed to stunt every new generation that didn’t live in the protected zones. Those fuckers got sun lamps and vitamin shots, hell even us regular folks in the accessible zones got filtered water and tinted windows. I myself was saving up for a little uv lamp to place in the back of the van for my off hours.
I rolled down my window just a small slit and stuck my hand out waving them on. The man nodded, his eyes met mine through the windshield and as he stepped back from the van into the full glow of the headlights I could finally see his face. He was definitely an elder, he had deep wrinkles that curved around his face and indented into the back of his naked skull. Hell, he might possibly be the oldest motherfucker I’ve ever encountered on any of my rides through the empty zones, but it was never safe to guess, life in the toxic areas made hard lines in even the softest of faces.
The group turned and began to walk as I slowly ambled behind them. The taller Piney trailed behind the rest calling out debris that they could scavenge or toss into the murky water. We bobbled along bouncing up and down until after a few minutes the man raised his hand in the air. It was my signal to brake and so I sat and watched in awe as two of the younger members of the party waded into the bog and shimmied up the closest streetlights as though they were made of nothing but feathers inside their yellow green suits.
The traps themselves were made of woven strips of stretchy fabric painted black. The idea was simple, stretch the nets between the lights and catch as many as possible while the bats flew through the dark. Eventually the nets would fill and the weight of flustered and confused wings would cause the net to fold in on itself trapping them inside. I could never quite figure out fully how they made the nets close on their own, Squid our mechanic said it had something to do with pressure sensors or weight distribution and the rest of the crew chalked it down to Piney magic. Me, I didn’t care one way or the other, I just thought it was cool.
The kids at the top of the lights carefully untethered each end of the net and secured the ropes around their waists. Slowly, they slithered back down the lamps until the net and the Pineys arrived about a foot above the water. The two other members in suits waded out to them and untied the ropes from their waists. The group pulled the ropes taut and waded back to the road, a full net hovering above the bog as they walked. Finally, they reached the road and dropped the net, handing it to the old man. He hoisted the net over his shoulders and I could see a slight flutter of wings scratch his back. Those were probably the freshest, the rest having been out since last evening or even the night before that meaning that the fumes and the panic had already taken care of them. He swung the net onto the ground and paused as the rest of the group headed towards the next set of streetlights.
His face crumpled under the headlights as he studied the bats, he gave the net another swing and then raised it back over his shoulders, and I could see a slight flutter of wings scratch his back. Those were probably the freshest, the rest having been out since last evening or even the night before that meaning that the fumes and the panic had already taken care of them. He swung the net onto the ground and paused as the rest of the group headed towards the next set of streetlights. His face crumpled under the headlights as he studied the bats, he gave the net another swing and then raised it back over his shoulders, content that any movement from those trapped inside had ceased...
Creature on the Road Part 4 by Mr. Mittens
The old man and I inched closer and closer towards the end of the bog, his steady wobble back and forth across the blacktop as he kicked branches and pulled at the salt grass that had only multiplied with the help of chemical runoff. The grass grew so much higher now, leeching off of the bog’s toxins, in the dark it caused shadows to darken crucial breaks in the road. I almost felt at rest out here, as though the man’s swagger and the sway of the newly broken salt grass stalks had formed a sound of their own that was unstretching my back and making my head feel quiet. The last of the stoplights was just ahead of us, as I turned to adjust a slight natural bend in the road, I caught sight of the younger group already wading out into the bog like a school of iridescent fish.
The old man stopped and held a hand flat out to me making himself visible directly between the headlights. We both waited silently for the kids to finish collecting the last net. I put the van in park and checked my clock mounted above my dash. I had beat my own personal schedule, which means I could pull over at the next rest spot and sleep for a bit before moving on. Shit at this rate, I’d probably reach my delivery location just as the sun was beginning to wrap its arms around us in its death embrace. It was the best time to be on the main roads, those red suited fucks hated leaving their chilled huts for anything other than a flagrant violation. I would look sketchy to them, but not worth the inquiry or at least I desperately hoped so for my sake.
