Monster Behind the Wheel

by Michael McCarty

  She put my hand inside her gown. She set my fingers over one of her breasts. Her flesh was frigid and the nipple was pebble hard. Her too-wide smile was a gouge of invitation as she started to rub my dick.

  I was dismayed to discover I was getting an erection, pressing against the rusting zipper in my bloody pants.

  She spoke again. What I had previously thought was a husky voice was only bubbles of petrifying syrup gurgling in the back of her throat. “My name is Fiona Bloom and I liiiike you—as much as I can like a breather, that is. Be sure to look me up after you kick the bucket.”

  I held her cold and stiff body next to mine. She pressed herself harder against me. What did they call it, the zipless fuck? Or in this case a zipless and dead fuck? I didn’t care about the terminology—all I know was that it felt . . . not good but erotic in a necrotic sort of way.

  “Never trust your fleshy heart to a carnivore,” Fiona whispered in my ear.

  “I’m not a flesh eater,” I said. “Not living flesh, anyway. And never human flesh.”

  “Well, aren’t you the precious little Boy Scout,” she said. “Baby, we’re all flesh eaters.”

  Suddenly I noticed that a lot of the zombies were staring at me. My revulsion at the bugs had probably tipped them off to my not-dead condition.

  “I think we have trouble,” Fiona said, glancing toward the glaring cadavers.

  A tall zombie came toward us. His entire body was covered in duct tape. He looked like a silver mummy held together by adhesives and a prayer. He grabbed my shoulder and said, “We don’t like your kind here, trying to steal our women—”

  There was this glitch, a blink from dark to light, a mess up in the space-time continuum—some kind of freaky shit. Suddenly I found myself standing naked, gripping my erection. I was beside a steel table holding a towel in my other hand. My therapist, Rochelle, looked pissed, like any minute she was going to give me a kung-fu kick in the groin. I quickly wrapped the towel around my waist.

  “You try another stunt like that again, Mr. Carmichael, and I’ll cancel your therapy. I may even cancel you. I don’t need clients exposing themselves to me.”

  I was so embarrassed, I wanted to melt straight down through the floor. “I’m really sorry. I-I kind of spaced out for a second,” I stammered, trying to grovel and maintain a certain manly dignity at the same time. “I think I was having a seizure or something. I didn’t mean . . .”

  She rolled her eyes and gestured for me to get on the icy table.

  I did as I was told, the dream erection—my, aren’t we full of ourselves?—shriveling away as soon as the pain returned. And the pain was delivered by Rochelle’s massaging hands, not quite as gentle as they usually were.

  It felt as if someone had hooked hot wires up and down my spine. Pinch, dig, burn.

  I grunted, fingers curling into helpless fists. “They call it rehab, but it’s just modern torture. Monty Python was right: no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “No pain, no gain,” Rochelle retorted irritably. “Want me to absolve you of your sins?”

  Sins? I felt guilty. What did she know of my sins? I sighed. “Pain ages the soul, and mine’s going to need a walker pretty soon.”

  Another glitch—blink from light to dark, space-time continuum screwed through the wormhole. I was abruptly thrown into a flashback but not my own.

  It was Rochelle’s memory.

  In a car, of course. Somehow, that didn’t surprise me.

  At least I wasn’t back in the Land of the Dead.

  Rochelle was sitting in the backseat of her boyfriend’s beat-up station wagon. Not everybody can have a cool car like a Barracuda. She was quite a bit younger, probably not a day over seventeen. She wore her reddish hair long, as opposed to the conservative sexy-as-a-butch-nun style of bun she sported these days. She was also quite drunk. A twelve-pack of empty beer cans littered the car.

  Her spiky punk-haired boyfriend, Brad, had lifted up her skirt and was leering for a peek. She tried to push his hand away, but that didn’t stop him. He started stroking her crotch.

  “You’ve been promising I could do this,” he said as he caressed her between her legs.

  She may have, but it had been mostly a case of putting him off with not now, not now, but that didn’t necessarily add up to meaning later, later. If that had seemed to him like a promise of forthcoming tight refuge, that was his problem. But Rochelle was so liquored up, she couldn’t really respond. Couldn’t get her numb lips together to say no. There was a negative buzz between her ears, as of fluorescent light bulbs hissing down an empty hallway.

