Death Valley Scenic Byway
written by: Stella Jay
It was after him, and the hand on his fuel gauge now caressed the E. The stranger lurked at the vanishing point, another motorcyclist’s silhouette immersed in shimmering mirage. Bodhi didn’t know why the figure in the mirror was chasing him. He only knew that the other motorcyclist was an it, and it was after him.
He pried his stare from the mirror. Two Joshua trees stood on his left. On the right, salt flats stretched toward Telescope Peak. It was the same view as before the stranger appeared– the same view he’d had a full tank of gas ago. Head pounding, he accelerated. Four black birds hung in the distant sky over Telescope Peak, wings petrified in flight, stiff as the wooden parrots on his daughter’s mobile.
He jammed on the throttle and the speedometer scrambled into the triple-digits. The yellow line in the road stuttered along at the same callous pace. The Joshua trees didn’t move. The birds didn’t budge. Telescope Peak stood unchanged. Tears stinging his eyes, Bodhi thought of a hamster on a wheel. There was no wind, no engine noise– only the sound of his breath scraping his desiccated throat.
A flicker drew his gaze back to the mirror. The stranger was right behind him now, sun glinting off its yellow helmet. Its license plate read HOT STUF.
Bodhi’s motorcycle stopped vibrating. The needle plummeted down the speedometer.
“You’re out of gas,” the stranger said.
Screams ripped out of Bodhi’s chest, filling his helmet with the caterwaul of a man in hell. He abandoned the bike and staggered into the salt flats. His parched lips cracked and bled, but he couldn’t stop screaming. Clawing the helmet off in an effort to escape his own shot-coyote yowling, he fled toward Telescope Peak.
The stranger lowered its kickstand and strolled after him.
Bodhi’s clothes stuck to his skin. Violent, full-body shakes threatened his balance. He could taste the salt in the air. His wife had once used salt where she should have used sugar in her cardamom cookies. This tasted worse.
A hit to the head knocked him to his knees. Talons punctured his cheek. The birds, turkey vultures, now animate, dive bombed him.
The stranger stood before him.
“Oh, god,” Bodhi wailed, spitting blood.
The stranger removed its helmet. Out poured glittering salt.
Bodhi couldn’t breathe.
He coughed great white clouds, fingers clawing his throat, sinuses burning, chest heaving. His lungs turned to sandbags. As the wavering glimmer of heat mirage first warped and then consumed the vultures circling like a mobile above him, he yearned for cardamom cookies.
Hours later, park rangers found him spread-eagle on the white ground, throat torn open, fingers bloody, salt pouring from his gaping mouth.
“The buzzards left him,” one noted.
“Too much sodium, maybe,” said the other, laughing nervously as he turned to look toward the deceased’s abandoned bike.
Another motorcyclist had appeared on the horizon.
- Hatch - November 2, 2024
- Death Valley Scenic Byway - September 12, 2024