The hunk of metal and wood that I was hauling would most likely be destroyed on site before they could even get word back from the Overhead about what it was exactly that they were destroying. My back muscles jerked at my spine, pulling my thoughts from tomorrow’s plan. The kids had made it to the top of the light, I could see them slowly and strategically untying the knots from each net. I didn’t usually get out and stretch along the bog. It's not the place for a loose walk to unstiffen your joints, but the old man was curious to me. Hell, half the interest of being a driver is meeting people that are curious to you, weirdos along the road just doing their own thing and acquiring their own stories.
“What the hell”
I whispered to myself and took the ventilator from my front pocket. I shoved the plastic tubing into my nose and adjusted the curved metal ends over each ear like a pair of glasses. I opened the van door and stepped out onto the asphalt, my feet felt slightly jittery from the slow stop and start rumble of the last hour or so. The old man jumped at the sound of the door and stared at me in muted amazement. The physical distance that a hood and windshield put between him and a driver had just been reduced and I watched as he recalibrated himself and then smiled. I smiled back, and then raised my arms stretching them as far as I could into the night’s sky. I made a serious production of my stretching, letting him know that I wasn’t keen to intrude on his silence, but should he want to talk I was right beside him, listening.
Creature on the Road part 5 - By Mr. Mittens
Finally, after a long and thick silence, the old timer produced a small metal box from his pants pocket and shook it towards me in an offering. I knew what it was, there’s not a full time driver on this route that doesn’t know about rock salt. I took the box from his hand and nodded in thanks. Opening it carefully so as not to spill its powdery contents, I took a small pinch and snorted it off the tip of my thumb. The old man nodded approvingly and shoved the box back into his pocket, but not before taking a generous amount between his fingers and snorting it.
“Whew” he said and shook his head violently back and forth for a few seconds before slapping my shoulder. “There’s a kick in this mother for sure.”
“What you been playing around with?” I asked in mild sincerity. I’m not opposed to knowing the contents of what I’ve just catapulted up my nostrils, but I could tell that his overreaction to rock salt’s sting meant that he wanted to further the discussion by bragging a little. Every place this far out has their own version of rock salt. A sort of home grown stimulant that usually lasts for a bit and doesn’t cause too much of a comedown. The real stuff you can get in the state zones is harsh and the comedown falls on you like an oily wave from the American ocean. It’s made that way I think, the depression so bad that you’d rather be up and palpitating than feel anything so awful ever again. You can drive yourself to the cliff’s edge with that shit. Rock salt of every variety is a lesser high, but with no abrupt let downs. It can keep you driving longer than you should, but you’ll still get a decent sleep down the road. Besides, there was usually a mild hallucinogenic rush to it. Nothing you can’t do your job on, but the colors around the edges of your eyes might play some tricks on you and you might see some weird shit in the dark. Rock salt isn’t strictly legal of course, but the red shirts can’t do much if they find it on you except steal it and give you a few punches. The drug sits in a hilarious grey area of being both natural and unnatural, it’s made primarily from the bones of animals that still thrive out in the uninhabited zones. The government can’t ban it outright, as that might cause an accidental resurgence of interest in the uninhabited zones, or worse, a remembrance of how those zones became uninhabitable in the first place. The officials thrive on not digging up even the smallest of corpses. It’s easier to make it seem old fashioned and unworthy of any real zone wide attention. Besides, I’m pretty sure the pineys pay the redshirts around here in trade for some feigned ignorance as an extra buffer.
“Come on, tell me what you got brewing this time?” I asked, reaching my hand out for the box. I had to admit there was something different in this batch, it was making my brain feel like a string of Christmas lights freshly plugged in.
Creature on the Road Part 6 by Mr. Mittens
The old man smiled at me and inched closer to my side of the hood. He leaned towards me, his face just inches from my shoulder. “Bees,” he said after a dramatic pause.
