Running Dry (Or Maybe Just Running)

(Implied violence)

The pump is dry—or broken. It has probably been that way for a long time. It is also quite possible, the man considers with some degree of annoyance, that it has never worked at all. That it has always existed in this state. One not unlike the town of its residence, or the land surrounding; empty, restful, wanting. 

He swears under his breath. He doesn’t typically enjoy doing so where the sun can see him, but his current situation certainly warrants it. He knows his car is on its last legs. The fuel light on his dash has been worrying at his peripheral for an uncomfortably long time and this is the first small slice of civilisation in what was a half day sized cake of sweet fuck-all.

He replaces the nozzle to its original position, where it will likely stay for another two or three lifetimes, until the arrival of yet another poor soul shit out of luck and unleaded who would find themselves equally as disappointed. 

He wipes what is either rust-dust or red-dirt from his palm to the denim of his thigh. It’s possibly both. This specific shade of copperhead orange is a familiar sight around this part of the country. Everything here—when there was anything here at all—is either dirtied or deteriorated to the point where no other colour dare remain. And as a man of many shades of black, this and the sun make for a rather unfavourable pairing to say the least. 

Finding a means of escape is imperative.

He checks his phone for reception. If he can’t find fuel here, he can at least scour his map app for the closest alternative. His phone gives him nothing, not even enough bars to make an emergency call lest he be approached by a psycho with a shotgun or a cannibal from the distant hills; irony be damned. 

He wields his phone to the sky, a beacon of betrayal that offers him nothing in return for his extended efforts. He will change providers—if he can ever reach a town where such a change can be provided. He lets his arm drop.

“You’re in the country now, boy.” A voice calls to him, thickly accented, each word halved in size, incomprehensible if one aren’t fluent in this very particular brand of local drawl. The man feigns nescience, offering the voices wielder a leisurely wave, careful not to let his irritation show. 

No shit. He thinks but does not say. I never would have guessed.  

A secondary survey of his surroundings offers up not much more than his initial had. Beyond the functionless pump there is a functioning carpark, occupying a series of cars and carcasses whose differences are indiscernible to the naked eye. Along with this, there is a single large building that likely once operated as separate businesses but is now connected by wooden panels and rusted corrugated pieces to form a single beast of a thing that no doubt housed primarily the motel-servo monster that is this town’s only lure.  

Everything is rust and ruin, dirt and detritus; ancient relics of times gone by. No wonder they didn’t have phone reception, they probably didn’t even have indoor plumbing. 

In an odd way it is both charming and eery. With too much time here one could easily fall prey to red dust homey quality unique to inland towns, as inconvenient as their services might be. Withdrawn from the reach of the rest of society, townships such as this often maintained an air of timelessness. Whether it is the eighteen-hundreds, nineteen-fifties, or the same day he left the place before this one, he can’t tell. He’s unsure whether the locals would even know themselves, stuck in their perpetual state of desert-town dormancy—listless things they are. He won’t allow himself to fall into this trap. In-and-out. Fuel and finis. He will give himself twenty minutes at most. 

He makes his way to what he presumes is the front door, letting himself in with a jingle and sway of waterlogged veneer. The heat of the day follows him, only to make a hasty retreat the very moment before the door clammers shut. Looking around, he can’t blame it. The scent of distilled spirits and the zestless air of dying ones is his only greeting. He knows then why vacuity is worn so boldly from pump to patio—no one would want to stay amongst this energy of the damned for long. 

So many eyes, not one of them friendly. He hardly looks like anything worth such open, unmetered hostility, surely. 

He smiles, inoffensive. He is good at inoffensive. It’s a trademark of his. Inoffensive and preferably invisible. 

Dissolved of the heat’s company, he ventures alone, making his way past the bar’s testy occupants and through a connecting archway eloquently labelled simply as ‘STORE’.  

Time continues to evade him. The classic, soulful sound of FM radio makes love to his every step; the mellow, acoustic twang of country diluted through with the gapping nothingness that is the store’s lack of patrons. 

It’s been a lifetime since he’s listened to the radio. Why would he? It’s difficult to trust someone who enjoys midrolls in their music. Only a real weirdo vetoes Spotify in exchange for the skipless prison that is public broadcasting. 

No DJ you may not spin him a pretty little number that only half the audience will actually enjoy, whilst the other half graciously suffers through it in hopes that the next song just might be their jam. He will play what he pleases, thank you. What would be the point of a premium subscription otherwise? Possibly this is the pitfall. The radio is fiscal liberty whose true cost lay in theft of choice. To each their own. 

