Twinkies. Zac wanted a goddamn twinkie. He stalked up and down the aisles of some little mom and pop store, clutching a Dr. Pepper in one hand and a fistful of beef jerky in the other.
“One thing after a-goddamn-nother,” Zac muttered to himself, resigning himself to a honey bun. It wasn’t the best dinner in the world, but he hadn’t planned for it. No, he should have been sitting down to eat meatloaf and mashed potatoes with his girlfriend’s family. He walked to the front of the store and joined the line at the register. He was one of only three people in the store aside from the cashier, but someone’s grandmother was paying for her tank of gas with a change purse full of pennies. Zac sighed, and tried to remember how his night had been derailed. He wasn’t sure exactly where things had gone wrong. He had showered, brushed his hair into a relatively neat ponytail and driven the two hours south of Oklahoma City to Lena’s tiny hometown all because she wanted to introduce him to her parents.
When he finally made his way to the register, Zac pulled a few wadded bills out of his pocket and flung them across the counter. The cashier raised an eyebrow but thankfully did not speak. Without bothering to take his change, Zac walked out of the store and back to his van. He stomped his feet hard against the pavement, enjoying the satisfying crunch of autumn leaves beneath his shoes.
He hoisted himself into the van and slammed the door a bit too hard. He patted the dashboard with his left hand, attempting to coax the vehicle to start. After three tries – less than usual – he finally felt the engine turn over and he settled in for the drive back home. Zac twisted and turned the radio dial a few times, but the radio would play only static and faint bluegrass. A little digging under the seat revealed a lone cassette tape which he pushed into the player and hoped for the best. Within seconds, he was singing along with “Werewolves of London.”
A little more digging under the seat and Zac was rewarded with a large joint that had probably been in the van for several weeks. He pulled a lighter out of his pocket and lit the joint. Steering the van onto the highway with one hand, he took a long, hard hit on the joint, relishing the sweet burn in the back of his throat.
It reminded him of something out of a 1950’s sitcom. The house was a giant brick monstrosity with an impeccably kept garden and two excessively large SUVs in the driveway. Zac wasn’t sure how long he stood in the doorstep staring down at his dirty sneakers before he gained the courage to ring the bell.
Lena swung the door open on Zac’s third ring. She smiled and Zac could tell how forced it was. Her eyes betrayed no emotion when she spoke. “Hello, Zac.”
She turned on her heel and he assumed this was his invitation to follow her. Lena’s mother, introduced to Zac as Marianne, stood perfectly poised in the kitchen, stirring a steaming pot. Her smile, in contrast with Lena’s, was too wide. The kitchen smelled like food and some other scent that Zac could not identify; it was almost spicy, like damp earth and the smell after a thunderstorm.
He forged through the small talk with difficulty, stuttering and shaking but holding himself mostly together. When he could see that Marianne wanted to resume her cooking, he excused himself and shuffled down the hallway to their bathroom. It was cold white marble and smelled faintly of bleach. Zac was almost afraid to touch anything, afraid his presence alone was tainting every inch of it.
Even with the bathroom door open only a sliver, he could hear the argument, in muffled clips and pieces.
“-shouldn’t be here, not tonight.”
“-knew about this for weeks!”
“-things have changed and he just can’t-”
Zac felt his stomach turn and he gripped the edge of the sink.
“-need us to do this tonight-”
He stumbled out of the bathroom, wiping his hands on his worn jeans. Lena met him in the hallway, her expression still carved out of stone.
“You need to go.”
“Why?” Inwardly, Zac cringed at his boldness.
“You just need to go. You can’t be here now.”
“You invited me, for Christ’s sake.”
“Things change, Zac. We’ll do this some other time.”
“Fine.”
He snapped out of the memory when he heard the tape deck’s tell-tale whirring and clanking. He pressed eject and flipped the tape over. After the static, “Witchy Woman” filled his speakers. He looked out at the road at the sky. It was rapidly darkening and he could almost make out the outline of a full moon. Zac realized he must have been lost in his mind for quite a while. He hadn’t consulted the hastily written directions Lena had given him before he left campus that morning, but he thought he remembered them well enough. A familiar looking two lane road branched off from the highway in front of him, and Zac twisted the steering wheel hard to guide his van onto it.
