The road was dark. Shreds of light fell from the trucks headlights. The driver hurls out the butt of a cigarette. A leaking echo of reddened ash tumbling on the tarmac. Some people would describe the night as lonely, maybe a frail kind of solitude. But the driver considered it a good night.
Nothing but heavy hands on a heavy vehicle. His arms are the shape of tree trunks then relaxed on the steering wheel. An unknown song filtered out of the radio, it creased itself into the calm air. A tarnished smile is scraped on to his face. A shy, secluded smile that can fade into his beard.
As mentioned before he has tree trunk arms, but he also has a thick set head filled with watery blue eyes. Blackened strands of brown occupy his head, a riot of it trails down either side of his face, tapers into a beard on his jaw. The smell of cut out ash with withered air freshener forms dense edges on him.
You may have seen him in the pokey diner among the highway. You may have caught him in those monstrously large truck stops among the interstate. Might have seen him in the trucks that ride the tarmac from state to state. He travels through this land in puffed out jackets, worn down boots and scrunched up apathy. Like him all his possessions have been exposed to the long night rides or lands of premature morning light.
Right now the only light comes from the truck’s high beam. The light curls itself around the thickly cut darkness. He drives through a forest of night, rain and trees. A sliver of road on the left of him, then the fence, then the forest. A mist of water and leaves falling from the tree’s hands.
He would chew another handful of jerky. Smokey meaty things taken from the glove box. A logo is cut out of purple and burnt blue on the side of his truck. The same logo is seen in a multitude of ball point pens he keeps in the cabin.
He works for a well-paying shipping company that handles domestic trading between the many northern states in America. His measured stare and calm commitment also won him a few contracts with a commonwealth company that shipped in Australia, Canada and England. But the roads there were alien tracts of narrow stone compared to the open empty highways of home.
So he stays mostly in America. Mostly alone. Everything seems different on these unrevealed worlds. Dusty clinical truck stops with their strange pay showers and clumped food. The most he ever gave fellow truckers he recognised was a stale nod or a colourless hello. Most would’ve of called him boring if it wasn’t for something in his watery eyes. A deep undercurrent of intensity and patience. Maybe kindness.
The dreary dreamy creation dressed in tired clothes and enigma.
He walked in front facing confident lopes and his shoulders swinging. He watched queues and other unavoidable human obstacles with disdain. He talks little. To the few people he meets regularly he seemed to be a speculation, a kind of wispy stolidly formed man. A seldom seen figure stalking along the all night diners.
Why was he thought of? Well for starters there was the open mystery of his age. The way he stood erect and straightened out in his corroded clothes two decades too old. His solid figure and filled muscles make some think of a young man, but his tethered beard and his dragging silence tell of a much older creature, maybe something in its early thirties.
Another reason he’s thought of is, well, in a severe and silent kind of way he can appear handsome. Sometimes the light can catch his eyes differently and instead of a watered down blue it can appear the pure kind. Sometimes he would smile and sometimes he would shave and he could seem to be a tall stranger with pink shaved flesh and eager eyes. All his worry lines could be laugh lines in these strange short moments. Sometimes his rarely seen grin would be pasted to his mouth as more of a question then anything else.
Then there is the intrigue of his origins. Where did he come from? Some windy abandoned trailer in the north? A squealing child from the fields of the south? A child raised on sharp sunlight and full American food? More likely he just appeared on the road a full man.
Maybe people like him simply come into being on the blurry roads.
Well it’s a lot easier for him to believe this now because out of that choking night a girl stepped on to the road.
She walks as if conjured from that darkness we all know. Pink haired and tented in a yellow dress her legs would leak into frail steps. Her paper limbs fold flimsily into the torrent of night and fallen leaves. Her legs collapsed into weakness as if she’s never used legs.
Well she’s never used human legs.
He body is a cough of flesh and bone, more slender then full. If you could see her you’d know you could run hands down her featureless flesh and feel pokey bones through them. Her hair billows around her like a weightless idea. Her muscles sleep on her bones. She’s so skinny you could weep.
Her hopelessly wiry arms are clenched tightly into her body. A tightly held stick body releasing a pinched lungful of hot air. The whole of her is shuddering and shaking. In the truck’s headlight she’s too delicate, too innocent and too confusing.
