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Roadtrip

Dear Commander whats-his-face,

It’s me, your sexiest sycophant, reporting from the exotic American Midwest, near the town of Sutton. You know that macguffin that was real enough for you to send me away? I think it’s in New York City, or London, or San Paulo, in a place with real culture, good cell service, and stores that don’t close at 8pm. Attached are the budget and supplies needed for relocation. No need to let my coworkers know, they are total fun killers that will decrease my effectiveness at finding things, because that is what I do now. Actually, you can send Lias to Antarctica, or the Sahara, or

Wait, if he got a juicier position, that meant more scrutiny, more work. Simon sighed as he deleted the email.

“Simon, there’s a lamp right here,” Taya’s voice came over his shoulder.

It was almost 9pm. The sun was leaving the room, unresponsive to Simon’s need for source of light. Taya was on her way to the door, jacket and bag slung over her shoulder. “Maybe this was intentional. Maybe I’m just doing my job…as the night watchman…” he said.

Taya did that head tilt that followed her eye roll, “You have fun with that. Are you staying here for the night?”

“Yeah, after I finish reporting to the mothership,” Simon said. “Loafing in an empty house miles away from town, itself in the middle of nowhere. This is what my nightlife’s reduced to.”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“I used to have fun. The moment sunset hit, I was on the streets, I was partying, watching drunks act like idiots. There was a whole market of street venders that popped up after dark. I ate bilberry jam out of a jar while watching the sunrise.” Simon did all those with his old friends. A shame memories, unlike photos, could not have people edited out of them. “Taya, where do you go for fun here? Don’t say the library. Do you know any place open right now?”

Taya humored his request with a ponder, “everything’s closed here, but there’s a 7/11’s an hour away, it closes at 11. We could bring whoever’s left here and get slushies.”

“All that driving for slushies? Are they spritzed with Lake Superior or something?

“Well,” Taya shrugged, “the 7/11 has green apple. You can’t get that in Sutton.”

Slushies. Simon remembered them as half-syrup and half-ice, never mixing well. “Do you want out of the house or not?” asked Taya.

“Sure,” Simon said, “let’s check the attic for Enola.”

“Slushies?” Enola said from the pile of blankets atop the movies couch, “Sure. I’ve got nothing else to do. Will Cyrene be coming?”

“I doubt it. She’s been banned for the past month.” Taya said, “dear gods, it’s only been a month.”

Enola placed more blankets on her toppling mountain, “wait, isn’t the house van getting fixed?”

“It is!” Simon had low hopes for the repair, but he could dream. “We’re taking mine,” he flashed his keys with a smile, “you’re welcome.”

Simon was forced to exchange his blue convertible for an old blue minivan with a better insurance policy after he crashed his first rental car. Still, he made the best of what he had. A bundle of sea breeze air fresheners hung over the front window. A wad of cash hid beneath a pile of paperwork. His sword case rested like a child across the backseat. There was gum and long-lasting glowsticks in the compartments. A spare gas canister hid in the trunk. “Be careful with that,” he told Enola as she clambered into the care, Taya having already called shotgun.

“Don’t use the map, I’ll direct you, you can’t take the highways,” Taya said, “turn left, and go straight for twenty minutes.”

“Mmm,” Simon flopped his head against his seat, “this better not be a ploy to get me somewhere isolated and try to kill me.”

“It was only once,” Enola protested, lounging across the backseats. “Wake me up when you get there. I don’t mind music.”

Simon tabbed the radio to some music station with the less static. The engine purred on. He pulled out of the driveway and into the empty, paved road, dodging the large pothole at the turn, hitting a smaller one as a calculated tradeoff.

The car fell into its steady sway. Outside, blocks of trees lined the ground, filled with mosquitoes, melonheads, and other nasties separated from them by speed and metal. The sun was down, totally dark, nothing but the white lane markings in front of him.

