I will start by telling the story of the holdup at Luke’s work. It’s as good as a place as any to start this thing off and makes for a good story in itself, at least it gave me a good chuckle.
Luke worked alone at a gas station fifty miles out of Mammoth, Arizona. A place called Lucky’s Gas and Snacks. If you don’t know where Mammoth is, then you’re like everybody but the few hundred souls living there, and a handful of others who noticed the place when passing by and who wondered if this was where the legendary mammoth’s lived thousands of years ago (no, the name is not linked to those creatures according to a quick Google research). All that needs to be known is that it’s in the desert, isolated and always so damn hot.
Luke, is in his mid-twenties. He is a good-looking guy. (I’m not gay, as you shall see, but Luke, with his mullet that falls mid-neck does have a rugged sexy look–even I can admit that much.) He often wears jeans, even in the worst heat, with a plain white t-shirt, a black one when he goes out. He’s a good-natured, level-headed guy, and he’s simple. By simple, I’m not saying he’s stupid. No, simple in the sense that he doesn’t need much to be happy. He reads books by the tons, fiction mostly, smokes a reasonable amount of weed, and enjoys driving his car–a 1973 Dodge Charger.
His job sitting alone behind the counter may seem unfulfilling to others, but the time he gets to read compensates for the shitty pay. Normally he’s bothered by one or two clients per day, at most, and occasionally by a harmless holdup.
On this particular day, Luke was at his regular spot, behind the cash, feet on the counter, sitting back with Lovecraft’s The Shadow Out of Time. His tenth reading of it.
He leaned forward to look out the window when he heard the growling sound of a punctured muffler pulling up. He knew what was going down when he saw the driver get out of a truck, sporting a lime motocross helmet to stay anonymous. The helmeted driver grabbed a shot gun from the cargo box and held it along his leg as he walked over, keeping his leg stiff along its side, as if that would be enough it conceal it from Luke’s view.
Not again, Luke thought to himself. (Yeah, I am aware of his thoughts, the reason this is possible will be clear later. Much later. Patience, please.)
Like I said, Luke was level-headed and good-natured. He wasn’t worried by the kid. Mammoth holdups were nothing as violent as what you’d find in a big city. It was a slow ordeal, languorous and slightly ridiculous. Besides, anyone with any common sense wouldn’t waste time at Lucky’s Gas and Snacks. The kids who did this only considered half the equation when thinking it was a good idea. They were right that nobody, clients or cops or whoever, would be nearby to interfere or intercept them. What they failed to realize was that it wasn’t worth their trouble, they’d make more money skinning a rattlesnake. And rattlesnakes there were plenty up of in the bush.
The sloppy look of the motocross helmet robber didn’t worry Luke one bit. The kid was wearing oversize jeans, the fly unzipped, his shirt buttons misaligned and partially tucked into one side. If he shot as straight as the kid dressed he’d be safe.
The chimes chimed as he entered the store. Luke put aside the book to do his job. The gun was pointed in his direction, the two barrel like hollow eyes.
“Han’s with syrup,” is what Luke understood the kid said, and couldn’t hold back a smile. “At’s fun, eh?”
“Sorry,” said Luke, knowing he shouldn’t mess around too much, a kid with a gun was dangerous even if he didn’t plan on using it. Luke continued, “The helmet muffles you’re voice, you’ll have to speak louder.”
“Hand’s where I can see’um,” the kid shouted. Luke raised his hands as he was told. “Slowly, with you’re left hand, open the cash and take two steps back… No wessing awound.”
He did as he was told and once done he stepped back. The kid reached over the counter to grab the money. He removed the cash tray to see if more was hidden beneath it. There wasn’t.
“Frothy ducks?” Luke decided to not mess around with him anymore.
“Yeah, forty bucks, that’s all I got. One sedan filled up six hours ago, you’re my second client of the day.”
“Do shit with me? You kweep cash.”
Luke nodded to the sign next to the counter, Credit or Exact Cash only. The kid’s shoulders slouched, letting his gun falter. “You gonna be skinning me,” followed by muffled slurs.
“Listen,” Luke offered, “for your troubles, you can serve yourself to anything,”
The kid looked around at the racks of snacks.
“Weally?”
“Yeah, go ahead, take whatever you like.”