“Bullshit” I said sharply, the tone kind of slipped out before I could catch myself. There hadn’t been bees, real bees since I was a teen and working at that ratty old soda station out by highway 6. I still remember sitting behind the counter stocking tabs of nicotine chew and turning around just as it flew in and headed towards the syrup choked countertop. Me and a driver, some kid in a yellow zip up, stared at the bug in awe. Bees had died out in our part almost completely, replaced by little mechanized silver wisps that flew from plant to mutated plant, but here was a live one hovering gleefully above the layers of colored syrup that I’d been too lazy to scrape off. The kid and I watched it buzz and waver in the air, before it simply flew out the open drive through the window and into the high sun. I’d never forgotten the sound it made, a beautiful warm hum caused by friction and follicles. It sounded unbothered and yet busy, lazily frantic. I never heard it again after that day.
“No it’s not bullshit” the Piney said, his face had softened and he suddenly looked like a much younger man. “My old lady has been watching them for years, watching them regroup and return to the barrens. I thought she was full of shit when she first told me about a small little colony she found out by that abandoned kiddie camp.”
“What. the one with all the little houses and a stupid name?”
The man nodded and moved ahead with his story. It was a compliment, his shorthand, he must know I’m from around here originally, and not some hog driving through this road like it’s a smudge on a map.
“Yeah that’s right, the one over by Palmer’s pond with the dirty water. Anyways she’s been trying for years to keep them going, bringing them sugar water and covering the cabin windows and doors in the colder days. Finally, Jarvis’s old man took a look at what she was doing and told her to stop fussing so much and just let them work it out by themselves. After some real back and forth, they agreed to keep watch over them until they sank or swam. In the meantime we’ve been killing the fakers when we find them. Smashing those little metal shits into circuitry. Now they got honey dripping down the walls son, just oozing with it.” He stopped briefly, and fished a little jar from his back pocket. He held the glass low into the headlights glare and gave it a slow shift up and down. A long red strain of thick honey slid up and down over the glass.
“Holy fuck how is that possible?” I said, bending myself towards the light to get a good look. The old man shook the jar a few more times to my honest delight. I felt like a little kid watching a trick I couldn’t recreate.
The old man shrugged. “Fuck if I know how. I know bats kid, and barely that on bad days.” He tapped his head and pointed to a cluster of bruised skin behind his left ear. “Leuk’s taking over my blood, and there’s something growing up in here.”
I paused and held my breath trying to think of something to say that didn’t sound completely stupid, but the man only waved his arm and brushed me off. Out in these zones, the tumors and blood cancers feed on people like fat leeches, and nothing I said would change the outcome.
He put the jar back into his pocket and then patted me on the back. “Here’s what I do know about this stuff, it dries out fast and once I started tinkering with it I got it to mix just right with my rock salt. You feel that humming in your brain, like you just had a heavy meal and a good sleep?”
I nodded in agreement. Ever since that rock salt had hit my nostrils, I’d been feeling not just alert but awake. My back had loosened, hell even that little twinge in my neck that I carried with me everywhere had started to unfurl.
“Well that’s the dried honey, the what the fuck they call em’? The sugar crystals, yeah they just kind of make you feel…” he paused. “They just make you feel not sore all the time, and not like you’re carrying a brick around your chest. It’s nice right?”
I leaned against the hood of my van and took a long, good breath. I could see the kids up ahead, they were back on the road, the oldest was dragging a net behind him. A slip of cool wind danced over our heads and I felt it graze the tips of my ears. The boys carried on moving forward until we could no longer see them in the glare, but we could still hear them, laughing out there in the dark as they walked. A sickly looking bat with pale wings flew from one side of the road to the other before disappearing into the clouds.
“Yeah man”. I said watching the reeds dance in the iridescent water. “It sure is.”
