Black Rainbow

by Scott Savino

  Valentine shifted himself in the seat to lean forward and tap the clock on the dashboard. Then he reached to unlock his phone, still docked and useless in its GPS spot.

  “GPS still isn’t’ going to work,” Nick muttered, offering him the last Twizzler.

  “Just checking the time.”

  He accepted the tasty rope candy, but tore it in half and offered the bigger piece back to his husband, all the while stretching forward to peer up at the sky overhead. The trees were still dense, creating a thick canopy overhanging the road.

  “It feels later than it says it is. Looks darker.”

  Nicolas grunted, a curious noise, and leaned to have a look for himself. “Probably just a storm or something behind us. Or it’s all these trees,” he said, sounding bored as he leaned back in the seat.

  He rummaged through the bag from the gas station only to find there was nothing left.

  “We didn’t stop for lunch.”

  “I told you we weren’t stopping for lunch. The snacks were lunch.”

  “Twizzlers do not a lunch make.”

  “We’ll be back to civilization by dinner and we’ll stop then,” Valentine smiled fondly, unable to stop himself.

  A soft click startled him. He was still on edge from earlier, but with a glance he saw it was just Nicolas turning on his seat warmer. That had been the big selling point of the Jeep for the both of them.

  “Mm, toasty buns,” Nick grinned.

  Valentine was inclined to agree, and pushed the button to turn on his own seat warmer. He also adjusted the heat in general as it was starting to feel more than a little chilly, probably another aspect of the encroaching storm. And it had to be a storm. He had decided. The clouds were so very dark and menacing, sucking all the color from the world from the churning grey depths peeking through the canopy.

  If not for the clock and his phone both declaring it was just after three in the afternoon, Valentine would have assumed it was closer to sunset.

  By the time the clock read four, it was completely dark.

  As the time ticked by—approaching five, half past five, approaching six—Valentine grew more and more concerned.

  Not only should they have seen some sign of civilization, they should have been smack in the middle of it. He knew he had timed it properly, because neither of them were ever happy skipping one meal. Skipping two was just out of the question, even for the sake of making good time.

  “Vale, are we lost?” Nick sounded a touch scared at that point. Earlier it had been a joke, something to laugh off, but now he seemed just as concerned as Vale felt.

  “We’re on this road, heading east,” Valentine repeated, “and we should have hit the next town by now. Hell, we should have hit the interstate by now, if not the city itself. I know I plotted this out correctly,” he huffed.

  It just did not make sense!

  Nicolas took the phone off the stand on the dashboard and had Valentine unlock it for him to try the GPS again to no success. He put it back and unfolded the map he had never properly re-folded, spreading it out in front of him.

  “Well, at least Nap-town is on the map,” he mumbled, tracing his finger across the lines, “then we turned this way … and this way …”

  “I’ve driven this road probably a hundred times growing up, I know where we should be by now,” Valentine protested, trying not to let his anger get the better of him.

  The road was getting difficult to see, a dark miasma obscuring it. Valentine wasn’t sure if it was fog or not, but if it wasn’t fog then what could it be? There was no rain, yet a fine haze of damp had him flicking the windshield wipers every few minutes. He kept checking to be sure he had his high beams on because it just didn’t seem like they were making as much light as they normally did. The beams were not piercing the darkness ahead of them.

  Behind them, far behind them, Valentine could see the sky was a bit lighter. It was just the sunset, he told himself, that was all it could be. There was fog and drizzle at sunset, perfectly reasonable in the woods, and he was freaking himself out for nothing.

  “Vale, I really gotta pee,” Nick complained.

  “Can you wait until we get out of this? I don’t want someone to hit us if we stop.” Vale’s mind flashed back to the eighteen-wheeler from their last bladder break, but that wasn’t the only reason he didn’t want to stop.

  “Well, I was trying to wait, but you said we should’ve been there already, so …”

  Valentine could hear the distress in his husband’s voice. Nick didn’t like to protest, always eager to please and not be a bother, but he was trying to assert what he needed and that, alone, spoke volumes to Vale.

  So he put on the turn signal and coasted to a stop along what he could only assume was a clear stretch of road, since he couldn’t see far enough to verify. He hit the button for the emergency flashers and hoped that would be enough if anyone came up on them. Then he reached over and grabbed Nick’s wrist as he was fumbling with his seatbelt.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go out there.”