He never got to feel this in the city. There was the public transit, but that was crowded. Here, he was facing the road, hands on the wheel, no one around except for the Taya, Enola, and whoever’s singing on the radio. He turned on his high beams.

Simon drove far enough for the radio station to turn staticky. He tabbed to another station, which was also static. Another, which was on commercial. Another, which was questionable country music. He wished he could connect his phone to this car, or that his phone could turn into a CD. Or that the only car at the rental place with a touch screen wasn’t a hideous shade of green.

“There are CDs in the van. I could lend you some,” Taya said, relaxed in her seat, “they’re mostly musicals.”

“I love musicals,” Simon smiled, “In another life, I could’ve been a performer. A true Broadway star.” He thought back on that ill-fated The Crow musical he planned back in college. He really did give himself too many solos.

Taya snorted, “that’s not surprising. I was a theatre kid myself. Danced too.” She adjusted the potato box on her lap.

“Enola? Don’t tell us you’re hidden theatre royalty yourself,” Simon said, looking back, for the road was a continuous straight line in front of him. Enola was asleep, conked out across the seats, tucked into her giant hoodie. “Right, she’s asleep, asleep around me.”

“Of course,” Taya tapped his shoulder with a light hand, eyes glued to the window, “you’ve never closed your eyes in a car before?”

“Depends on the people,” Simon would not fall asleep with his parents around. Would Taya slumber next to him? Would others? Did he not have to look behind him as he walked across house halls anymore? He turned away, so Taya couldn’t see his furrowed brow in the darkness. This peace, if not forgiveness, gave a bitter feeling within his chest, like his body was rejecting a perfectly good organ. He almost preferred the uneasy truce, the captivated, if still captured, audience. Simon wished he could flip the radio, and have it play something from a musical.

“You can stop now,” Taya said. Simon halted the car next to an unpaved inroad in some burnt out field, cleared of the thick trees that made up the scenery so far.

“Is this where I get murdered?” Simon stepped out of the car and stretched. Crickets chirped their song, hidden in the tall grass. Wind ran through the trees, whistling. A bright ball of lights floated in the distance, coming closer.

Those lights, were those something he missed while he was driving? The light got bigger, longer, taller. The light grew legs, a face, arms. The light was a ghost in tattered clothes.

The car alarm – he could wake Enola up, scare the ghost if they were a more skittish sort. Simon pressed the button on his keys. The van vibrated from noise. The ghost stopped moving. Enola jumped up with a thud. She opened the car door, “what’s it now, Simon?!”

“Ghost!” Simon grabbed his sword, which Enola had shoved unceremoniously beneath the seats. He had no ghost powder – his past shipment had gotten lost across the Mackinac Bridge two weeks ago – his blade would glide through with nary a scratch. He tossed his keys at them. “Enola, get in the driver’s seat. Prepare to drive.”

Simon thumbed the charms on the sword pommel. He could always summon a lake. Any thinking being would be surprised by that.

Taya was heading toward the ghosts. Simon rushed toward her. If he was fast, he could snatch her and escape without any tricks. She was stopping in front of it. She was talking to it. She was giving it gum.

Simon felt very stupid at his panic. Taya noticed him. The ghost was curious, dressed in bell bottoms, and quite pretty discounting the snapped neck. Simon loosened his shoulders, slung the sword across his back, raised his hands in an unthreatening, my bad, gesture. “Simon! Sorry,” Taya apologized to the ghosts and him, “I should’ve told you. But it’s been so long since I’ve seen you guys, I had to say hi. Maggie, Simon, Simon, Maggie,” she gestured.

Maggie waved at him with her translucent hand, “Maggie here ran a whole ghost hitchhiking thing, until stranger danger made the whole business go bust. She tried to get her gang to possess us and take over our lives a few years back, almost succeeded,”

Taya laughed as if the incident were a wild college accident. Maggie smiled sheepishly, thumbing the gum’s silver foil.