He pulls up beside her, the massive engine hewing out blocks of smoke and noise. He has to turn left a little because she’s paralysed in the spilling light. She still doesn’t move when he opens the cab door and his feet hit the ground. The angry crunch of boots striking tarmac. Then the dripping silence.
They both share in the stillness. Occasionally, all of it would be perforated by the wind and the smell of burning gasoline. Her pink hair drifting.
He coughs several times expecting something. What was he expecting? He expected an attenuated hello or a squirming plea for help. He only received the weight of both her eyes on him. Her stare is crushing, a hastily made mess of surprise, fear and curiosity. Somewhere far away the soggy hands of rain stamp out dryness.
It took an absurd handful of seconds before either one spoke.
“It’s cold. It’s raining”
He hands her these words and yet she still stares. But soon she relents as well.
“Hi”
Her voice scraped into drifted shavings of sound. Hoarse. So Faded.
“Hello”
His hello dumped in a haggard stack. Deep. A little harsh.
The strange silent girl pieces together a scattered grimace, hidden behind falls of her pink hair. An intricate and nervous creature. A ridiculous and ethereal girl. Standing there with the cold, the light and fascination pasted to her alabaster skin. Pale and shuddering. Her two breasts hardened into blooms of dense red flesh. The cold obviously.
The wet reveals parts of her under the slightly transparent dress. He’s too embarrassed to feel lust.
“Wait a second. I’ll get you a coat”
In the end he quickly took a couple of brittle steps to his truck. He takes a spare coat from the cabin. Rusty coloured, with a forgotten logo stencilled on it. Warily he slowly gives her the coat. Shyly she takes it.
They back off from one another quickly and in the nature of all recluses they avoid looking at the other’s eyes.
The coat is held in her hands for a moment. Then clumsily she manages to mangle her arms into the coat. The coat is so large she’s drowning in it. She’s held the overflowing sleeves to her face and her eyes peep over them.
He looks at his feet. Fiddles with the corners in his pocket. After an effort he looks her in the eyes. Soon reticent words follow.
“I wonder what you’re doing here in the night. In the rain and the wind.”
“I think I’m lost”
The wind is rising now, in a drunken fist fight it lifts leaves and dust, heaves at the sleepy drops of rain. Her voice is lost in the midst of it. A lot like her.
“It’s too cold to be lost this time of year. You could get in trouble”
“Yes”
“Being lost is bad I guess”
“Yeah”
“I think you’re a little shocked”
“Yes”
Unknowingly, they have both taken concealed steps away from the other. If one or the other would move too quickly they would both recoil. Both started mumbling into their lips. He wouldn’t admit it, but an unknown fear of this girl overcame him. A thudding humming fear of the beautiful girl dressed in light. He can’t explain it but he’s a little scared of her. A little intimidated.
He would’ve run away too if she didn’t walk to the fence separating the road and the forest. Lift her scraggily body and sit on the fence. Her miniature arms to the side of her and her coat hanger legs below her. She might not be pleading but her body is, pleading for food. For warmth. For the kindness of strangers. Her face so fierce in its shyness. The deep humming green behind the piercing blue of her eyes. The diminished whisper of a person wrapped in his coat.
He also remembered his own desperate days moving with a starving grimace of a body, always cold and always hungry. She looked like a throwaway to those wasted days and violent nights.
Predictably, His heart softened a little for her.
“I remember running away from home. I remember just being in a daze for a while.”
“I’m really far from home”
“I’ve been there before”
“Have you?”
“Yeah I’m in the same situation”
“Oh”
“I’m really far from home”
“Like me then”
“Yeah”
But she didn’t run from home. Rather, she has been clothed in the bones and skin of a human female, and then lost for half a week in this anonymous forest. Starvation has taken gleeful bites out of her figure. She lacks both the conviction and the bravery to tell the alien this.
Yet despite his false assumption of her, when he sits next to her on the fence a timid understanding is formed between the two. In a roundabout way he understands those few days where she had to sleep where she could. Sleep in ditches in ashy dirt. Stare at her alien body in pools of water. Juggle with courage and despair. The homesickness.
They say nothing for the next three minutes. They don’t look at each other for all of it. Mostly they breathe in the view of the long road and the forest. Slowly the night pales into a colder dark. He shifts off the fence and lands on his boots.
