The Station

I am driving. I’ve been driving. I hate driving. My eyes ache from staring straight ahead at the road, and my hands hurt from gripping the steering wheel too tightly. The sun is getting lower in the steely sky, and still all I can see up ahead are fields of grass and snow. I am surrounded by a landscape of empty pastures and fences fading into a tall, dark tree-line on either side of the road. There is not a house, a barn, or a human establishment of any kind in sight. In fact, I can’t remember having seen any for hours now…
Wait, I think to myself, something isn’t right here. I want to turn around and go back. I probably still have enough gas to make it back to the freeway…but then, what if I don’t? If I don’t find a gas station or a road sign or something soon, I’m going to be in trouble. I shift uncomfortably in my seat as I gaze out the windshield at impassive frozen fields; soft expanses of purest white, broken here and there by patches of pale brown and green grass poking through the thin snow.
A slight current of panic ripples up my spine, and I realize I have to empty my bladder. Bad. I know I’m not likely to come across a public restroom any time in the next ten minutes, so I pull my faded black Pontiac to a cautious stop on a widened area beside the road. I hear the crunch of snow and gravel under the tires as I leave the pavement slightly. Not too much. I don’t want to get stuck out here, and it’s not likely another car is going to come and plow me off the road anyway.
I turn the car off, grab my long gray coat from the back of the passenger seat, and step out into the cold, silently thanking my mother for teaching me to pee outside as a girl. I can see my breath turn to steam as I open the door, and the air is biting. I pull my coat on quickly, and moving to the rear of the car, I pull down my jeans and squat to relieve myself. There’s no one to see, but I keep my bare white ass to the back of the vehicle just in case, using the back bumper for support, and trying not to expose my warm derriere to the chill. The sound of my piss hissing into the snow echoes in the silence.
There is something uneasy in the air; a stillness that seems unreal. There is no wind, only the motionless air hanging beneath a heavy sky. Everything around me is so wide open and yet I feel trapped somehow. Claustrophobic, as if the sky is a heavy blanket slowly smothering the world.

We’re suffocating and we don’t even know it.

I shake my head to clear these strange thoughts and lean against the side of my car. I wish I was home, warm and safe in my bed. It is getting really dark now, and soft flakes are starting to fall from the depthless dome overhead. I open my mouth to the sky and a tiny frozen flake melts on the tip of my tongue. This is a ritual with me; something I always do. It rarely snowed where I grew up, so I learned to treasure snowfall like a rare and precious thing. I think of snow as a treat, a gift from God sort of like rainbows, or pearls. To have one of those tiny flakes drift down from the heavens and light on my tongue, it’s like communion.

Back inside, the car has grown cold; it loses heat so quickly when the engine is off. I think, If I have to spend the night in here I’ll freeze to death. But that’s not going to happen. I am going to find a house or a store, or something. I know this area, the population is small but there are farms all over. It’s absurd that I’ve already driven this far without seeing anything. Again, in the back of my mind, I hear a nagging voice, something isn’t right. But again, I squash it.
I start the car and wait a moment for the heater to warm up. Driving once more, I feel a renewed sense of urgency and purpose. The sky is getting dark; it’s snowing harder and harder, and the road is disappearing. Soon my tires will lose traction, and I don’t have chains. I need to find a sign or something so I can judge how badly I’m lost. By my calculations, I should be within an hour of my uncle’s ranch. I was certain I had taken the right exit off the freeway, or almost certain. Somewhere after that, the roads got narrower and the signs grew less specific. Most people who traveled through here were locals, or at least familiar with the area. I thought I was too, having visited my Aunt and Uncle several times before. However, in times previous I had not been driving, I had not been alone, and it had not been snowing.
I keep driving this way in silence, locked in an internal conversation, for about another half an hour. Then I decide it might be nice to listen to some music, to break the monotony of the unchanging scenery. I pull my eyes away from the road momentarily to reach for my CD case, which has slid onto the passenger side floorboard. In this moment, which can’t be more than five or six seconds at most, the world turns itself completely upside down and sideways.
I pull the wheel slightly as I lean, and I feel the car veer to the right just a little. I automatically hit the brakes and try to straighten the car to correct, but on the now snow-covered road, it’s the wrong thing to do. The brakes lock and I feel my stomach lurch as I realize the car is sliding into a spin. All I can think is please don’t go off the road!
Then there is a sound like a soda-can being crushed, except that it’s a Pontiac-sized soda-can, and the sound is amplified times a thousand right into my ears. The steering wheel twists from my grasp like a living creature. I feel a jolt forceful enough to loosen my back teeth, and gravity seems to suddenly disappear. My head, which had been bent down and toward the passenger seat, smacks against the CD player. I feel buttons and knobs gouge into the side of my skull, and as I slip into unconsciousness, an image of a crushed jack ‘o lantern flashes before my eyes. Strange, I think, since Halloween was months ago.