  Now, she knew that just beer shouldn’t have, couldn’t have done this to her. What else had he slipped in? Her tongue was withering all the way down her throat and was becoming a twisting snake in her chest.

  Brad reached under the skirt and grabbed her white cotton panties in his fist, pulling them down with a flourish. He brought her undies to his nose and sniffed them. Then he balled them up and stuffed them into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt.

  Brad unzipped his zipper slowly, so slowly Rochelle could hear each metal tooth click like a wolf’s fang—ready to attack—and he was. He turned her over. She struggled to get up, but he kept pushing her back down. When she stopped wiggling around, he used the opportunity to enter her from behind.

  A scream rose in her throat, but that coiling, thrashing snake in her heart and mouth wouldn’t let it go. All she could do was hiss with her mouth pushed into the vinyl backseat. It felt as if he’d stuck a crowbar up her rectum.

  Brad took the noise she made to be a moan of pleasure. He began to pump harder, riding her like a bucking bronco at the Mesquite rodeo, where, as a matter of fact, they’d just spent the afternoon. He’d been annoyed she’d thought the cowboys were cool, but he was over that now. Yeah.

  Just like the cowboy riders, he was done in a few seconds.

  Rochelle wept against the vinyl, feeling a serpent slither tightly around her heart.

  I put a hand to my head, which was throbbing like mad. Glitch sonofabitch. Dark to light again. Fuck space-time.

  “I said, you’re making great progress. Really. It usually takes years of therapy to recover from the kind of injuries you’ve suffered,” Rochelle said.

  The way she’d phrased the first sentence made me think she’d had to repeat it. Which was a good thing, since I didn’t hear it the first time.

  She wasn’t a teenager cowering against the seat in a piece of shit car anymore. She was her usual, ice-chiseled thirty-something self. The bun sat on the back of her skull like a sleeping snake.

  I just nodded. Uh-huh. Whatever you said.

  “That’s weird,” Rochelle muttered.

  “What is?” I asked, thinking, Oh, God, please let’s not have any more weirdness. I’ve had more than my quota today.

  She frowned, puzzled. “There was a long scar by your vertebrae where they made an incision. There was also another scar by a lower disc. I’m sure of it.” She checked the folder on me and shook her head. “How can this be? Both scars are gone. Have you been using some miracle cream off an infomercial or something?”

  I was flustered. “What? I wanna see . . .”

  “Here, look for yourself.” She usually helped me off the table, but this time she didn’t. She gestured to the mirror on the wall.

  I posed for the best possible view, twisting at the waist, turning my head as much as I could to glance over my shoulder.

  She was right. Hot damn. No scars. Not even a trace of paleness or dappling to show that scars had ever been there.

  CHAPTER SIX

  DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE

  Dreams are funny things.

  Understatement of the millennium, huh? I’ve had exceptionally vivid dreams my whole life. Sometimes I think my dreams are more vivid than my everyday life. And the oddest factors influence their content.

  If there’s water dripping on a tin can outside my bedroom window, that repetitive plinka-pl
inka will work itself into my dreams, perhaps as a marching robot or a metal ant dancing in a subterranean ballroom.

  I guess that’s just the brain working overtime, taking bits of sensory input and spinning whole new worlds out of them.

  I often fall asleep in front of the TV, and if I fall asleep after I’ve eaten something and I get a crummy taste in my mouth, that skanky flavor—which only gets worse as the night wears on—will work itself into some sort of insane taste-bud nightmare. I once fell asleep after eating nacho chips, and that cheesy, spicy taste soon turned into sour bleecch in my mouth, and I dreamed I was on a run-down dairy farm that looked like the rural equivalent of The Addams Family estate.