“I’ll drop us off by a diner. Get something to eat. Then we’ll part ways”
What he said was a statement but there was a question wrapped inside of it. A tentative proposal. The offer for a little food and quiet company. It looks like she needs it.
“Come on”
She lands unsteadily. Weightlessly. She could pale into the night, she could be swallowed quickly and quietly and he wouldn’t even notice. She could be a late night hallucination. She looked like one.
She struggles with each step to the truck. The girl’s hunger is so massive she has a hard time hauling it with her. The unfairness of it stirs anger in him.
“My names Henry”
“Fluttershy”
“Strange name”
She smelt of strange flowers and wet fur. He had to help her into the cab. Their touch was as non-committal and brief as their conversation.
“Thanks for the food Henry”
“No problem”
Comfortably they had made their way through a shared plate of Buffalo wings. He dived in first and she followed after him. She watched him lick the smears of chicken on his fingers. It was slow going but she managed it. A Grin turned itself on his face. He leaked a kind laugh for the girl licking her fingers with such a serious face. A pink drip of hair coiled across the forehead.
“What are these parts? They’re really tough for a vegetable”
“Really? Oh”
Another wing taken. The truck stop was occupied by a skeleton crew of truckers and travellers toughing it out from the Canadian border. The truck stop was waited by Lucy with the harsh Tabaco voice. Together, Fluttershy and Henry watch the stream of midnight people chip away at reheated frozen entrees.
The kitchen remains the crumbling kind of room behind a counter. A heavy man pokes out behind a grill. A radiator is a deflated hissing strapped to the wall. Outside and above them an American flag flies above the station in a howl of wind. To the left of it the glowing letters “Centos”.
“What?”
“Wait”
The crunch of bone. A greasy hand sweep from his beard, to his mouth, then the beard again.
“They’re not vegetables”
“Huh. Like a dense kind of fruit then”
“No. Not really”
She was still eating. The mind hadn’t caught up to the achingly empty stomach. She slows herself down in a collision of greasy fingers and cheap napkins. With less conviction the rain fell slower and slower. The lack of rain is followed by an anonymous boom of sound far away.
“What are they?”
“Well those parts are bones. So yeah”
“Bones”
“Yup. You vegan or something? Allergic? Christ I’m really sorry.”
The realisation slowly stained her face like the greasy stretch of the diner. She stood from their booth, an unknown horror caked on to her. Her eyes widened and her mouth gasping as if she’s drowning in it. The words she gives the human are young and frightened.
“I need to go to the filly’s room”
“You okay?”
“I need to go to the filly’s room”
“What?”
She rushes to the back of the dinner into a door with a white and blue picture of a man pissing into a pot. A startled man leaves the men’s restroom wondering why a pink haired girl rushed in.
“…What?”
He says it to himself, and it’s strange how you could carve so much hopelessness, amusement and confusion into a single syllable. He frowns and smiles at the same time listening to listless tunes from the diner’s single radio, the thought of her in his head.
The time shaves off in curls of late night pointlessness. It was ten minutes and he was thinking of a move to make. The rain was gone. The sky is dark and getting sticky. A distant boom from the outside, eased its way into his ears. Must have been thunder.
After a while Lucy reaches across with a coffee pot and a curious smile. She has tired eyes and wrinkles made from dead night labour.
“Trouble with your girl?”
He took a time to put his mind back on. The girl with pink hair. The truck stop. The coffee.
“I think she’s special.”
“That’s really sweet. It’s rare to see girls look so nice with pink hair”
The door to the men’s restroom hadn’t moved an inch. He still worried about her.
“No. I mean she’s special. As in special.”
“Like a little different in the head?”
“Yup”
“Well she’s sweet either way”
She reached across and dropped a slab of coffee in his cup. He waited for the coffees end at the bottom of the cup. The bitterly held blackness of it.
“Yeah she’s sweet”
As much as an emancipated, frightened, socially arrested girl could pull off. Even then it couldn’t be that sweet.
“Thanks for the refill”
“No problem, yell if you need anything”
He set aside a cup of coffee then drank his own. He stood up. Took a can out the corroded vendor in the corner. The can loudly screamed “Mountain Dew” in green and yellow. He laid out the can, the coffee and his patience on the table. In the light they were all diminished.