The road was worn and dusty. Altogether, the scenery was rather dull – trees, a few more trees and lots of open fields. Zac drove along, banging the steering wheel to the beat of the music and eating his honey bun. He was beginning his second listen through the cassette tape when he saw it. First, the bridge. Then, the sign, which confirmed his fears.
DRIVE FRIENDLY – THE TEXAS WAY
“Oh, fuck.”
The Red River being his only other option, Zac continued on across the bridge. He slammed his head against the steering wheel and wondered how he could have fucked up so royally. He scanned the roadside. There was nowhere to pull over but the shoulder, and Zac didn’t relish the idea of trying a U-turn on such a narrow road.
He drove on.
Hardly five hundred feet into Texas, a disconcerting smoke began wafting up from the van’s hood. The vehicle gave one great lurch, followed by a series of sputters. Zac groaned and steered the van onto the shoulder as the engine sputtered to silence with one giant cloud of metallic-smelling smoke.
He stepped out of the van and lifted the hood. He knew fuck all about fixing cars, but he figured it couldn’t hurt to at least let the rest of smoke dissipate. He coughed and gagged as the cloud descended on him. Stepping back, he pulled the last piece of beef jerky out of his pocket and assessed the situation. He was stranded in Texas. In fucking Texas. He rifled through his pocket for his cell phone and it assured him of the worst. No signal.
So he did what he could. He turned on his heel and started walking back to Oklahoma. After a few minutes of walking, he regretted the decision. One, he had forgotten his Dr. Pepper. Two, he didn’t have a flashlight and the October sky was turning a deep, dusky blue. Zac could only hope that another car would pass by soon, and that said car didn’t hold a serial killer.
Just after he passed back into Oklahoma – “Discover the Excellence” – he smelled it. Smoke. Thick and heady, like weed but… different. A small patch of trees was visible in the distance, and Zac was certain it was the source of the smoke. Against his better judgment, he veered off the shoulder and toward the fire.
As he walked, the thicket seemed to grow larger and larger. He could hear voices chanting something in an unfamiliar language. By the time he reached the trees, he could not even see the clearing around it; it appeared to him as though an entire forest had sprung up out of nothing. He stood quietly behind one tree, watching the scene unfold. Thirteen women danced around a fire, without a single stitch of clothing. In front of the fire lay… something. He could make out only bits of fur and bone, and did not want to know what it had once been. Suddenly, the chanting stopped and he could see the women’s faces. He gasped in horror as first Marianne and then Lena’s faces became visible.
“Oh, fuck.”
Lena turned slowly toward Zac and held up a long handled blade, her eyes glowing in the firelight.
Zac ran.
He ran and ran, not knowing which way would lead back to the road. The wood seemed to stretch on forever, and the thick smoke trailed after him, taunting. He could hear the chanting again, and it seemed as though a thousand feet pursued him, within hearing but just out of sight. The voices and footsteps seemed to surround him. He coughed and it caused him to stumble. He could not regain his footing and the tall grass seemed to rise up around him as he collapsed to the ground.
He woke up to the sound of car horn. Opening his eyes cautiously, Zac saw that he was in the back of his van. He jumped and scrambled backward as the rear doors swung open.
“What the hell, Zac?”
“…Taylor?”
“No shit. Why does it smell like weed in here?”
Zac inched forward and leaned out the van door. No one else in sight. He squinted against the early morning light. “Aren’t you more concerned about why I’m in Texas? Wait, no – why are you in Texas?”
Taylor shook his head and laughed. “I went to Dallas with Matt, remember? His parents bought him that new car and I gave him a ride home. What about you? Sleeping off a bender in the shagging wagon?”
Zac frowned. “The van broke down.”
“In Texas.”
“I took a wrong turn.”
“Only you, Zac. Only you,” Taylor replied. “Listen, just get in my car. We’ll call Dad when we get back into civilization. Maybe he can raise that thing from the dead.”
“Thanks, Tay.” Zac hopped down onto the pavement and followed Taylor to his car, an old Camaro parked a few feet back, just barely off the road.
Taylor opened the driver’s side door, then paused, hand on his hip. “Weren’t you supposed to be visiting whats-her-name this weekend? Lora? Leah? Lucy?”
“Lena.”
Taylor nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I said. What happened to her?”
“You don’t want to know.” Zac shook his head. “You really, really don’t want to know. And I am never smoking pot again.”