  He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d said that. What did he think was out there, exactly? It was just dark and a bit damp, that was all. He had grown up in this area and there was nothing but woods and the occasional hunter. Maybe a few less-than-friendly locals who had moved to the middle of nowhere to be left alone, but nothing that warranted this kind of unease. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling something was very wrong.

  “Can’t you just, I don’t know, piss in a soda bottle?”

  Nicolas looked at him as if he had grown horns, and shook his head, a tinge of blush coloring his cheeks. “Vale, that’s gross, driving along here with a bottle of pee. Don’t be ridiculous. Will it make you feel better if I leave the door open and just stand right here by the Jeep?”

  “Yeah,” Vale said. “Not much better, but a little better.”

  Before he got out, Nick leaned over and pecked a kiss on his lips. Valentine reached behind his neck and stopped him, seeking out another kiss until his husband squirmed to get away.

  “I really have to go,” he laughed and hopped out. There was a slight splish as his feet hit the wet ground.

  Valentine glanced at the rearview mirror as Nick splashed toward a suitable spot, hoping the emergency flashers would be enough, worrying about another eighteen-wheeler rocketing down that little road on a deadline and trying to make up time. Though their Jeep was sturdy, it was still no match for a big rig truck.

  He sucked in a ragged breath. The light from the flashers didn’t seem to penetrate the darkness pressing against the back of the Jeep at all.

  “Nick?” he called.

  “Still here,” came a very near voice. True to his word, he hadn’t strayed far. Probably just along the side of the car.

  Looking out the back windows, though, Valentine couldn’t see him. There was only that oppressive black fog and a hint of very distant evening light. He thought he saw a tendril of mist curl up along the inside of the open passenger door, but could mist really be that dark? That couldn’t be natural.

  “Nick!” he called again, an edge of panic in his voice.

  Nicolas immediately appeared in the open doorway, reaching for the hand wipes Valentine had already retrieved from the center console. He hated them, often complaining about the smell, but Valentine insisted, especially for reasons such as this. It was just good, prudent sense to practice good hygiene, even though he no longer needed to worry so much about his viral load because of his medication.

  “My husband, the ball of anxiety,” Nick said it with an almost-smile in his tone, but there was no expression on his face.

  There was no color in his face either. That slight blush from before had drained away, and he looked even more pale than usual. Even the light dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose and cheeks seemed washed out.

  “Come on, just get in here and let’s get going before we get hit,” Valentine encouraged, somehow both relieved and more on ed
ge than before with Nick returned.

  He barely waited for Nick to climb back into the Jeep before shutting off the emergency flashers, signaling, and putting it in gear. The seatbelt notification dinged as he took off back down the road. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he swore he saw something, something even darker than the fog moving against the black, rushing up toward the back window.

  “Vale?” Nick questioned the sudden acceleration, still fiddling with the seatbelt.

  The ding of protest from the warning system was poking at his last nerve, so Valentine reached over to try and help guide his husband’s seatbelt into the latch. When their hands brushed against one another, he was shocked to feel how ice cold Nick’s skin was.

  He clicked the belt into place, and then immediately went to turn the vents on higher, cranking up the heat.

  “I’m not cold.”

  “I am,” Valentine excused, noticing that Nick had turned off the seat warmer on the passenger side at some point.

  Anxiety was getting the better of him, that was all it was, he told himself. The onset of night just made getting lost a little creepier than it should have been, and nothing else was going on. They just made a wrong turn somewhere and he would find a sign at some point, and straighten them out. He knew all of these roads; he could find his way again.

  Looking in the rearview, Valentine swore there was a tendril of dark fog now swirling among their luggage, packed as it was to just beneath the back window. He watched in horror as it twisted and curled, almost pulsing.

  It was definitely inside the car. It was in there with them.

  As Vale’s stomach growled, diverting his attention from the fog in the back, he realized Nicolas had not complained about being hungry since getting back in the car. It was well past dinner by then and Valentine knew his husband. Nick should have been complaining by that point—just soft complaints, little sighs, and that adorable little pout of his bottom lip combined with big brown eyes.

  He was afraid to look over at him now, afraid of what he might see.

