pre-April Flash Challenge #1 – Texaco

I dyed my hair in a bathroom of a texaco. The box said “natural blond” but these things rarely work out the way they are intended, do they? When it said it would bring out my natural glow, I expected a little illumination. What I got was not even a whisper, my shaggy hair hung down my eyes in wet clumps, like it was crying after the hack and color job I had done on it. I had holed myself up in here too long. I slung my bag back over my shoulder, stuffed with mementos of a past I couldn’t go back to, nor could I move forward. It was just one long, dusty road between me and anywhere – anywhere was better than here.

I crept out the bathroom door, carefully noting the location of the truckers idly pumping gas like it was just any other day, and that everything would be fine because the sun was shining on the horizon. The ignorance of the common. It was disgusting. I plopped the bathroom key on the counter of the dingy store along with pocket change, getting a drink for the long dusty business ahead. I must have looked a mess – spiky wet, drippy hair, torn shirt, pants that were 5 sizes too big. And the boots. There was no mistaking the boots. Shit kickers. As in “I dare you to fuck with me, or I will kick the shit out of you – literally”. The man behind the counter glanced at me, then away, trying to play it cool. “where you headed missy” he asked, a failing attempt at polite conversation. I impatiently flicked the hair out of my eyes before answering.

“Away. Gonna head north”

He scratched his stubbly 3 day shadow of a beard, examining me more closely. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, young lady. People who go north don’t often times come back”. I knew the truth of that. To the north was the general direction of where the nuclear reactors had gone defunct after the war. It’s what turned my homeland into a desert. Ironic that as a child, I loved traveling through las Vegas with my father, with a pocket full of quarters for the slots or the stray jukebox when he stopped in the hole in the wall bars for a drink. A girl had to find a way to amuse herself. And now, the whole country (or what was left of it) looked like Nevada. Just as windblown and dirty. Just as dusty. Just as barren. There were rumors that the explosions and the resulting aftershocks of the war, then the earthquakes, then the flooding had created a sort of abomination out there in the wilds. Its a good thing that mostly they were rumors. The people who were left had a tendency to shy away from the truth when it was presented to them – left to their own devices of imagination, they’d really rather not.

The clerk eyed me more closely still, his eyes squinting with the beginnings of suspicion. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. I missed the days when I felt invisible, before the incident. Before any of this had happened – but now I knew I needed to disappear. He started to open his mouth to say something. That was a mistake.

Faster than the flash of understanding in his eyes, the blade of my index finger had made a gash in the soft pallet of his chin, reaching farther than he had given my small hands credit for. Blood gurgled across the counter as the understanding faded to glassy nothingness.

I walked back outside, back into the dirt and the dust. An old pickup truck rambled down the road in front of me a ways – an old, faded bumper sticker glaring at me with it’s irony. “Watch out for the monsters”

I laughed, changing into my less than human form – all fur and spiked steel that came in handy for putting people off their guard and catching them unaware.

I am the monster.

prompts: I was riding the underlying thought, Snap Dragons, Chasing blame like shadows