“Cool,” Simon said. Is this where they’ll bury his body? In the road corner of nowhere? Will they go through the trouble of dismembering him first? Loot his body? Taya seems well off, but the house is struggling, so the spare $50 in his wallet may spot a sink repair or something. He hoped his face would be kept intact. Taya could spout a quote from a book as a eulogy. She seemed like a Shirley Jackson person. Simon could picture it, his hair fanning out in waves, ground wet from the lake he summoned, sword falling to the ground…

“Anyway, what is it you wanted to tell me?” Taya said.

Maggie opened her mouth and a rasp came out, “danger ahead, vines, growing on everything, tried to swipe at me. Infecting things. Be careful.”

“Thank you,” Taya brushed her hand against Maggie’s hair, fingers going through, “remember, the house is always open.”

Maggie closed her eyes and recoalesced into a glowing ball, which faded away. Taya went very still. Simon waved goodbye.

FWEEP!

“Are you guys coming or what?” Enola said as she drove Simon’s lovingly chosen rental car up to them, somehow doing half a wheelie on the rough ground, grinding the wheels and jostling the car. “Thanks for lending me this, Simon.”

“Enola, do you have no consideration for context? How I was clearly in duress?” Simon opened the car door for Taya.

“Not my fault you can’t recognize ghosts. Onryo, death curses, those are what to watch out for. Get in the backseat or we’re leaving you.” Simon got into the backseat, Taya on the other side.

Enola drove onto the dirt road, hitting every bump and rock on the way. Simon was not aware fields could have potholes, but under Enola’s driving, there were many. He jammed his seatbelt across his chest and wished for the swerving to stop. It didn’t.

The road got narrower and narrower, the tall grass brushing one side of the car, the branches almost scraping the other side. He couldn’t see the stars nor sky out the window. Simon raised his voice over the radio’s static, “Enola, you better know what you’re doing.”

“I’ve been to this place before, it’s fine.”

Taya hadn’t responded to any of this. Rather, she was deep in thought. “Plants that recognize ghosts, plants able to think…” she muttered.

Simon sighed a long-suffering sigh. He curled up and closed his eyes. He didn’t intend to sleep, just rest. The swerving and jumping, it could be another nap on a helicopter, designed to drop him off into enemy territory, before his life got all complicated – BANG!

Simon would’ve banged his head on the ceiling if not for his seatbelt. And on the front seat thanks to Enola’s disastrous braking. “Enola, the damages are coming out of your paycheck!”

“Fine! Let’s see you drive under these conditions,” Enola slammed the car door open and hopped out.

“About time,” Simon got out of the car and landed on the hard, dirt road. He glanced behind the car, curious about the branch that fell across the road. It wasn’t a wayward branch. It was a squirming mass of something, vines? Twisting, weaving together. Maggie’s warning.

“What the fuck is that?” Enola walked toward the vines, “calm down, I’m not gonna touch it.”

Enola didn’t need to touch the vine. Out of its own volition, the vine wrapped around Enola’s thin ankle and dragged them into the forest, not leaving enough time for a yelp. “Stay in the car!” Simon yelled at Taya.

Simon took out the glowsticks and snapped them altogether. He grabbed his sword and followed the rustling branches, dropping glowsticks along the way. The sticks shone green, blue, and pink among the darkness. The bushes and twigs caught on his pants. Outside of the sounds of movement, the forest was silent. No bugs, birds, or animals. Upon fading noises of struggle in the distance, Simon opened the flashlight mode on his phone and tracked the claw marks Enola made fighting the vines.

Claw marks and toppled branches later – Enola caused much carnage, Simon broke into an opening within the trees and halted from shock.

Back when he was in college chipping away at his degree, Simon took an environmental science class. There was a lesson on invasive species, and how introducing foreign agents to unprepared ecosystems with less or no biological resistance led to disaster. One example was kudzu, the vine that ate the south. Through digital projections in an air-conditioned classroom, Simon half-paid attention to pictures of a thick green carpet atop hills and buildings. Draped across powerlines, exploding from buildings, using trees as framework, nothing could stand against the stranglehold of the plant.