  But that was nonsense. A crazy anxiety notion. This was his husband, and they were on their way to a family get-together straight from their honeymoon camping and hiking in Northern California, where they’d had a glorious time! Nick had complained and huffed and ached, but he’d done all the hikes. They’d held hands as they’d looked out over the world from the tops of so many personal victories. It was a world brand new to them, full of possibilities. Valentine was well again, Nick had his own goals and was reaching for them. They were both crawling out of their respective dark places and supporting each other in growth and hope. He was going to introduce Nick to his family for the first time as his husband. And fine, maybe Aunt Linda wouldn’t be there, but it would be satisfying just the same. They would hold hands and not care and let everyone whisper because it didn’t matter anymore.

  They had each other.

  So Valentine choked back his anxiety and glanced at his husband, needing to see that freckled face, that less-than-confident smile, to silence the terrified voice in his head.

  But there was nothing.

  Only darkness.

  A dark, hazy form that might have been person-shaped, but only just barely, took up half the Jeep’s interior, its foggy tendrils creeping across the empty center console. There was no map, no bag of empty snack wrappers, no empty soda bottles.

  There was only darkness.

  The digital numbers of the dashboard clock read twelve, but slowly faded to black and were gone, lost in the miasma.

  Then, from the darkness that now took up the entire interior of the vehicle—not just beside him, but all around—came a voice.

  Nick’s voice.

  “Vale, I love you …”

  The Unicorn

  EDYTH PAX-BOYR

  THE AD HAD BEEN SIMPLE. “Adventurous couple seeking third for romantic getaway. All expenses paid.” A contact number followed, along with an email address and a series of pictures following an Insta-perfect pair in a variety of exotic locales.

  She looked like a Polynesian princess and he looked like Idris Elba.

  It was everything Shayna Singh had been craving.

  A listless weight lurked in the back of her mind where she kept things like dealing with confrontation and doing chores. It tried to surface in the quiet moments, when she’d run out of work to do and all she had for company were her own demons. After her partners had gone to sleep and she had too much time on her hands, she’d dwell on the quiet ache that came with having no primary—someone to whom she could always come home.

  For now, it was just Shayna and Handsome Jack, a golden Chihuahua she’d rescued a few years back, plus a handful of partners she adored, but knew would only ever be “for now”.

  She also knew a romantic getaway with two beautiful strangers wouldn’t change any of that, but it was a nice excuse to play.

  Not that she needed one.

  Especially when that play date was booked in Hawai’i.

  Her Insta-couple, Hi’iaka (a name she had spent hours practicing to pronounce correctly as hee-ee-ah-kah) and Adésanya, met her at the airport, each with a stunning lei to accompany the one she’d received just for landing.

  “Aloha,” Hi’iaka said, pulling Shayna into a fragrant hug. Adé followed suit, smelling of honey and spice beneath the flowers.

  “Aloha,” Shayna repeated awkwardly, her heart suddenly racing in a mixture of delight and panic. Their pictures—already stunning beyond reason—didn’t do them justice. She couldn’t believe people like them would ever be interested in spending time with her, but their smiles never faltered as they swept her up, laughing and sharing stories even before they’d left the airport.

  As they made their way to short-term parking, Hi’iaka’s voice rang out like a crystal bell, recounting a misadventure the duo had dubbed “The Great Paneer Caper”.

  “Hand to Kāne, he was holding all three goats when the manager found us and all he could say was—”

  “‘The service in this hotel is terrible!’,” Adé laughed, reliving the moment with dramatic flair. “Then I handed the goats to the manager, grabbed ‘Iaka, and stormed out without looking back.”

  “I never did get my naan, either.”

  Shayna was laughing so hard she could barely see where they were going and had to lean on Adé for support.

  “That’s the real tragedy,” she said when she could breathe again. “No one should ever go without naan.”

  “See,” Hi’iaka said, gesturing to Shayna but looking at Adé. “She gets it.”

  Shayna looked up in time to catch Adé rolling his eyes with a grin. “This. This is the one thing she’ll never let me forget.”

  “On your deathbed, I will be there at your side, reminding you of the naan I never got to eat.”

  “How did you two meet?”

  A moment passed, the boisterous humor replaced by a quiet appreciation as the couple smiled at each other with a look that communicated a million things Shayna couldn’t identify. Love seemed to be the loudest message, though.

  “We grew up together,” Hi’iaka said as they climbed into the back of a dark SUV with its own driver.

  “Jealous of each other, really,” Adé added with a laugh that made parts of Shayna tingle in anticipation.