  All the cows were scrawny yet potbellied, like those sad-eyed third-world kids you see on those save-the-starving-children charity shows. These Halloween bovines were spotted black and white, and some of the spots were shaped like angry, screaming skulls—more hellsteins than Holsteins. Their muzzles dripped sickly, stringy glops of green snot, but what came out of their udders was even worse: thick and chunky and lightly streaked with thin ribbons of blood. At one point in the dream, a bloated farmhand with one eye made me drink half a bucket of that noxious milk, and when I woke up, I had to run to the bathroom to vomit.

  Yeah, dreams can be funny things. Funny like a dead-baby joke.

  One night, when I was about twelve, I had a dream where I was walking around on a rocky plain, with ragged orange clouds swirling overhead. The rocks were rusty red and black and covered with shiny dark blue and green moss. Ahead I saw a lone figure sitting on top of a boulder, looking down at something, completely absorbed in whatever it was viewing.

  I walked closer to the figure and decided, with growing horror, that this person probably wasn’t alive—too many bones showing—but was still quite mobile, fidgeting, scratching itself, saying, “Hmmm” and “Look at that” every now and then. I wanted to turn and run—that would have been the smart thing to do—but my curiosity was even stronger than my fear. And besides, who does what they’re supposed to do in dreams? Or in life, for that matter?

  I stood next to the half-rotten scarecrow creature and realized that it was an old, frail thing, surely too weak to hurt me. “What’cha looking at?” I said.

  It pointed down past the far side of the boulder. “Come closer and look. Pretty, isn’t it?” Its voice sounded like the wind blowing through a pile of autumn leaves.

  I moved closer and saw that there was a canyon on the other side of the boulder. And down below, flowing through that deep, rocky chasm, was a wide, turbulent river. But not a river of water.

  This flowing substance appeared to be a freaky lava flow of molten diamonds. Can a fluid be faceted? This stuff seemed to be. It was almost as though I were looking at it through a fly’s eyes. It illuminated the walls of the canyon with brilliant, multicolored light, and as I watched it flow, I found that every now and then I could see little scenes being played out in some of the larger facets.

  “Is that a dinosaur?” I said, gesturing to an image of a huge, scaly creature with horns on its face. But the image disappeared about two seconds after I’d spoken the words.

  “It might have been,” the scarecrow said. “If you want to see more dinosaurs, just think about them. Think hard. Your thoughts might draw some pretties your way.”

  “Pretties?” I said.

  The creature nodded, shaking loose a tooth that tinkled down the side of the boulder and landed at my feet. “I call them pretties. The things I want to see. I like looking at pretty things, and this is the place to see them. There’s nothing else pretty hereabouts.”

  So I concentrated on dinosaurs. I was only a kid, so I didn’t know anything too scientific about them, but I knew that some had long necks, some had big plates sticking out of their backs, and some were big meat eaters with little tiny arms and razor-sharp claws on the ends. And in a few minutes, I started seeing big lizards in several of the facets swirling around in that strange, beautiful river.

  A few of the lizards had wings and long, thin beaks. Others resembled reptile versions of gigantic sloths. I saw the meat eaters and the long-necked ones, too. Then I saw things that looked like men covered with scales.

  “Was that a lizard man?” I said, pointing. But of course the image was gone before the scarecrow had time to spot it.

  “It might have been,” the thing on the rock said. It leaned down to take a closer look at me. I saw that it had millipedes crawling on its sad, bony face. “You’re living, aren’t you? Can’t ever recall seeing one of you here before.” A few shreds of dried flesh turned upward on its cheeks, creating an undead version of a smile. “Perhaps you did see a lizard man. Time hasn’t revealed all its secrets to the living yet. I suppose what you saw might have been an evolutionary dead end that didn’t last too long. Maybe it’s not even from this world.”

  “So what is this place?” I asked. Then I motioned to the river. “And what is that stuff?”

  “I forgot how curious the living can be,” the creature said with a dry laugh. “Why don’t you just toddle back to Living Land like a good boy? You seem like a nice kid. I’d hate to see you get hurt.” It then pointed to a huge, pale, bat-like form huddled on a far wall of the canyon. “See that critter? He might not like a living guy hanging around here. Get going. Walk back the way you came. Hopefully you’ll find whatever rabbit hole or sewer pipe or magic cupboard got you here.”