Finally the old man raised his hand and grabbed his nets from the ground. He raised them over his shoulder and soon he disappeared into the dark as well. I stretched my legs one more time out of habit, and got back into the van. The way I felt now, I could drive for another 12 hours if the mood struck me. I clipped on my belt and put my foot gently down onto the gas pedal. As I reached the bog’s end, I saw the old man entering the trees. I honked my horn goodbye and blew a kiss to my mother, to wherever she was out there in the water, forever melded to the seats of her favorite car.
“Ride on baby, ride on”. I said, as my tires whirred beneath me like a syrup stained bee.
Creature on the road- the Elizabeths run - By Mr. Mittens
The work com squeals its way into dreams pushing me out from a deep and needed sleep. The back of the van was finally empty and I’d found a nice off road spot full of mosquitos and bad air to spend the night in. Sleeping in your vehicle is considered a vagrant charge, but the red shirts hate looking off road for citations especially in murky places infested with overgrown bugs and air so heavy it looks like the foam on the top of a soap bubble. If they catch you it’s a beating, but usually a few credits or some barter can be arranged. Right now I’m low on credits and I’d hate to lose my recently aquired rock salt to those greedy fucks, so I’d parked my van deep into the trees near a rust colored creek and slept with my breather on all night. The com squeals again, the noise bounces off the walls of the empty cab like a cartoon bird flying straight towards my head.
“This is Creature”, I whispered hoping that the dispatcher would sense my half awake state and make their message brief.
“Hey Creature, we got a run up for grabs if you want it.” said a voice so high pitched that it could only be Abbi at the desk today. She was practically a baby anyway, but her voice had to shave at least a decade off of her true age. I shuffled to the very end of the cab and looked out of the van’s back windows. The light was high even with the tree cover which meant it must be after 10 by now. I hoofed it to the front of the van pulling my jumpsuit over my legs, tripping as I walked. It was too late in the day for a run to be available. Most days, the jobs are sorted out early and taken before anyone’s had a single sniff of rock salt or heard a coffee pot bubbling. It must be a shit job, one that’s either too annoying or too dangerous to bother. Dangerous isn’t ideal, but the credits are usually doubled and guaranteed by the company to be paid in full at the end of the run no matter what the customer scores on your rating sheet. Annoying jobs are just a fucking drag the whole way through but you usually go home with a bit more cash. Right now I had cash to burn, but credits, man I could really use some credits.
“Yeah ok”, I said, rubbing my prickly head. “What’s the job Bob?”
I could hear Abbi sighing over the com, she’s too young to appreciate
unnecessary silliness and I’m pretty sure she finds it embarrassing to witness. She’ll learn, if she lives long enough, that nothing matters and we’re most certainly nothing more than bugs stuck on the windshield of the cosmos so you might as well act goofy sometimes, I mean fuck everyone else does right?
“It’s an Elizbeths run” she stammered her voice reaching near carving knife levels of sharpness.
I swung my arms over my head and kicked my legs against the dashboard.
“Oh fuck, an Elizabeths run, man I haven’t even been off pick up for less than 24 hours and you wake me up for this? Where’s TinsleyX isn’t she running overlap on this part of the grid?”
Abbi sighed and waited for my tantrum to subside. I wasn’t really that mad about the run, the Elizabeths are not an easy drive and they’re certainly not easy customers, but I wanted those guaranteed credits. I had a mattress at home with stale sheets and all of my clothes smelled like the bog and the back of a soda stand. I needed washing powder desperately, maybe even a new set of soft towels, or just some good music for the van. I’d tried using my cash for some of the powder you get off road, but those assholes have made it so that the washing machines won’t spin unless there’s zone approved washing powder inside it’s hungry guts. What I bought off road wasn’t even soap, it turned out to be ground rocks and artificial sweetener. I smelled so bad that by the end of the month I finally broke down one night and cried myself to sleep itchy and heavy hearted like a baby in a used diaper. Still, I had to make Abbi think that I wasn’t desperate enough to do the job without some added incentive. The Elizabeths are a nightmare from start to finish, but the dispatchers usually bear the full brunt of their collective ire. Abbi needed me more than I needed the job. I held my breath and waited for her to cave.
