Concerning the Rest Stop, pt2

   Taylor looked at him a moment, then rubbed his nose. “Ride the dead horse,” he said.
  The haircut sighed. “What I was afraid of. Reeve?”
  Reeve went to grab him. Taylor jerked the knife from him pocket, slinging it open by the blade, twirling it through his fingers and slashing backwards. He caught Reeve cross the chest, just a shallow laceration, before someone else grabbed his arm. He kicked out wildly, hitting something that grunted in pain, then twisted his wrist back, gouging the knife into the hand that held him. The haircut drove a fist into his solar plexus. Gasping, the knife pulled from his hand, kicking forward again, shoving himself and Reeve backwards off the haircut’s chest, trying to pull away, and then another gut punch, and hot white lightning scorched through the bottom of his mouth like he’d just bitten a high voltage wire. The knife had gone through his bottom palate, the base of his throat.
  Reeve let him go. Taylor opened and closed his mouth, choking on the blood flowing down his throat. His glasses -- it seemed such a startlingly mundane thing to notice -- hand come loose in the scuffle, and dangled over one ear. He took a step back, tried to fix his eyewear.
  Sky. Focus. Trees, green. Reeve, now in vision. Focus. Reeve pulling a gun from his jacket, now cut open and red staining his shirt. Focus. Muzzle flash, a roar. Pain. Focus. Gunshot. Pieces of his own chest flying into his vision, splatter on his lenses. Focus. He dropped to his knees in the grass.
  Aware, still aware, of Reeve putting away the gun, the haircut considering him dispassionately, and the trio left, left him there, vanishing from sight.

Concerning The Rest Stop

   Shadows falling, rising, bobbing to footfalls. Three men overtook him. “Hey man, long time no see!”
  Taylor stopped, looked at them blankly.
  The cheerful one had ratty brown hair, that I-don’t-care-about-much-never-mind-my-hundred-dollar-haircut look. “Where you going, man?”
  “Salvation,” Taylor said.
  “Listen, Eric, we need to talk, man.”
  “Fuck Eric.”
  The orthadontal smile fell. “What?”
  “I’m not Eric. We just look alike, and Eric can fucking take care of his own shit now.”
  “Excuse me?”
  “No Eric. Just me.”
  The haircut turned to one of the others. “Reeve. Is this who you dealt with or not?”
  “Yeah. Little scruffier now, maybe.”
  “So what’s your game, mister?”
  Taylor sighed. “Look, I don’t care if Brutus here believes I’m Santa Claus, alright? We just look alike, and I’m not here to clean up after him.”
  “Heart-rending. We, however, are, so if you’d be kind enough to either produce my money or my merchandise, I’ve other things to do today, right?”
  “Told you. Not Eric. Don’t have your junk, man.”
  The hair swished as the head bent toward the ground. “Look, this is a serious career, okay? I can’t let any exceptions, else the whole thing crumbles, you understand? So what’s it gonna be?”

Concerning the Exit

  He stopped his telic hike only for a diner somewhere off of Highway 7, where three-fifty was too much for a dismal hero. It was the first food he’d eaten in an indeterminable while, and he promptly threw it up. He guessed that’s what happened to people with Problems. Either way, it seemed the only exit the sandwich deserved.




  Trudging on. Gravel beneath his boots, asphalt crumbles, valiant grass stalks, glass and garbage. Vehicles whizzing past with the sound of a cough. The shoulder widened out to a grassy roadside rest, small pavilion with a picnic table and cairn with a plaque honoring someone obscure. Taylor unconsciously moved from the ditch and into the grass, staring at his feet, staring at nothing. Trudging on. Leaving. Escape. Salvation. Redemption. The gravel-meets-rubber sound of a car pulling to a stop. Oblivious. Kept walking.
  “Eric!”
  To hell with Eric.
  “Eric!!”
  Eric lied, severed the bond, the sacred seal that bound, tied beyond temporal understanding for something as ephemeral as money.
  “Hey! Eric!”
  Eric was on his own now.