Accountants Get Married, Too

by Cailin Rogers

 The funeral is in the desert, where her mother was born and raised. They had not seen each other for nearly two decades. Things ended poorly, as they always do, with the slamming of doors, the shouting of bitter promises, and a silence punctuated by incessant undead emotions. Her brother had called to invite her to the service and she waited three days before calling him back. 

 Now it is all done and the woman heads back towards the airport without turning the radio on. The sun is like the clean end of a new piece of chalk. At some point, the hypnosis of flat, brown earth like the palm of God’s hand catches up to her. The car she rented is out of gas and coughs to a halt on the side of the road. As the woman looks around, she sees nothing but highway like one black vein running through endless sands. The car’s battered corpse seems to sink lower into the tires. She kicks the stupid fucking thing and, map in hand, walks towards the nearest exit, just a couple miles away. 

It’s ridiculous, the way things die and leave you here alone. It’s disgusting how simple your life is before you even know what that means. You spend the first few years of existence beloved, cloaked in someone’s warm arms, neck-deep in enamored stares. That time passes before your little blueberry brain learns how to cherish things. Eventually you end up reaching through a hole in the wall of your mind, arm thrusting into who-knows-what, pressed from tear-stained cheek to aching shoulder against cold concrete. Grasping into the dark for something you cannot even remember anymore. The best of your life is in someone else’s recall.

A teardrop hits the flesh-colored sand and sizzles back into the air. When the woman wipes her face, the slick of anguish makes her world too real, too bare, too dead. She chokes and doubles over, weeping. 

There is a high whine floating through the dancing waves of heat. It sharpens erratically– tortured, strained. The woman swallows her own groaning to trace the noise. Louder now, it screeches like metal being forced from metal. The woman squints against the sun to find the source, but between the sands and the sky, the desert is like being trapped in a box of mirrors. There’s motion on the horizon. A black smudge thunders towards her, taking shape limb by limb. A horse. Foam flies off of its loose jaws as it screams. Closer and closer, it approaches at full tilt. Something rises from it, around it– the horse is bathed in flames. The woman is trapped in her feet. The creature bucks up onto its hind legs, a futile effort to escape the violent shroud. Flesh slips from bones like liquid soap. The horse kicks and thrashes. Screaming, screaming, screaming. It throws its head in agony. It jumps again, but buckles when it lands, and crashes to the earth in a twitching heap. The horse is silent but the flames shout and curse. 

The woman rubs her hand over her face. The asphalt underneath her cooks the soles of her shoes. The heat of the fire has dried the inside of her open mouth. She sobs once, a strangled, low yell of a sound. She turns and a tall man is standing two paces behind her. He steps forward.

“Would you like to buy a brochure?” he asks. The woman stares at him. His khaki vest is adorned with dozens of travel brochures, strung together and draped down his front. “I have at least one for every state in the country; I have six for this state alone.” She slowly glances at the horse without moving her head. The flames are almost gone. Fat bubbles on charred bones.

“What’s your name?” The man says. He wears a shapeless ochre smile. The woman clears her throat.

“Claire,” she chokes out. He squints his eyes. The white sun melts onto the bald spot in the center of his head, but he does not seem to notice. He says nothing. The desert feels simultaneously shrunken, like a dollhouse, and endless. Inescapable. “Claire.” 

“Okay,” he says. That smile does not move. He drops his voice so low that she almost leans in to hear him. “I have more than brochures.” She knows her eyes are frozen like moons, like a cow in transport to a slaughterhouse. Wide open, as if there is a way out of this if she just looks hard enough. Wide open, and the rich, greasy smell of the horse is taking thick, plodding steps across the highway. The sweet cologne of death hits the back of her throat. She yawps and retches drool into the sand. 

“Take a look,” the man says, and opens his vest. Baubles gleam like little stars. He traces the outline of one shaped like an angel. “Would you like to buy one? I’ll sell it to you for cheap.” His breaths are so steady. His eyes never lose her, even when he looks down.

She went to the city zoo on her eighth birthday. Her hands were flat against the glass of the tiger exhibit. A ten-foot-long beast built to kill, now confined to a cement room, condemned to endure people staring and pointing and pounding. She remembers the caged tiger’s eyes. This man has those eyes. There is something pacing behind them and it is powerful. 

“What’s your name?” he asks again. Tears slide down her face. She can’t remember what she told him last time. Saliva pools in her mouth. 

“Anna,” she mumbles. His smile saunters across his face. 

“Anna,” he sing-songs. “Why are you all alone out here?”

“My car… My car is broken. It- it’s broken down.” She points down the highway at the speck on the horizon. The map in her hand is rippling, soaked in sweat. The fork in the road is just a few hundred feet away. The man moseys around her until he stands between her and the exit. The baubles inside his vest jingle and chime.

“Why don’t you buy one of these? You need it.” He is speaking quietly, but not gently. Her mind pieces it together, run run run run run. But her limbs just sag and dangle off her body. Her stomach turns like a rotisserie chicken. 

“I don’t have any cash on me right now,” the woman says, speaking each word one by one. He clicks his tongue and sighs.

“What’s your name?”

She gags and she is fully sobbing now– chest shaking, lips twitching. She is about to answer, about to give him a third name, but he goes pale. White. His sloppy mouth falls into half a frown. He inhales and she can hear his chest rattle. Then he walks back in the direction of her rental car with huge heel-to-toe strides, moving quickly into the shimmering heat rising off the earth. She looks at the horse, still crumpled and stinking, and when she looks again down the highway, she cannot even see the man anymore. She exhales with a laugh. She takes a few deep breaths and lets the sun warm her face. Then the woman turns off of the highway, and wanders down the exit into the town.

There is a gas station. A truck is parked at one of the pumps, and a new sedan sunbathes in the small parking lot. The woman smoothes her hair down with her damp hands as she approaches. She steps onto the platform of the station and the air shifts. The world is noiseless– no birds, no roar of summer insects. Stillness. No wind. No movement at all. She pauses. It’s like being inside a refrigerator. Above the gas station, something huge coasts through the air. It is incomparable to an airplane; it looks more like an aluminum shopping mall. The ship casts no shadow as it moves over the earth with purpose, methodically, projecting a thin yellow beam down to the ground. The beam hits a mangy desert tree. The roots explode out of the ground and the entire object hurtles through the air, up into the underside of the ship. The beam continues sweeping. A feral cat scampers across the gas station platform, into the path of the light. Its mouth opens to scream but nothing escapes. It meets the same fate as the tree. 

The woman backs up, one foot at a time, as the ship approaches. She begs the barren terrain for a place to hide. The lightbeam stretches over the new car, but it reflects off of the grille and the ship moves quickly past it. The car remains where it was parked. The woman gasps. She searches herself for jewelry, zippers, a belt buckle– but her efforts are not enough. The yellow beam is inches from her toes. She screams and turns to run. Before her feet can hit the earth, she is flying towards the ship.