He approaches the counter, hands pilled with packaged foods past their expiration date, that he will not eat, but will make him look at least purposeful. 

He addresses the cashier, “Are you the king of this fine establishment?” 

Nothing. Silence. 

Humour is lost on the sequestered.

His nametag reads Glen.

“You see, Glen. I was having a little trouble outside. Is your fuel pump—?” 

“Working.” Glen amends but elaborates no further. 

“Right.”

“That tank’s been dry as a nun’s nasty since the yanks drained in back in forty-five.” The man didn’t believe the United States was likely to have drained this particular tank in this particular province of Nowhereland at any given point of time, but this wasn’t his problem. 

“But the pump works?”   

There’s a beat of nothing. Nothing but FM and smoker’s wheeze. He needs to leave.

“It’s cracked. There’s a spare out back. Hand fill. Rhody will fill ‘er up. You’ll pay here.” He isn’t sure what a Rhody is and how it would fill his car when the pump is debunked and tank dry as a Prioress’ privates, but he’ll take what he can get.  

He upturns his expired confectionary upon the counter, shuffling each item into some semblance of order more for the benefit of his own amusement then Glen’s convenience. He spots them then, the pile of newspaper’s stacked just shy of the counter’s edge. Local rags from the look of them, maybe regional, but with definitively no further reach than that. It is the front page that strikes his eye: in clear and imposing block letters. 

“Terrible.” He comments, with some level of casualty, tapping a sole finger to the paper’s edge. Glen says nothing, but does with the briefest of movements, drops his eyes momentarily to the newspaper. Face-up the headline reads, ‘ANOTHER MISSING IN ONGOING DISAPPEARANCES IN REGION.’

“Coppers will sort it.” 

“That they will.” The man agreed, “Do you take card?” 

“Cash only.” 

Smalltowners are a simple people: cash, caution, and Hits Top 100. 

He slips his presumptuously attained debit card back into his wallet alongside half a dozen others, near identical in all but name. He hands Glen a hundred. 

“Donate the change.” He proclaims, gesturing to the ambiguously labelled charity tin, “Can never be too charitable.” 

When he re-enters the bar, not much has changed, but now he is once again invisible at least. No one turns to him as he steps back in, too intent on eying their drinks, or the TV, or each other. He is no one to them. A passer-by, a blip, a stranger. This is how the man prefers it. 

He observes them: a room full of people that have probably been here since before the room was even constructed. The type of townsfolk that had fallen here as seeds—carried on the wind or shat out by a bird or propped up from the very crust of the earth itself—settling their roots exactly in place and then never budging for a lifetime. They’d all know one another. By name, by birth, by the grace of the limited available space. They are both a tragedy and an inconvenience. 

He needs to leave. Yet for now, he has no choice. Glen had mentioned around a half hour wait for Rhody’s fuel services and as enticing as the prospect of standing outside under the direct rays of the peak-hour sun is, he thinks he at least deserves a drink and a short reprieve. 

He orders a beer. He assesses the room once more. Wariness, hostility, and flannel. There is so much flannel. There are two distinct groups of people that wear flannel in public unabashed and they are generally the same two groups that frequent establishments such as these. Sadly, neither of these groups are generally his opted choice of company. 

Then he spots the girl. Tucked in the deep recesses of a corner table, curled in upon herself as if hiding or hibernating in the shadowless crevice that seems to protect her from the oppressive air of the surrounding environment. 

She’s reading a tattered paperback. A strangely old-fashioned gesture for her presumed age, with a mobile phone and the endless void of social networking resting in such close proximity to her hand. 

Probably dead. He thinks. No, definitely dead. 

There is no flannel in sight. He approaches.

He greets her with a smile: inoffensive. 

She gives him her name: Toni. He gave her one of his. 

She invites him to sit, having clearly assessed him against the bars other occupants and finding him to be of a more agreeable variety. It’s probably his lack of missing teeth. 

They tell their stories. He, a man on his way cross-country to visit a Great Aunt on the verge of cardiac collapse. His childhood caretaker, he explained, like a mother. Though men like him didn’t often have mothers and if they did, they weren’t the good kind. 

Her, a young woman on run from an unspoken responsibility like something out of a coming-of-age novella. Vague, clipped. He doesn’t prod for details.  

How did you end up here? Car problems. 