In the humid, mosquito-laden nighttime air, Simon understood the scale of those photos. Thick, thorny dark vines covered a pit in front of him, a near 10-foot fall. Roses, explosions of red petals, budded along those snakelike things. Lumps, some moving, some still, littered the the pit walls. A raccoon’s tail poked out of one of them. Simon stepped back; something crunched under his heel. Bones, animal bones.

A large, struggling lump was dragged to the center of this hollowed opening, covered in digging bugs. Enola! Fighting as always! The vines, squirming and thick, where would he start? Could his sword cut anything? “Simon!” Taya called behind him. She stumbled next to him, carrying the spare gas can. She gasped at the kudzu roses, hunched from the can’s weight.

“We’re not setting them on fire,” Simon said. He couldn’t have the death of another friend on his hands. Taya offered him a bullet from her pocket, going off-balanced with a free hand. “I don’t have a gun, put the bullets away.”

“We can – I don’t know – start a distraction or something!” Taya said, swaying from the leaden can. The spout dipped close to the ground. Drops of gasoline dripped onto the vines’ outer edge.

A vine shot out. It yanked the can out of Taya’s arms; Simon caught her before she fell. The can, rather than flattening the plants with a thud, was caught by a raised mass of vines, with not a drop spilled.

Like an ocean, except solid, controlled, and made of brambles, the vines carried the can across the whole mass. Perfectly upright, like a book on an elegant lady’s head, no splashes or drips whatsoever. Once it reached the end, an arm of vines threw the can in the air, far away from the greater tangle. Simon hoped the can didn’t hit any random deer in the head, that’d be an embarrassing way to die.

Taya tugged Simon away from the vine. “This is bad, they’re smart,” she whispered.

“Hold on,” Simon kept his voice low. Those vines were smart enough to fear fire and knew he doesn’t have a gun. Good choice, logical, they’ve made clear they’re thinking beings. Thinking beings, environmentally conscious, used to the forest… “Taya, I’ve got a plan. I need you to prepare the car.”

“A plan?” Taya gestured to the growth behind them, “for this?”

“Trust me,” Simon tapped his sword, his waterproof phone case, and kicked off his shoes, “I’d show you but I can’t let the competition know.”

Taya nodded, still worried. “Okay,” she said, “I’ll go to the car. If you’re not here after 5 minutes, I’m getting help.”

“Perfect.” Simon ran back to the pit. The Enola lump was still moving. Good. “Enola, deep breath!”

Gathering a running start, Simon launched into the pit. All the vines went wild, thrashing, reaching at him. Closer, closer. Simon tapped his sword hilt and unsheathed it. The metal gleamed even in the nighttime. He packed his lungs with air.

A 5m x 5m cube of cold lake water materialized around Simon, halting his fall. The cube, with its clean edges, as if suspended in a glass container, swallowed the pit.

The lake should stay in shape unless Simon got distracted or lost his sword. The vines, once violent, now stunned, confused, limp in the water. If the plants were smart enough shimmy a gas can to safety, they were smart enough to be confused about spontaneous lake formation.

Simon swam toward Enola, batting at the vines that got in his way. A few, slow from the cold and water, meandered at the tiny fish that came with the lake. The oblivious fish swam out of the way. A stray bit of leaf floated in his face.

Simon swam over the Enola lump, vines tight from the temperature. He wedged his sword at the base of the lump and cut. Dark blood bloomed in the water. A lot of blood. An important artery’s worth of blood. Simon swam back and waved away the murk. The redness had an odd flow to it, like from a bunch of tiny water hoses. The vines were the ones bleeding. Simon returned to his slicing.

