My god I can remember how my soul was hurting on those long drives across the country. I hated these road trips my father would make me go on, by the time I got there the sadness had found its home deep in my heart and it would take me at least 3 days of moping about to feel even the slightest bit better about all the animals. My dad told me to close my eyes and listen to music, that way I wouldn’t see their fluffy blood-stained bodies lying by the side of the road but I couldn’t… someone had to see them and feel the loss, feel the pain, of a life so pointlessly taken.
I hate humans for making roads and cars and most of all war…oh GOD war. It’s one thing to inflict such atrocities on humans but the animals, they can’t comprehend the meaning behind why a bomb is dropped. We cannot explain to them why they are suffering, why we must make others suffer, they will never understand, just as they will never understand the animal that doesn’t breathe, the animal that cannot die, the fucking car.
The only thing that ever made me feel better is that they weren’t left in the middle of the road to get trampled over and over again by people hurtling down the road singing fucking Kumbaya at the top of their lungs, not a care in the world for the animal kingdom, for this precious planet we have made into a living hell for it’s most innocent inhabitants. I asked my dad how they got to the side of the road and he said something about vibrations going downhill…but that’s not downhill, he just made shit up to sound smart and I hated him for it.
I didn’t start bringing home the road angels ( don’t ever use the term roadkill around me) until I was 15. My thought process was that the natives on this land… if they killed something, they would use every part of it, and that was considered how to properly respect an animal you slaughtered. I’m not one of those taxidermy freaks though, I bet that’s what you were thinking. No, I find that completely disrespectful too, making it into some kind of abomination staring at you with dead glass eyes. As if an animal, finally rid of the abysmal cycle of life on earth being stuffed and dolled up to be put on display in the homes of the species that destroyed their planet. Anyway, with taxidermy OFF the table, I had to think of how best to recycle them and use them to bring some benefit to the planet, so I planted a garden. For my 16th birthday, I asked for a blender, I told my dad I was getting into bodybuilding and needed to make protein shakes for my daily workouts… he was thrilled of course, the bonehead.
I would painstakingly cut up all the parts that couldn’t be used elsewhere and say a special prayer I made up to show them how sorry I was for what had happened to them and then the rest of the time I play them my moms (deceased) CD of Queens greatest hits because I feel like humanity kinda did the gay community in the 80s like they do animals, if you want me to elaborate I can just send me a private message. I personally find myself attracted to both men and women, it’s more about personality for me and I have YET to find someone who I feel I could spend my life with. Anyway, once everything was blended up I would mix it with fresh soil and spread it out over my freshly planted seeds and you wouldn’t believe the quality of fruits and vegetables I produced. I never ate the meat because I was a vegetarian, of course, so I did my best considering. This all continued for about 2 years until a horrible but ultimately fortuitous night just 2 weeks after my 18th birthday.
I was living on my own by the time I was 17 because my father got remarried and went to live with his new wife in Florida, leaving me the trailer and the garden, thank god. I got a job at a roadhouse off of Highway 80 as a cook, which I liked a lot because I didn’t have to talk to anyone much. I just put in my headphones and waited for a ticket to print. They even let me bring some of my own produce and were even grateful for that, and I liked the idea that the people, mostly truck drivers who probably caused at least 30 road angels a year, were involuntarily practicing the native tradition of honoring the whole animal, even if it did sort of bother me that they were getting any pleasure from their death.
Anyway one night, I left around like 11 pm and got in my truck to drive home. I usually drive well under the speed limit to prevent any accidents and keep a watchful eye out on either side of the road for any furry friends waiting for an opportunity to cross. So this night I’m probably going like 20mph down the 80 when a little beamers headlights come right up on my ass. It’s a two-lane and they wanna go fast and they’re honking and blaring music so I kindly motion for them to pass. They crossed the double yellow line and rolled down their window to get a look at me and we drove along for a second at my pace. The driver looked like something straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting with light brown fluffy hair and pink rosacea’d cheekbones, the stink of Marijuana wafting out from behind his stink face as he rolled down his window.
“You good, dude?” he spat.
“You should slow down, there’s deer crossing,” I replied, calmly. The boy wore too much chapstick around his mouth. It over lined his lips leaving a glossy finish where his mustache had most likely just begun to grow in.
“oh my god, I thought you’d be like 80 years old.”
“yoo, he’s like our age.” his passenger chimed in, a runt of a boy, blonde, rat-like.
“I’m just being safe.”
“It’s not safe to go under the speed limit, bro.”
“It’s not safe to drive while under the in”-
A thud.. something… under my wheels. How could I have taken my eyes off the road? My foot left the gas pedal and a blackness hole formed in my heart. The boys must have just kept going unaware of the tragedy that just occurred, their taillights disappeared around a bend and I sat, mind blank except for thoughts of suicide, as I stared straight ahead.
I have to check I thought, but my feet didn’t move, my hand didn’t go for the handle.