It took another moment. He took to his feet and pushed his way into the restroom. Soon everything would be sticky with smell of urine and dirty water. The used condom in the corner told of the presence of once upon a time lovers. The weeping pipes told of the lack of plumbers. The stench of bile told of a struggle with buffalo wings.
Next to the basin was a mystery in the shape of a girl. Although confused he always thought that strange occurrences would follow the girl.
The fluorescent bulb smudged a light on a perplexing situation. Somewhere, a distance from the restroom a thud falls out and shakes the bulb slightly. It must be thunder.
She was staring at the mirror. But soon the girl called Fluttershy had fallen into another bout of retching. Her body is a determined tight-lipped clench. It took her another minute to finish vomiting. When it was over he gently coughed into his hands. She turned to give him a wry, depleted smile. Surprising, considering how delicate she seemed.
“Girl don’t get any of that on the coat”
“I haven’t”
In a brisk movement he took a handful of paper towels. He shovelled it towards her in a gesture approaching kindness. She squeaked then jumped, but still took the towels. She spat out something yellow. The towels came up. She wiped her mouth.
“When was the last time you’ve eaten?”
He was answered with the loud stare of her eyes. The words had crawled back into her mouth and into her throat. So she was hunched there in his jacket with the edges of the basin perforated by her spit and bile. The mangled flood of a buffalo wing could be seen on the sinkhole. It all told him, yes. She hadn’t eaten in a good while.
“Come on then. You can’t go in the men’s room. And I’m not giving you anything with meat.”
He didn’t want to hold her hand so he took the miserable girl by the sleeve. Again a squeak flew out her mouth and was the last thing she left behind in the men’s room. Finally they were both dragged by him to the table.
He ordered baked beans, toast, fries. It took another look hurled by the pitiful girl before he ordered pancakes as well. Tired of trying to appear friendly to himself he ordered a plate of biscuits and gravy. He huddled into an embarrassed slew on his seat.
“You okay?”
It was a stupid thing to say because he wasn’t and she wasn’t. He was slumped and she was sitting straight. Despite it he still held her sleeve in his hands. Awkwardly and unknowingly they sat that way until the food came. Lucy bought it over in two trays, she was startled slightly by a low booming somewhere closer. Probably thunder.
The microwaved stack of it on the table. The hydrogenated fat and the gloriously excessive syrup. He gives her a weary smile as if to say there was no meat there. She reaches for the beans in barbecue sauce and he spoons himself the biscuits and gravy.
“Where are you from Fluttershy?”
“Equestria”
“Huh. Is that like a town near the south of here? Maybe next to the old estates.”
“I don’t really know”
“Yeah. Who knows”
The loud crack was heard again. It was closer this time, followed by the sound of a falling tree. Although dark, afterwards you could see a restlessness settling on the night.
Meanwhile she approved of the beans. Henry thinks she ruined it by grabbing a stack of pancakes to go with it. She was enjoying it though. Just like with the wings, it did him good to see her eat again.
“It was a good place Henry.”
“It was?”
“Best friends and animals. I’m a carer for animals. Been doing it since I was a little filly, caring for animals from bears to bunnies. I have a talent with animals. I think it’s why I’m good at talking to you.”
The meal was continued after her words. Another helping of French fries and he knew she was thirsty. He undid the can of mountain dew and slid it over to her. He folded himself back into his chair with a cup of coffee. Fluttershy sniffed then drank the can. She kept her eyes on the crumple of human opposite her. He lifted an eyebrow.
“I’m an animal?”
“Yes. A very nice one. Although I don’t know if you are all like this”
“Well you’re an animal as well”
“Yeah. I guess so. Also-”
She pointed to the pancakes with a fork.
“We had pancakes where I come from as well”
He would chew a mouthful and enjoy her company.
“It sounds nice”
“What sounds nice? The pancakes?”
“Equestria. The place you said you came from”
“Yeah it is”
“You shouldn’t have left”
“I didn’t have a choice Henry. It was more of an accident then anything. Pass the syrup please.”
He passes it over while she seems to fiddle with her fingers and the bottle. He dragged a hand over his stubble. Soon both his hands landed on his lap and a decision was made. He decided that he was fond of this strange girl and that she had probably ran away from something. Decided that she would have to run about this path and find her own way either to the wilder world or back to her home equestria.
He wished she could follow him, but he knows how that will look.