Shell broken, a dazed Enola emerged from the vines. She bled, but how badly, Simon couldn’t tell. Careful not to land in a vine pile, Simon gathered Enola’s small frame into his arms. He kicked away, sword sheath in one hand, sword in the other, blade turned away from Enola. Simon swam upwards, out of the pit, to safe land.

Something yanked him back. Simon let go of Enola, who was conscious enough to wade upward. A vine had wrapped around his ankle - several actually - in a thick braid. By instinct, Simon swore. Bubbles burst out of his mouth. His sword spun away from his fingers.

He was getting sloppy. A few years ago, he could hold his breath for a little over minutes while getting shot at underwater, not letting a single ounce of air out. Now? With glorified shrubbery?

More vines joined that stupid braid, dragging him down. More air flew out of Simon’s chest. His lungs hurt. He tried to swim upward with his free limbs. No go. The cube wavered in its shape.

He had no sword. It was falling away from him, about to be eaten by the vines. The lake wasn’t going to last. Vines swiped at his remaining leg. Simon had blades in his earrings, but they were too small to do anything fast to the cables corded around him.

A familiar hilt brushed his hand. Simon looked up – Enola! Wonderful Enola, holding the weapon in an unsafe way – palm against the bladed side. Simon grabbed the hilt, waited for Enola to swim away, and sawed off that braid in a cloud of blood and plant parts. Freed, he swam with Enola to higher ground.

Simon and Enola collapsed out the lake cube gasping for breath, even Simon who had a substantial amount of air stored in his lungs. He coughed badly; his hands shook. The cube collapsed in a spectacular fashion, gallons of water spilling onto the pit and forest. Simon felt bad for the fish, about to suffocate or be eaten by the vines, whichever came first.

“I can walk,” Enola panted. Simon shoved on his shoes and turned flashlight mode on. Enola was cut, bleeding, but nothing too egregious. Behind them, the vines laid limp and wet, unused to spontaneous lake dissolution.

Simon and Enola stumbled back to the road, following the dropped glowsticks. Hop over that log, dodge those rocks, worry about getting lost, hear staticky music in the air, realize Taya turned the high beams on, run to the road just as she was about to call for help.

Simon collapsed into the backseat, Enola in shotgun. He fell asleep before anyone could ask him anything.

The car reached the 7/11 that closed late, attached to a gas station. The dingy white lights and close rows of jerky, chips, gummies, and gold-foil chocolate greeted them. Lines of colorful energy drinks and coffees said hello from the back. A sleepy employee gazed up from his phone at the counter, shriveled hot dogs getting grilled next to him.

Simon was glad he had spare sets of clothes in his trench. One was for regular changes, the other for emergency parties. That meant Enola got to enter the door with black bootcuts and a novelty vintage shirt a few sizes too big, and Simon got to wear the tight mesh shirt, vinyl skirt, and blue leather chest harness (for warmth).

He winked at the staring employee, who suddenly found the floor very interesting.

Simon marched to the slushie machines. Blue raspberry, raspberry, grape, cola, and green apple, chugging away. Stacked slushie cups with ‘slushie’ printed all over the paper were right next to the machines. Simon chose the largest size, because he deserved it.

He filled his cup with electric blue raspberry. Taya got a medium regular raspberry. Enola got a blend of all flavors, including green apple. They headed to the cashier.

“Wait. My money’s soaked,” Enola said. She pulled out a wallet full of soaked bills as the cashier rang up Simon’s slushie.

Simon got out his credit card. “I can pay, don’t worry.” He took Taya and Enola’s cups and set them next to his.

“If that’s the case.” Enola took a packet of gum and handed it to the cashier. “Thanks.”

Simon rolled his eyes and slid his card against the card scanner. He was glad things were cheaper here.

The group got out of the building. As Taya drove back on the highway, Simon tossed away his straw and drank his blue raspberry straight from the cup. The stars stretched from the 7/11 to forever. Survival had never tasted so great.