Sometime later, I open my eyes. Not a slow, elegant, fluttering-open, like they show in movies, where the vision starts fuzzy, then slowly wavers into focus; No, this is a brutal and sudden awakening, as if from a nightmare. My eyelids do flutter a little, however, as I blink them to clear ice from my crusty lashes. I know immediately that I am alone and that I am trapped in semi-darkness. My mouth is dry. My body throbs and I hear guttural, frenzied breathing. After several seconds I connect these noises to my own parched throat, and realize that I am the one making them.
After the initial shock wears off, I examine the situation, forcing myself to breathe calmly. I don’t want to be that annoying hysterical girl who can’t take care of herself. I’m not even seriously hurt. First things first; I’m still in the car, wearing my seatbelt but slumped painfully over the center console. Most of my pain seems to be caused from lying at this odd angle, rather than from actual injuries. There are some cuts on the upper left side of my forehead where I head-banged the dash board; it’s very tender and bruised. I don’t know how to tell if I have a concussion, but I hope that I don’t. The car is off, but the battery is not dead. I haven’t been sitting here long. The windshield is shattered and pieces of it are everywhere. The whole vehicle is leaning forward and to the right sharply, as if it’s partially in a ditch, but I can’t see outside through the frosted windows. I am paralyzed with cold.
I take my seatbelt off and shift in the chair to try the driver-side door handle. It feels stuck, but I wrap my frozen fingers around it and pull. It gives, but ice has formed around the door and I have to pull my knees up and brace my feet against it to get it all the way open. Bits of snow and ice rain down on me as I pry the car door open with my legs. I still have my coat on from earlier, when I stopped to pee, but I’m still shivering. I’ve never liked the cold. I don’t know how much time has passed since then, but it feels like forever. Like another lifetime.
Outside of the car, the night is surprisingly bright with moonlight reflected off the brilliant snow. It has stopped falling, but the air is still frigid. I pull the keys from the ignition and slip them into my pocket. I don’t stop to think why. I know that I have flares and an emergency roadside kit in the trunk. If nothing else, I might be able to start a fire with them, although I don’t know what I’ll burn. I find a folding pocket knife in the center console, probably left there by my little brother on our last hiking trip. It’s old and the blade is dull, but it feels heavy in my hand. I decide to take it, more for comfort than for any sort of protection it might offer. I scramble up, hoist myself out, turn, then stop and stare at what I see.