“Well there’s a plug under the table if you have a charger for a mobile phone. Ask Lucy for the phone if you don’t have a mobile. This is enough for the motel across the road.”
A small scattering of a conversation was heard. Fluttershy watched Lucy’s drawl flung across the room and was reminded of Applejack. Lucy was talking and gesturing to a group of humans. The group seemed worried about booming sounds from down the road. One of them was pointing at an image on a mobile phone and muttering in a low conspiracy. Another one was close to the window and starring down the road.
“You should wait till morning to hitch a ride back to your place. It sounds nice even if your running away from something”
“I think Equestria is very far away.”
A massive thud peeled into the diner and snapped into a crack. The group talking to Lucy walked out the door and tumbled into the rusted car outside. For a while the crack rolled and spilled around the dinner. Some more left the diner and no more came in.
“Christ it’s loud. Don’t worry it’s just thunder. Okay, in the morning hitch a ride to one of the big truck stops on the interstates. Hitch during the day and don’t take rides with creeps.”
“Creeps?”
“Yeah creeps.”
“Bye fluttershy”
“Bye”
While they said their goodbyes a bearded man in a truck could be seen with shaking hands.
He was obviously a Canadian. His lopsided accent was panicked and poking into his words. Terrified he told everyone to leave. He said that the thumping wasn’t thunder. That there was something down the road. His truck skidded away in fear.
The ones that were left are Lucy, a handful of truckers and the pair saying goodbye to the other.
Then the long wail of something massive. Alive. They all stare at the road for as far into the darkness they can see. Suddenly and without warning the dark patch beyond the road became dangerous and unknown.
Lucy is on the phone calling the police and the truckers were hurriedly cutting off flakes of notes, dimes and cents. While Lucy was on the phone they lay it out next to the cash register. Henry did the same but lay it next to the unfinished mess of food. Those that hadn’t left for the trucks stood together silently by the window.
A patch of silence and waiting. The quality of it almost the same as a shadow.
Henry deliberately bundles the girl into his arms. There is too much fear to be embarrassed. They hold each other and stare through the window.
“Henry, is this normal?”
“No. I think we need to go”
Above them a pillar the width of a house kissed the ground.
In a screaming outburst the air around them all broke into a single reckless note of sound. The crash so overwhelming it approached a silence of its own. The humming in the ears. The glass on the ground. Deafness.
The silence bloomed into the wail of car alarms. On top of it the Canadian man from the truck was shouting at them. He had come back with the truck and was yelling till his face turned red. A women in the passenger seat was pointing a camera to the pillar in the middle of the road. Finally the Canadians words sieved through into their heads.
“It’s a leg. It’s a goddamn leg. Christ”
The unexplainable fear had finally reached his chest. All around the crowd, the dread slotted into the right places. Six of them including the pair all had plans to move. They tripped across the glass and jumped through the broken window.
A shuddering shattering wail was held high above them. They ran to the Canadian’s truck. All of them piled into a tight spate of legs and arms. Henry lifted her above him. He dropped her into the truck, and then hurled himself after her. The truck sped off. Sloppy rubber on the road. Smoke.
Behind them a head, all consuming in its magnitude. Then two more. The climax had come.
The flickering neon words of centos were inspected by endlessly massive and endlessly unknown eyes. The glint of a thousand teeth is felt. Even with the distance they put behind them, they could feel it.
The air struggled to hold another uncontained wail. A leviathan’s wail. The tuck stop drowned entirely in teeth and open mouths. In a few seconds all of it was snuffed out in a collision. The finality of a landscape swallowed.
All they could do was ride. Speechlessly wonder at the forever unknown horror. In its size. In its origins. In its motives. The Canadian man swears. He says fuck quicker and quicker and quicker until he stops altogether and pants through his beard. Lucy has shaking hands and has put a wet cigarette to her lips and makes no move to light it. One of them is laughing in deep poisonous breaths.
Another collision and this time it was close to the horizon and not themselves. Again, another bottomless howling. They all huddle together and hope the truck takes them further away.
“What?”
“Hydra”
“What?”
“It was a hydra Henry”
“A hydra”
“Yeah”
“Okay Fluttershy. Okay. A hydra”
“They used to live in the everfree forest”
“Used to?”
Author's Note
long time no update. But I've often imagined how awful it would be if our two worlds collided.
