Her Heat

This giant dusty bowl she drove herself into had started to mess with her mind. To her, she had taken the trip around a million times already. She thought she saw puddles of starch blue leading in front of her car now and then. She knew she saw the cactus and swore it had an eye. An eye that was staring her down every time she passed, an eye that drilled holes through her car and into her. A stare that was sharper than the seagull that stared down her sandwich at the beach. It was impossible, she couldn't pass the two giant cliffs ahead of her. Ones eerily matching the ones she drove through to get on this road. Never nearing the tall chalky clay forms that almost looked like they were reaching out to each other. She finally stopped the car checking her phone for the time that hadn’t changed since her first trip past the cactus. Her battery at thirty percent without her charger. Even worse the bars were low so she stepped outside of the car reaching her phone sky. She started to cry, losing her breath in the deep stretched-out whines between her tears. Her beautiful cherry red car she just had polished had been peeled off by the heat. The most terrifying part, the tear-jerking part was the puddle of blue under her car. The puddles she thought she hallucinated but smaller than when she started. Ensuring her fear that she was looping around. They didn’t look like water and even if they were there was no way they would have lasted in that heat for that long. Crying and shaking she went back to the car.

“Oowww!!” She winced at the pain from touching the car. She mistakenly touched the scolding hot handle. Grasping her burned hand. The pressure relieved the searing pain. She wrapped her hand into her shirt. Struggling to open it with the free pinky she did have in her not burnt hand. She got in the car and rolled out her throbbing pink and purple hand. Looking at it somehow caused her even more pain. She had to get somewhere, anywhere with first aid so she started driving. Wailing and shaking in pain, she decided sitting on her hand was the only way she could get anywhere. She passed the cactus once, twice, three, four, five times. Her head spun in a frenzy of anger, mania, and sadness every time she passed it. By her twentieth time her near-dead purple hand had cooled as much it could. With the AC cranked to the max still allowed for heatwaves to wash through the car, burning her when she touched anything bare-handed. She dressed down to her beachwear with a towel drenched in her sweat draped over her chair and her shirt wrapped around her driving hand. She had lost count of the times she passed the ‘evil-eyed cactus’. Now she could only tell time by how often her sweat dripped and dried. The road, the cliff peaks, the flying sand, the staring cactus, the dry heat, it wouldn’t end. Stressing her to the point that she had to leave the boiling car and hide in what shade the car could make. Balancing her feet off of the scolding street into her sandals. About half an hour went by before the shade left her. The sun was moving, giving her hope that it would leave. It had to switch its place with the moon. She used her hand in the shirt and went back inside. Lying in the back waiting for darkness. Watching the sun edge ever so slowly to the horizon. When it finally left the light didn’t let up, the heat didn’t let up, the sun had replaced itself on the other side of the sky.

"Aaaaaaahhh!!!” She thrashed against the front seats in outrage. Curling up and wailing lasted her for some time before she decided to do something. She grabbed her phone at the same thirty percent. Loading to a photo of her son. Squeezing it into her chest with heavy tears flowing down her face. Seeing no bars on her phone she still tried to call her mom, 911, her best friend, her ex, friends, boss, coworkers, whoever she thought would answer. She held tears in as much as she could but with every dial-up and let down it became harder. Tearing up she carelessly let snot slip into her mouth. Wiping as much as she could away. She started her car with forty gallons of gas like it had when all of this started. “Aaaah!!” She yelled after 20 miles of thinking ‘If I can just make it to between those two mountains’. She wouldn’t allow herself to cry again though. Crying didn’t help the last time and she knew her water bottle wouldn’t last here much longer. Staying hydrated was most important. She decided it was time for her ‘death video’ for everyone she loved if anyone would ever get to her body and leave, surviving this place. Exhausted of the suffocating air in the car she left it for her video. She wiped any sweat on her face away and slicked her hair back as best as she could. Determined that the last time anyone would see her, she would look the best she could look. 

“Nathan, know that I will always be by your side. You are more than your parents, my sweet little boy. Mama, I’m sorry but if you’re seeing this that means Nathan has no one but you to care for him. I didn’t mean for it to end this way. If I had known that this would happen I wouldn’t have come. I love you all. I’m sorry, I had to try to mend things.” Talking through tears and laughter, and the occasional voice cracking. “Of course I ended up ruining it all. Well, I think that’s all I need to say. My throat feels like it’s gonna give out on me at any time. I should probably preserve this beautiful voice for any rescuer that might come along.” She left the camera app on her phone. Her eyes widened to the size of golf balls when she noticed her phone was at twenty-seven percent. 

“What the fuck?” She whispers to herself. She ran back into the car checking the gauge. That still had its forty gallons of gas. Confused and angry she banged her phone against the steering wheel. She threw her phone into the seat next to her and started driving. Convinced that the battery dying meant something had changed, she could leave. After five turns around the cactus, she turned the phone off refusing to believe it had died. Tears welling and heat filling her throat in an instant a second after seeing the black screen still up. Clicking and clicking at the power button until she realized it was actually working and her clicking was turning it off too soon. The tears had no choice but to leave her eyes but she could feel her throat clear up and come to a chill. She saw that her percentage was still at twenty-seven so she sighed in relief. She stopped herself from thinking anything good would come from it and tried thinking about why it lost any percentage at all. She tested it to see if the battery would drain in the car and it didn’t. She tried using it outside of the car soon enough she could see it dying again. She couldn’t understand why that would happen so she went back into the car. Stared at her phone sitting next to her then sighed wiping more sweat off of her face. With nothing else to do she started driving backwards this time, thinking maybe that’s the key to leaving or at least to the percentage loss. The road pelted her car with chips of itself. The car was immovable even with the gas pedal pushed to the floor. 

“What the fuck!!” The car tipped a little forward and tilted back, the trunk thrashing into the road behind it. She got out and checked the front of the car. Before her eyes, the car coughed out some of the road chips that were wedged into its grilles. She checked the back of the car for any damage. The bumper was mangled nearing the point of falling off. It couldn’t get any worse and she could drive without a good bumper so that’s what she did. When she started the car it went backwards. Jolting her around when it hit the bumper, carrying it the little bit she did go.

“Fuck!” After all of the wreckage to the car, she couldn’t do anything but walk. She grabbed her water bottle and her phone and started walking to the middle of the red cliffs. She edged closer and closer to them. Relief washed over her when she noticed she could see more of the cliffs than she ever could in the car. So set on her success she hadn’t noticed her sandals had burned off into the road leaving little blue footprints bleeding into little blue puddles the farther she got away from them.