A rabbit or a fox, something bigger than a chipmunk, maybe a skunk. My mind went completely blank to the point where I thought ‘This is what death might feel like,’ like no thoughts, nothing, and I thought that was okay and that is what I deserve. I don’t know how much time passed, only that cars would pass me on my right side and maybe even two of them tried to talk to me and I made myself tell them that help was on the way because the worst thing would be if police showed up because they’d call animal control and at least… 3 hours maybe passed by before I was shocked from my trance state into reality by the rustling of the bushes by the side of the road.
Oh great I thought, it’s a child skunk coming to see how I murdered its mother and now it will die too because there is no one to show it how to be a proper skunk.
But what emerged from the tree line was far too big to be a skunk.
At least 7ft tall it stood on 4 legs, but with a long neck leading upwards to a skeletal head that resembled something horse-like with long incisors, except something else about it, perhaps how stout and round the top was, was vaguely human. I would have thought it the most severe case of mange I’d ever seen if it didn’t realize that there was absolutely no muscle, cartilage, or tissue connecting the bones of the legs so it would be quite literally impossible for the thing to set one foot in front of the other. There was fur on it though after all, mangled together like a freakish fur coat were the heads, mouths moving open and closed in silent yips and growls, paws, tails, and even some molting antlers, fell around its back and neck before making way for the ambiguous, skeletal head.
It was hard to see in the darkness the exact details of the anthropological makeup of the thing but it gave a sort-off huff when it approached the back of my car, and somehow I understood that it wanted me to pull forward. I also understood at that moment that it was good, even though it looked bad… just like my road angels. So I started up my engine with a pang in my heart and slid forward to 6 ft before turning it off again and tentatively stepping out of my car.
I watched as the thing walked over to the animal I had hit with my car, in the darkness I could see it was most likely a fox after all, the worst of the worst besides a deer. The thing lifted a hoof and brought it down with force on the fox’s head (oh god it had been alive, suffering for the past 3 hours, I could never live with myself after this, how could I not have checked and put it out of its misery or taken it to a hospital). It then took the fox in its front teeth like a mother and pulled it to the side of the road. At that moment I knew, a warmth filled my body and I dropped to my knees. This was the being that had been pulling my road angels to the side of the road this whole time. A guardian of their souls! The saint of the highway! My hopes were confirmed when a newly formed fox head sprouted from its torso.
To my horror, it turned to leave and I screamed and hollered for it to wait, yelling how sorry I was and detailing all my good deeds over the years, but it didn’t stop until I let out my final cry. I looked down the road at a pair of headlights approaching from a distance. I had the things attention and I had to make my move. I lowered myself down on the asphalt and stared into it’s empty eye sockets. I watched as it blew a hot breath into the cold night, the mist swirling around its death mask like a veil to another world. I was certain it would take me, my whole life had led to this moment and I could finally be with my road angels and know them.
The car was rapidly approaching and I closed my eyes so as not to chicken out at the last second. I could hear the gravel under the thick rubber tires.
30ft
20ft
10ft
SCREECHHHHHH
Instinctively I curled up into a fetal position to avoid the blow…
but the blow never came. The next thing I heard was yelling and cursing and as I opened my eyes the creature was no longer there, my opportunity had passed and I was doomed to live.
The police station was a horrible, sour coffee-smelling, fluorescent lit, hell-hole. They held me in the interrogation room, seemingly not knowing quite what to do with me. The drivers of the car that missed me eventually dropped the charges because they thought I was insane. I didn’t much mind what they thought of me but I hoped no one talked to my boss at the roadhouse because I didn’t want to lose that job if I had to continue living.
They did talk to my boss about it, it’s a small town after all, but he didn’t much mind cause I was a good cook and I brought fresh produce and what did it matter if I had suicidal tendencies- if and when I decided to make it official he would find another cook, but until then, the job was mine.
“Just don’t let me be the one that finds you, dead bodies give me the jeebies,” he told me with a pat on the back.
Every night since, after work, I would drive down the highway with my brights on looking for a road angel that hadn’t yet been moved to the side. I find so many of them, usually 2 a night. I pull over with my headlights off and wait for the creature to come but it never does, eventually I just have to pull them to the side myself because otherwise, I have to watch them get bulldozed time after time. One night I even saw a deer coming and, god, it’s so hard to even say this, but I didn’t stop. It smashed right into my hood and I put it out of its misery immediately of course, having learned my lesson, before letting it lie in the road for 5 whole hours while directing traffic around its lifeless body. Eventually, I loaded it into the back of my truck and took it home. I felt so disgusted with myself for what I had done I knew I had to do something special with this one, so I carved it up the way my father taught me, made a small stew and packed the rest away in the freezer. With its skin and horns, I made a costume of sorts. The hooves I attached to a stiff sleeve and fitted them around my arms and legs and even attempted to walk around on all fours and get the feel for it, but eventually I just resorted to mostly maintaining a standing position except for an hour or two a day when I would practice jumps.
I keep my costume in the trunk and only put it on after work to make my rounds. I walk along the side of the highway, bringing my road angels to the side, waiting for the creature to come and take it away, but it never comes while I’m there. It knows what I am underneath the costume because it does not see, it only senses, and no matter how much I try, I will always be a human…
a killer.