The kid took his time to check out the options. Luke let his arms down, his hands growing numb. The kid chose a bag and lifted it and to ask, “These any good?”
“Solid choice, Gordon.”
The kid was on his way out when he stopped to ask, “Wait, what you say?”
“It’s on your helmet.”
The kid raised his hand to cover his name written with a sharpie on the back edge of his helmet.
Luke watched as the truck pulled out, pitying the kid. He didn’t even fill up the tank before leaving.
***
At two in the morning, Luke locked up the pumps, and turned off the yellow neon lights over the Lucky’s Gas and Snack worn out sign. He hadn’t seen another customer since Gordon, and had since finished reading his novel that he started again from the start until close.
Luke pulled the tarp covering his car, a Dodge 1973 Charger. It wasn’t in mint condition, he couldn’t afford a fresh paint job, but it was clean and he took care of it like a baby brother. (That means he did beat it every once and awhile.)
Whenever he walked along the car’s side, Luke had a way of sliding the back of his knuckles along the hood’s surface. The same way he’d caress the curves of a girl he finished making love to; a slow, and tender brushing of the skin.
He grabbed his stash from the glove box and rolled himself a joint before revving the motor a few times. He rolled down the windows and popped in the stereo the Jazz mixed tape he’d made, contemporary stuff.
The roads in the flat desert plains offered the ideal straightaways to push a car to its limits, which Luke did on occasions, and always on nights after holdups. To loosen up, it was as good of an excuse as any. Luke smiled as he shifted into the last gear. In the desert darkness, the speed was blind but he felt the rush through the roaring motor and the gust of air brushing past him from the open window. With control, he fishtailed his car off-road and stopped, appreciating the adrenaline pumping throughout his body.
Two hands on the wheel he raced on the hard packed dirt plain toward a lone cactus planning to do a few donuts around it, he pressed on the clutched and engaged the hand brake to initiate the turn, but before he could continue the skid, he heard a thump and the car’s underside scrapping along the dirt. It didn’t sound good.
Outside, he walked back to the damaged rear passenger side. He found the wheel had spun off and rolled several hundred yards away. Back in the car, he considered calling Beatrice’s emergency number. She was the owner of the only garage in Mammoth. Luke decided not to. He threw his phone in the passenger seat, planning to wait till morning. At this hour, she’d come herself to get him. He’d rather not spend the twenty drive into town hearing her lecture about the irresponsibility of doing donuts in the desert and her nagging insistence he needed help to recover from his drug addiction–one he didn’t have. He didn’t have a mother and didn’t need Beatrice to act as one.
In the morning, she’d be too busy to come herself. Tommy would be sent out, and they always had a good time.
Sitting in the car he rolled himself another joint, reclined his seat back and using the overhead cabin light he finished reading his novel.
Things get interesting for Luke right about here, but before getting into the details of it, we need to step back to talk about Mylah. I think it will make more sense this way.
When Gordon, the kid who robbed Luke of the forty bucks and the bag of snacks, entered the service station, it was around ten o’clock Arizona time. This makes it one in the morning eastern time, and around the time Mylah and her two friends, a bassist and percussionist, were finishing their last jazz set at The Thirsty Crane in downtown Boston.
They weren’t professional jazz players, but they had enough talent to be booked when they wanted and to keep the full house at the Crane’s respectfully listening till the end. Mylah played the saxophone and was the bandleader, even if she never wanted to admit the sounds revolved around her leads. She was humble that way. I guess it’s easy for an overachiever like her to be humble, (unlike me, who will unhumbly admit at being the most successful underachiever on campus). She was proudly one of the five Afro-American, three of them women, in the third year of Harvard med school.
They bowed as the crowd gave them a generous applause. Trevor, The Crane’s owner, greeted them backstage with high-fives.
“You kids really have talent,” he said. He was an older guy, in his sixties, gray hair down to his shoulders. Always had a smoke dangling from his lips, unusually it wasn’t lit, it was his way of quitting.
He reached into the bottom of his jeans pocket and handed a roll of warm cash to Mylah. “I have another gig for you,” he said while waving his hands to get the bandmates to huddle around him. “Just got a call from a friend of mine, owner of The Pearl, the late night band cancelled on him last second. He’s looking for a replacement.”
“Now?” asked Mylah.