  At that moment, the bat-like thing turned its head. Not enough to see me but enough for me to get a better view of its face. I had to cover my mouth and bite one of my fingers to not scream. I bit so hard I drew blood.

  The thing had round, frantic, blazing yellow eyes, a snout with wet flaring nostrils, and a mouth like an oversized piranha. It had more teeth than my pocket comb, and all of those teeth were long and needle sharp. It stared into the rivers, grunted, and then turned in another direction.

  “Go away,” the scarecrow whispered. “Before it smells your blood. Go away. Go. Uh. Way. Now.”

  That’s when I woke up, drenched in sweat. I was safe and sound in my bed, but my pillow was smeared with blood, and the middle finger of my right hand had a little chunk of skin missing.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  RUST IN PEACE

  I drove Monster to the MetroBank to make a withdrawal. It wasn’t the one I usually went to in Garland. It was a branch in Las Colinas, a ritzier neighborhood than mine. This was where they held the Byron Nelson golf tournament every spring. This was where Valley Ranch for the Dallas Cowboys was. They even have movie studios there. Sitting in the outdoor teller line, I could see people in other cars admiring the Barracuda. If I’d been driving my old clunker, they’d have probably called security on me.

  “Hey, that’s a nice classic, a real muscle car,” some middle-aged guy in a fifties MGB called through his rolled-down window. “Did you restore it yourself?”

  “Yeah, took lots of man-hours,” I yelled back. “I had to replace the engine, and most of the body was badly rusted out, but I loved every minute of it because I knew it would end up looking like this.”

  Why the hell did I say that? Did I want to impress this dude? But the lie came so easily, like I just couldn’t admit I hadn’t done the macho thing. I probably didn’t have the skills to refurbish a Matchbox car.

  “Ever take it to an auto show?” the guy persisted.

  “It’s been to a few,” popped out of my mouth. I wanted to slap a hand across my lips to shut myself up. I inched into my turn at the automated teller.

  I knew I ought to be using this money to pay my share of the rent to Caitlin. I’d fallen behind, and she’d been bugging me about it.

  But Monster needed an oil change and a tune-up. Maintenance was an essential part of owning a car, especially an older one. If you wanted to keep it in cherry shape, you had to pamper it. I didn’t want to chance burning up a piston or blowing a gasket.

  Let Caitlin blow the gasket. She’s only my stepsister. Monster’
s my car.

  I could hardly believe I’d already clocked three thousand miles on it. I really didn’t drive Monster that many places besides school, work, going out to eat, and occasionally to the mall and the library. Of course, the Metroplex is really spread out, but I would have needed to be driving around all night in my sleep to be logging so much mileage.

  The longest road trip I’d taken had been to Wichita Falls. I’d driven up there on Memorial Day to put flowers on Mom’s grave. Caitlin had come along and she shivered the whole way, as if the air-conditioning had been turned way up. I’d glance over at her and her teeth would be chattering. Her nipples stuck out in her T-shirt. I tried not to stare—hey, she’s my stepsister—but that sort of thing is hard to ignore.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “Can’t you turn this damn air down?” she snapped.

  I gestured to the controls. “It’s only on low.”

  “Then turn it off.”

  I did. Then it started to get hot. Even after I rolled down my window.

  Caitlin wouldn’t roll hers down. She was still shivering, nipples like antennae—picking up what-the-hell? kind of signals. “Shit, close your window. You want me to get pneumonia?”

  “It’s in the nineties. How can you be cold?” I asked, sweat running down from my hair and into my eyes. I was concerned about getting perspiration on the upholstery.

  I took one hand off the steering wheel for a moment and touched her cheek. She really was cold. But what could I do? If it got too hot in the car, I’d pass out, and we’d take a header into a semi or something. The chances of her getting pneumonia weren’t anywhere near those of mine getting heatstroke. So I stubbornly kept my window down.

  Wichita Falls was close to the Oklahoma border, near where the Red River cuts between the two states. It’s an area built on red clay. There’d been quite a bit of rain that week, puddles and rivulets everywhere. We had to drive down a dirt road or two.