The front of my Pontiac is smashed. The hood crumpled like a cheap toy upon impact, even though I couldn’t have been going much faster than 35 miles per hour. However, I knew when I opened my eyes that my car was destroyed, and that is not what I stare at in shock now.
In front of the car is a brand-new shiny, metal gate. Not only does the gate appear to be new, but it is also painted bright red, of all colors. Furthermore, it doesn’t even appear to have taken any damage from my car, although it has certainly dealt enough of its own.
I stand in the middle of the deserted, snow covered road and gape. My mind feels like a CD that is skipping; stuck on the same bit of information, replaying it over and over, unable to make sense and unwilling to move on. I know there was no gate here before, I think. Wouldn’t I have noticed a big red gate on the side of the road?
Ah, but I did look away right before I hit…I tried to reason with myself; Maybe I just didn’t notice it?
This whole incident is absurd. But, I do have a head injury. I’m cold, distraught. It’s possible I could be confused. I decide that I must be, because the metal gate, slick and icy beneath my fingertips, is unquestionably real.
Why would someone put a gate here? I wonder. What is its purpose? People don’t usually put expensive gates like this out in a field for no reason. I examine it closely, touching it, running my hands along the smooth metal bars. It’s nearly as wide as the road itself, spanning between two solid metal posts. It’s the kind of gate that belongs on a wealthy rancher’s driveway, not on the side of a cow pasture. Alongside the road and beneath the gate, camouflaged by snow drifts, is a shallow drainage ditch. There is only a trickle of muddy ice-water in it right now. Looking back at the tire tracks behind my wrecked Pontiac, I can see where the car must have drifted to the right when I leaned down to pick up my CDs. I swerved into the fence post and the right end of the gate, and then my right front tire slid partially into the ditch. It seems simple enough.
Still, I don’t like it. It’s not right. I must be off the county roads, somehow. This could in fact be the beginning of someone’s driveway, but that doesn’t make sense. I don’t see any road, or houses, and I haven’t made a turn for miles. I ponder this as I walk back and forth along the metal gate, my fingers trailing along the central horizontal bar, marveling at the smoothness of the steel and pushing away the snow. Then suddenly I feel something like a thin ridge of metal set in metal. Upon closer inspection I find that it is a tiny, oval-shaped silver plaque, set into the front of the gate with miniscule screws. It too, appears to be nearly brand new and freshly engraved with the words “THE STATION.”
This only adds to my confusion. I search the rest of the gate, but there are no other clues. What is ‘The Station’, I wonder, and where?
After a moment of standing in the cold, shivering, I lean despondently against the red gate…
Only to feel it swing open loosely beneath my weight. How? I wonder. I hit it with my car and the thing doesn’t budge, but push it lightly and it swings right open? No way. My heart is hammering in my chest now as I gaze unwaveringly at the piece of metal in front of me. I stare at it like a snake that might strike at any moment.
Suddenly, a high piercing whistle shreds the silence. I snap my head up and

I had had my doubts before, but when I saw the massive black train rolling into the field, I knew that something was desperately wrong.

Herman the Merman

When I set out to visit my Grandmother that chilly Friday morning, I had no expectations of excitement. It was a completely average weekend, nearing mid-section of the completely average month of September. I often went to visit my Grandmother on weekends when I wasn’t busy with school or work, and on that particular weekend I hadn’t been to see her in some weeks. The trip is not too far, about five hours if I take the freeway, and slightly longer if I opt for the winding coastal route. I usually stick to the freeway, preferring to keep the drive as short as possible.
However, on that morning, as I loaded my suitcase into the trunk of my faded black Pontiac, I cast my eyes toward the sky overhead and squinted into a sky that churned with the nameless colors of rain.

My grandmother lives by the sea in the wind-whipped town of Bistle Bay, a decrepit and cramped place where half the city (if you want to call it a city, it’s really more of a smattering of weathered shacks and shops) is crowded precariously onto a sort of man-made shelf of cement, planks, and wooden pilings, that extends slightly into the bay, but serves mainly to elevate the feet of the town’s people only ever so slightly above the mud. However, the residents were often forced to forgo even this small luxury at times in the fall and winter months, when inclement weather and rising water levels turned the muddy streets of Bistle into full-fledged streams and river ways. Every winter, an interesting topic of conversation was provided by the multitude of unusual items seen passing down the streets during a bad flood. I’d heard many stories but, so far, a Volkswagen bug, an antique cradle, and the bloated corpse of Mr. Larkinson’s prize cow rank as foremost among the oddest bits of debris to ever float down the flooded streets of Bistle and into the bay.
The storms may have been washing some strange bits out of Bistle, but those were nothing compared to what was being washed into Bistle...

At the Devil's Kitchen

The sun sinks low...
Into the sea,
On the edge of the horizon
If you look, you can see
There’s a runway
To heaven
Paved in the glow
How beautiful it is...
The edge of the world

typical vampire/werewolf romance adventure story...(title pending)

The small town was nearly empty at this hour. All the little shops down in Old Town had turned their lights down long ago, the gas station stopped pumping at 10:00 PM, and the grocery store locked its doors at 11:00. The last place in town to call it a night was the Crow's Nest Tavern. There were still a few stragglers hanging around the back door of the bar, smoking and conversing lethargically atthe bottom of the stairs. But even these few were beginning to slowly dwindle off to their various modes of transportation. The bar was closing down, and the night was closing in.
The big city never sleeps, there's always an all-night cafe or a twenty-four-hour gas station flickering its lonely light, inviting in the graveyard-shifters, night-owls, and late travelers to stand watch against the darkness. Small fortresses these are; shelters from the night for those who don't sleep, or can't. But this wasn't the big city; this was Coquille, Oregon; the edge of nowhere, USA; a small, quiet town where nothing ever happened, and nothing ever changed. This was a safe place.
Most of the time.

