Passage-5
593 Words
I THROW MORE WOOD ON the fire and run the stick horizontally through the fish. This iridescent blue variety isn’t too bony. I can scrape the scales off easily once I run them over the flame. The dead trees provide plenty of kindling to keep the fire going continuously, which I try to do because hauling wood is easier than sparking a flame from scratch. My little camp is just outside the park, away from the thicket where she left me.
In my mind she’s sped from old woman to crone to witch. And she is irrevocably gone. I feel her absence as surely as I feel the chill breeze off the lake at night, raking over my face before settling into the long rip in the back of my jacket.
The fish dangles off the stick unevenly. I can’t chance it falling into the fire, so I skewer it again, making a mangled mess. I wonder if I can stomach it raw. As I consider this, I hear a low animal rumble and look up to find three lion-creatures meandering back and forth in the distance, their eyes on me. After six days and nights, I’ve begun to tell them apart. Other than them I haven’t seen a soul.
One of them gets brave and takes a few steps toward me. I stand and hiss. It is enough. The creature stops, one bulbous paw stretched out in front, then retreats. I hiss again, and the three of them slouch away, sullen.
I take a second stick and impale the fish near the first one, stabilizing its flesh between the two and holding it over the fire.
I ponder that last night, reading the deception I missed then. I think about why she took me to the dead trees, and about the precise moment she disappeared. I think about it a lot. She’d said I get to live. Or was it I get to leave?
I sense movement to my left. Someone’s watching me twenty yards away. I stand slowly, taking care not to drop the fish. I raise my hand in greeting, and he approaches, a young man with Asian features and haunted eyes. He’s around my age. His gaze wanders over my matted hair, the torn skin of my hands, my jeans clotted with dirt.
Dark spatter gums the nasty gashes on his cheek and forehead.
“I’m Richie,” I say.
He nods slightly and looks around. “Where am I?”
“Did you—” I pause. “What happened to you?”
He blinks a few times. “I slammed the car into a tree. My brother—” A sob chokes him, and he claps a hand over his mouth, then draws back and stares as if he’s just divined something about me. “Who are you?”
I glance down at the sooty fish wilting on the sticks. “I’ve been in your shoes.”
He continues contemplating my face in a way that in any other situation would be rude. “Am I dead?”
I shake my head.
“So, where am I? And where’s my brother?”
I scratch the stubble on my chin, chewing my lower lip until a piece of dry skin pulls off and I taste blood. “I hate to tell you this,” I say, “but your brother. . ..”
He takes a step forward. “What? My brother what? And how the hell would you know?”
I put my hands up in a conciliatory gesture. This guy looks intelligent, resourceful. Not too young, not too old. Adrift enough to land here, but that’s not my concern. I’ve thought about this moment too.
“I can give you passage,” I say quietly, taking the orb from my pocket.
- Writer