“Needs you there as soon as possible, to play till four. He’ll double his regular rate if you can help him out.”
The offer tortured Mylah. This reaction was a revelation to me. I mean, until getting a glimpse into other people’s thoughts, I never imagined people tortured themselves so much at the idea of disappointing their friends. You see, the Pearl was a nice venue, more sophisticated than The Thirsty Crane, but Mylah was already playing with fire. She had a Pediatrics exam the next morning at ten, and she hadn’t yet studied enough to ace it, or at least that what she thought. Knowing her the way I do now, she probably could have aced it anyway, but that’s beside the point.
“I’m sorry…guys…I can’t. I have an exam…” she said with a pain equivalent to undergoing a root canal.
Tobey, the bassist, lifted his hands to show he wasn’t intending on pressuring her. He said, “No worries, Mylah, we don’t want the funkiest saxophone player in Boston to miss her chance of becoming a doctor.” Here, I should note that I have no idea if Tobey was being sincere, as I don’t have access to his thoughts, but Mylah took the comment at face value.
Chris, the drummer, gave the classic money gesture; rubbing his index finger over his thumb. Mylah didn’t take it badly and gave him a friendly punch on the arm. Chris laughed and said, “We love you girl, good luck on your exam.”
The bandmates headed to the bar for drinks.
“Your music does more for peoples’ health than anything you’ll learn in med school,” said the bar owner before leaving her alone. Mylah wiped down her saxophone, doubting there was any truth in Trevor’s comment.
Back in her apartment, she sat at her desk in the dark with only her desk lamp on. Skully overlooked her while she studied. Skully was her foot high toy skeleton, who’s features were creepily accentuated by the way the lamp cast its shadows.
Mylah went over the highlights in her five-inch thick Pediatrics textbook, writing and rewriting information she had trouble memorizing. (Another revelation for me; I never suspected people actually studied this hard. A solid twenty minutes, sure, but hours like Mylah was doing, insane.) Eventually, she couldn’t take it anymore. She dropped her face into her book to rest.
“Come to me knowledge, come to me, nowww….” she said, rolling her head side-to-side in the book. She reached over to switch the lamp off and placed her hands under her head. The first rays of dawn were already entering her apartment when she fell asleep. It was six in the morning in Boston and three back in Arizona where we had left Luke who was now sleeping in his car.
Luke woke up, but not really, as you shall see. He propped up his seat and found himself in a 2022 Dodge Charger, fully loaded. He was at the same spot in the desert, in the middle night, the only difference was that his car was new and not tilted from a detached tire.
“I love when this happens,” he said to himself, as he gripped the leather steering wheel with admiration. I can’t see Luke’s childhood, and wouldn’t want to, tell you the truth, but from my understanding he dreamt about cars before dreaming about women.
He revved the motor, ready to have the fun he didn’t have the chance to have in real life when he hears a high pitch screeching, something similar to race tires on hot pavement is how Luke thought about it. Personally, I would describe it as the sound of millions of bats rushing out of a cave (even though I never heard such things myself, just how I’d imagine it would sound, or maybe I did see it in a movie I can’t recall). The darkness in the distance is replaced with pinkish bloody hue. The same color as a hand in the dark with a flashlight held behind hit. A thick fleshy pinkish hue with a flashing pulse giving it vitality.
There was another deafening screech when a black silhouette appeared running toward the car, fast. He leaned forward, squinting to get a better view. From what he could tell it was a girl.
WHACK!
She smacked her hands against the windshield, looked inside at him with terrified eyes, then climbed in beside him
“Go, go, go,” she screamed. (The girl sitting next to Luke was Mylah as some of you might have already guessed.)
Luke put the car in reverse and floored the gas, pulling away from the throbbing pinkish flesh that was accelerating like the heart of shy boy about to ask out his longtime crush. He spinned the car one-eighty to speed into the darkness, the pink pulse fading behind them.
“I don’t understand…it was sucking my thoughts away…something was sucking away the things I worked so damn hard to learn…” Mylah said angry and terrified, with tears running down her cheeks. She looked horrible (according to Luke).
As you can guess, I risk messing up this story, as I have access to memories from both point of views but I’ll try to keep it simple. Luke was perfectly calm. He knew he was dreaming and thought it cool that he got to escape in his car with a terrified girl. He knew she looked horrible because of what was happening, and in a better situation she’d be irresistible.