In a town as small as Coquille, there are still moments when all the stores are closed; the streets are completely empty; houses are dark, and it's so quiet that you can hear the waves crashing on the jetty from all the way across town. There are no all-night cafes here, no twenty-four-hour gas stations. If you run out of gas here at 3 am, you've run out of luck as well.
It may only be but for a moment each night, but in that moment the whole town stands still, holding its breath. It's an eerie feeling, to be out at night when this moment takes place. You feel like the only person on the planet, like time has somehow stopped and become frozen. You feel exposed, and its an exhilarating feeling as well. To be the only soul alive. The night is a secret treasure, long hidden and forgotten, kept at bay by street lights and signs that never stop glowing, and you feel as though it belongs to you.

That's how Alice felt, leaning on the railing of the smoking deck inhaling cool nocturnal breezes.
Outside the stifling warmth of the smoky bar, the night air had a damp and heavy feel; a light fog had drifted in from the bay, coating the city in a filmy gray mist.
From somewhere in the distance Alice heard the mournful cry of the fog horn, muffled by the drifts of briny dampness. This, and the ever present wind whipping in off the ocean, caused her to shiver as her eyes followed a particularly tall man across the parking lot. He turned to look back at her suddenly, and flashed a wide grin. The red glow from a neon sign in the bar’s window reflected off his too-white teeth and seemed to add a wicked cast to his gaze. She shivered again, this time not from the cold.
At twenty-six, Alice had never gone to a bar alone. She wasn't much of a drinker, or a partier. But when she did go out, she was usually sensible about it; She believed in playing it safe, always going with a group of friends.
But not tonight.

(to be continued...)

So a little update here...I have officially graduated from college! Right now, I am awaiting the arrival of my bachelor's degree in the mail. I have also moved out of the RV and into a small apartment in a part of town that is best described as...gritty. What else can you expect from the SE? I'm right up the street from a little biker bar called the Queen of Hearts, which plays live music most nights. Wednesday is Blues night.
I did some errands today, but once again I managed to avoid the chore of unpacking all my boxes. As a result, the apartment here still looks like a bomb went off in it...clothes, bags, books, and boxes of stuff, papers, dvds, and other objects are scattered all around me. It's a hazard to walk around in here. (Luckily, I thrive in chaos.)

Oh, and Oliver is back with me! We snuggle every night and it is lovely ;)I truly think that I could live my whole life without a man in it, so long as I have my dog.

Ballad of the Vampire

Ballad of the Vampire

I rise at sunset, my body
Aching, cold
Hungry
Lonely……

I walk the streets in the darkness
Searching, hunting
Light shines in a window, dim
A lamp left on perhaps
Or a candle burning within….

Quiet, so silent
I come softly creeping
Into the open window where the light dimly shines
Into my lover’s open arms
Where he is gently sleeping…..

My lover dreams unknowing
He is warm, sweet
A living thing
I hear his heart beat,
As I lay in the dark, listening…

And I smile
My kiss is sweetly soft on his lips
Cold, my touch
He stirs, then wakes
To be mine for such a short while…..

Be still, dear one
And he is paralyzed
I only want to taste you
Into the depths, speak his eyes
Take me into the depths….
And I gently oblige

My lover’s skin is silky smooth
His muscles warm
He is a living thing, his breath is hot
The touch of life on death
He is afraid, and yet he’s not…

His flesh on my flesh
Heat to Cold
And I take him in
Into the darkness……..
Let the night enfold

My kiss finds his throat
The skin is delicate, warm
The fruit of life…
This is what he wants now,
He begs, Take me
And the silver kiss is his,
Taking, draining
Feeding,
Sustaining…

Now my lover sleeps again
He is silent, all the warmth has gone
They never last, my lovers
More than one night in my arms

The night grows thin
Wan light sweeps the sky
I must fly
To wait until another night…..

To sleep for now in darkness
Silent, lonely
And dream of the love that is forever
Lost to me