How long have you been here? Too long.  

Though her situation is a tad more complicated as too long was two days rather than less than an hour, and car problems was that she had blown some sort of hose that fed some sort of important fluid to another sort of important mechanism that was beyond her mechanical understanding. Leaving Toni and the vehicle at a deadly ultimatum: divorce or a joint suicide. In the end the car and Toni had parted ways. The lack of a prenup and sufficient arm muscles meant that it kept all her belongings bar her phone, wallet, and a one-point-five litre bottle of Evian. 

Somewhere along the line she had been whisked up from the roadside by a pair of middle-aged women who had been either cousins or a couple and had done nothing but bicker between themselves until they’d reached this point. Toni, desperate to salvage her sanity, had bailed from the vehicle with promises of safety and cell service that she had not realised to be falsehoods until long after the women were out of sight. 

And here she is. 

Her phone: dead. 

Her book: borrowed. 

Her plan: Dicey. Maybe she would come up with one tomorrow. Maybe she would finish the book first. She’ll take things as they come. What’s the rush? She has nowhere to be. And nowhere she is.

“Chatty bunch, aren’t they?” He mentions partway in, two drinks down, Toni’s book forgotten by her deceased phone’s side. A crime novel. The kind that’s vivid attention to detail and vaguely concerning insider knowledge oft leaves readers unnerved enough to scour online criminal records with the authors name in mind, or at the very least leaving them questioning their sanity. They aren’t his preferred choice of reading. 

With a pointed gaze towards the bar, she nods in the direction of a specific man. Long, gangly, hair the desaturated, dying yellow of the rooms artificial light, “He definitely keeps human skins in his wardrobe.” 

“One for each day of the week.” He agrees. 

“You would make a mighty fine Sunday best.” 

This draws a hesitant laugh, “I’ll steer clear.” 

“So, how long for your wait?” She is sipping a coffee. Black. Like his clothing, like their corner. 

“Rhody has to fill me up from the tank out back. Apparently, the American’s drained the other one.” He explains.

“Tale as old as time.”

“Would you like a lift somewhere when I’m done?”

Hesitation, justifiably. There is always hesitation. She wears it as the other’s wear their flannel: dated, with practice. The hesitation of a young woman alone, speaking to a man she does not know and can not trust. Smart girl.   

“I promise to keep your skin intact.”

Her expression is thoughtful. Her mind weighing the virtue of one relatively unassuming man against a room full of hostile, sentient flannel, swiftly finding one marginally preferable to the other. Not so smart after all. 

“Well with an offer like that, who could refuse?” 

The tank is full. The windscreen is washed. The mysterious Rhody is neigh to be seen. 

They are off. 

Toni does not settle immediately, though her demeanour had shifted slightly to the left of caution when she had spotted his car. Something small and Japanese. Silver. Inconspicuous, but not too inconspicuous as to become conspicuous simply by the way of human assumption. It is just a car. The type of car you would expect an older gentleman to drive on the way to visit their moribund maternal figure. 

She flicks on the radio, drowning the car in sound. Yet another action odd only for her youth. He had not known this car was even tuned for the radio. The song is something crass and pop-y, strategically designed to be beloved by adolescents and algorithms alike. 

“This is my jam.” 

Of course, it is. God bless streaming services. 

He allows her the three or so minutes of electronic mayhem, then an extra forty of equally, if not more intolerable, musical free reign. Then he pulls out the gun. 

The man likes guns. They are his natural opposite. The bad cop to his good cop—or either or. Flashy where he is subdued; boisterous where he is muted. The irony of his weapon choice isn’t lost, just misplaced. It’s likely somewhere out in the desert, probably making friends with Toni’s car.

The silencer brings them back to equal footing. A stabiliser that is both a precautionary measure and a modest attempt at maintaining his inoffensive image. Not that there is much of an imagine to be had. No one lives long enough to question the authenticity of his character, so he supposes it matters to none but him. This includes Toni, whose death—although not as silent as his gun’s attachment had promised—cares for nothing now as he closes the boot of the car upon her body, gagged and bound for a shallow grave somewhere amongst the barren expanse of desert and nothingness, his driving companion for just a short while more. 

Much like his friend the fuel pump, he isn’t running. Running would require he believed himself to be obtainable in the first place. He is simply moving. Albeit at a faster pace to those on a different side of the law. He’s convinced himself of this, facts be damned. 

He isn’t running, but he would keep moving. 

And move he does.