Mylah had no clue she was having a nightmare. She was living this like if it was her real life. It’s odd to think how some people don’t realize they are having a nightmare no matter how out of context things appear to be. Neither Mylah, nor Luke had ever met before.
“Sucking you’re thoughts…” Luke said, making a slurping sound.
“This isn’t funny. It felt like my thoughts were being peeled away.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Luke laughed, “thoughts are neurological pathways–”
“I know what they are, it just felt that way.”
“Well, at least you’re safe now–”
But as he was saying these words, the darkness into which they were going toward at full speed switched to a glowing pinkish flesh. Mylah placed her hands on the dashboard. Luke glanced in his rearview mirror to see if it was dark behind them, ready to swerve around if needed. As his view returned to the front, another silhouette appeared. Luke pressed on the breaks, but it was too late; he struck the body and it tumbled over the hood and roof and fell behind the car that was now stopped.
Lucas opened the car door but Mylah grabbed his forearm to stop him from leaving her.
“You’re not going out there?”
“You didn’t notice,” he said, cool as always. “We just hit something, I’m going to see what it was.” Mylah glanced out front, the pink flesh was growing brighter, the pulse accelerating.
“Don’t, it might be,” she said. Luke waited, curious what she would say.
“Might be what?”
“The monster…” she said.
“I’ll take that chance,” he said, thinking that perhaps he’d been reading too much horror lately. He found the guy behind the car trying to pick himself up, shaken.
“Ever get run over by two hundred and fifty pounds of solid meat,” the guy said, with no apparent injury. “Feels just the same.”
The guy who got hit is Javon. He’s a solid piece of meat himself, just fifty pounds less than the guys he feared. Tall and muscular, as you’d expect of a college football wide receiver to be. We will have a chance to talk about Javon more later, let’s stay focused on the nightmare.
“What are you talking about, you just got hit by a car?” said Lucas, thinking his dream was getting a bit silly.
“This isn’t real. It’s just my body playing–”
“What you say?” Lucas didn’t like the characters in his dreams being aware they were in a dream.
“This isn’t real. It’s just a nightmare playing on my fears of getting picked up by an oversized safety, that’s all.”
“No…no… this isn’t your nightmare.” Lucas wasn’t scared, but his dream was messing around with him and he wasn’t liking it. “You see this car?”
“Nice wheels,” Javon said, impressed.
“I dream of cars like this all the time, making you part of my dream, not the other way around.”
“Yeah, right, whatever, so what you’re saying is that I don’t even exist,” Javon said laughing, “This is messed up.”
Mylah was out of the car wanting to get their attention as the pink flesh was casting itself over them. But a screeching sound covered her warning and silenced anything else stirring in the night.
At this point, things get weird (if it wasn’t weird already). It’s as if these three minds I have access to become one. I’m not saying this is the case, but they were all thinking the same thing, seeing the same things and feeling the same things. I can’t distinguish who is thinking what at this point.
The pink flesh covered them, as if they were inside some creatures bodypart with the shining light outside it. My three friends weren’t scared at this point, not because of bravery, but because they couldn’t sustain thoughts. Their minds were blank, attempting to observe what was happening. They heard, or think they heard, a car’s motor roaring and skidding around them. But they couldn’t see it, even with their eyes open it was like if their eyelids were closed, pink and translucent. Their thoughts were scattered and blurry, impossible to piece together coherently the sequence of events that followed. Just a conviction that the car they heard was heading straight for them. There was a flash and a loud blast.
All three of them woke up at this exact moment.
Mylah woke up with a sudden movement, sending her text book flying sideways, knocking Skully the skeleton to the ground into pieces. She looked at the clock, it was nine in the morning. She had to get ready for her exam.
Javon jolted upright in bed, panting heavily and sweaty. He examined his room making sure he was safe before lying back down, grabbing a pillow to cover his face while cursing from the bad night of sleep.
Lucas woke up slightly agitated, annoyed more than afraid. He raised his seat and called the garage. Beatrice is the one who picked up. She wasn’t impressed about his situation but didn’t have time to haress him about it. She sent Tommy to get him, as planned. Luke reread his novel while waiting, hoping the images of the nightmare would soon be forgotten.