“Well look at it this way”, she said finally breaking the overdone silence, “you’ll get to see the ocean if you’re lucky. I’ll even throw in 10 extra credits from me personally if you make it there by 6 tonight.”
My foot was already on the gas pedal hovering and ready to push.
“You got it lady, it’s a deal.” I shouted into the com. I balanced the tray of rocksalt onto my lap taking small sniffs as I raced the van through knitted squares of pine branches until it met the road again. My tires wet from the creek mud painted lines behind me on the heated asphalt as I headed towards the ocean.
Creature on the road 2- the Elizabeth’s run - By Mr. Mittens
The drive down was nothing but a light breeze. I even took the last part on the main road, hell my cab was empty and the rock salt had long been sniffed, there was nothing they could steal or be bribed with, and the beautiful pinpointed hyperfocus that the salt had provided me was just what I needed to drive the way they liked. The mood was so light that I even wasted a filter on my breather and rolled down the windows just to feel the salt encrusted breeze on my cheek. The heat was abysmal and it lapped at my arm and face like a boiling wave, I let it wear me down until finally I had to roll the windows back up. Still, just the smell of all that water was enough to keep my head high. I wanted desperately to use my last few credits on a couple new songs, something to keep the party going, but I knew that the minute I pressed the pay button, a gnashing and sour feeling of guilt would attack me. I couldn’t guarantee that this job would end with credits, shit I couldn’t even guarantee that I wouldn’t lose credits I didn’t have. Negative credits is a hell that eats its own tail and you with it. I’ve climbed out of it so many times only to willingly fall back in every time. I resisted the urge to waste what little I had, but I knew it would only circle back again in due time.
I reached the pickup at 4:33, not bad really considering the roads in town are covered in an inch of muck and bird shit from May to December. The best you can do is allow it to pull you forward and hope the smell doesn’t seep into the vents. The countdown to 6pm, was running smoothly, I could hear it ticking like a heart beat in my head. I parked the van beside a square concrete building painted a tiresome and ugly red. “American Red” is what the paint cans called it, and it was mandatory for any and all buildings not being used for law enforcement or corporate business. American Red means you’re a searchable entity. The trick is to keep your building looking somewhere between mildly faded to almost due for a repaint, with several test sections left in fresh paint on the walls so it seems like you’re already tackling the problem. Fresh red means a brand new business or worse, an establishment that’s actively making a profit. Everybody springs for the small can and a few splatters. The government has a chokehold on that particular color and they love to play with the price they set on it. You want to stay in the middle so as to seem not new enough to raid and not flush enough to steal from. Hell, I know a kid who makes her living just aging the walls of fresh buildings. She’s got a whole system set up with chemicals and shit, one quick mist and by morning that shit red looks five years older and five times more tolerable. It’s a ridiculous enterprise, but so is life really.
I honked my horn twice and waited, putting my legs up on the dashboard and stretching my arms. I could feel a slight tingle on my cheek, sun burn most likely. It was only a mild sting and not totally unpleasant. There’s something about that warmth right on your cheek that feels wonderfully innate, my pop said that people just sat out in it with just a few scraps of clothes and a towel to sleep on. He said that when he was a boy the sun was like a friend, a warm hand that felt nice on your back. Back then, the sun didn’t rage and fume you, it didn’t eat away at your skin bit by bit until finally it sloughed off like a cancerous river. I can’t really buy into that, but man if he was being honest, that sounds like heaven to me. I checked my face in the mirror looking for any change in color. The longer I stared the more I tricked myself into seeing a slight tan spot growing on my cheek. I’d probably have to get it checked just to be safe, I could hear my pockets emptying at the very thought of getting another mole zapped. I scratched my face and honked one more time, hoping Bug would come crawling out of his little hole of an office and bring me my cargo.