Have Pen, Will Travel

I’m sitting in the backseat of an apple-red ‘57 Desoto Firedome that’s hurtling down I-95 at a good 80 mile clip. It’s somewhere around midnight and a corpse I recognize is sitting besides me, tucked into the same suit we buried him in. Gravedirt clings to it in thick, moist clods; his cheek has rotted away, exposing clusters of yellowed teeth, like rows of tic-tacs. It gives him a constant and hideous grin.

Looks like you might be in a world of shit, sweetheart, he tells me, but his mouth doesn’t move. I hear the words like a wet chuckle in the back of my skull, bubbling up my spine and spilling across my cerebellum. It makes me want to dig out my brain stem with a fucking spork.

“You’re dead,” I tell him, but my voice is just a hoarse croak.

In this business? That ain’t sayin’ much.

“This is a dream,” I tell him. “You’re just a hallucination.”

I’m here to warn you.

“Warn me? It’s a little late for you to start acting responsible, piss-gargler.”

Bad mojo is coming down the pipeline, Lucky. And it’s coming for you.

“I’m shivering in my little Hello-Kitty undies,” I tell him. I’m starting to get good and angry, now. The initial fear and confusion is wearing off. God, I’ve hated him for so long. I want a chance to tell him, a chance to spit in his face.

Remember: The best trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he exists.

“…I think you got that backwards, dad.”

“Miss Monday?”

My eyes snap open. I’m in the front seat of an ‘88 5th Avenue Chrysler, right back where I started. The inspector’s eyes are stapled to the road, but he’s addressing me with what space aliens unfamiliar with human culture might feasibly interpret as concern.

“What.”

“You were talking in your sleep,” he tells me. “You sounded distressed.”

Slowly, the events of the prior hours start to filter back in. I dig my fists into my eye sockets and work to grind out the weariness. “I’m fine. Just–just a stupid dream.”

“Your dreams are rarely stupid, ma’am.”

“Are you going to tell me that my dreams are a government plot to broadcast secret directives directly into my brain or some creepy shit like that?”

“No. Just that your dreams often have significance.”

Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel any better.

I take stock of my surroundings. The flashing cadence of a neon light spills across the dashboard and washes over my head; it burns the words ‘ROSE’S DINER’ in an irregular beat into my face. I can see bright, scorching illumination inside, along with a few figures sitting at booths. The detective seems intent on getting out of the car and going inside.

“Why are we stopping here?” I ask him.

“You need food,” he says. “You haven’t eaten for at least twelve hours.”

“How do you know–wait. How long have we been on the road?” I crunch my eyebrows together, trying to do the math.

“Twelve hours,” he says.

“I was asleep–how long was I asleep for?!”

“Eleven and a half hours,” he says.

“Jesus Christ!”

“You experienced a considerable shock. You are under significant stress; in addition, you likely have not had a full night’s sleep in some time.” He gets out of the car, making his way around to me. When he reaches my side, he opens the door and steps aside. Really, it’s downright creepy just how gentlemanly he is. Like some sort of officer torn straight out of Dragnet. Or one of those know-it-all 50s sitcom fathers.

But I am hungry. Starving, really. And my throat’s about as dry as a fistful of dust. “Fine.”

We’re in one of those little towns stretched out like a string of cheap plastic pearls along a highway off ramp. The diner’s part of some stale gas-and-go with those old fashion pumps (the kind with the spinning numbers) and a storefront thick with the detritus of rural life. There’s a huge deer head mounted just above the entrance. It eyes me with a disapproving stare as we step into the dust-choked building, cow-bells clattering overhead.

Unvarnished linoleum floor with two decades’ worth of skidmarks. Booths that have been stained with every type of fluid known to man. Food that smells like a greasy carburetor and probably tastes like the rag you use to clean it. A waitress with a wart on her nose and a nametag that says ‘WANDA’.

Home sweet home.

We sit; the detective doesn’t even look at the menu. When the waitress saunters over, I’m still perusing the wares.

“Whole milk,” he tells her. “With a slice of apple pie.”

“Right. I guess I’ll, uh, have the pancakes,” I respond.

“Comes with a side of bacon and eggs,” the waitress says.

“I’ll skip it. Just the pancakes. And some OJ.”

She finishes writing down our order and slips off. When she’s bobbing behind the counter, the detective gives me a look. I wriggle in my seat despite myself. Something about him just throws me completely off my game. “What?” I ask, and then add: “I don’t eat meat, okay?”

“I know,” he replies.

“Goddammit!” My voice is harsher than I want it to be. “Stop doing that, okay?”

“Doing what?”

“Knowing shit about me before I even tell you! It’s infuriating.”

“I beg your pardon. It is not my intent to make you feel uncomfortable.”

“Well, too frigging late for that,” I mumble, staring back at the menu. Then I sigh. “Alright. Spit it out. Th’hell you know I’m a vegetarian?”

“Because when you eat meat, you can taste where it’s been.”

That makes me shudder. Hard. He’s right, of course; the last time I sank my teeth into a piece of scorched bovine carcass was when I was twelve. Suddenly, with a clarity of vision that forever branded the event in my mind, I saw where it had come from. I saw the calf born from the sow; I saw it ushered into a cage, fed on steel udders and kept still so its meat would grow fat and tender. I watched it grow from a little mewling thing to a thick, juicy slab of beef. And then I saw them fire the nailgun straight into its brain. The hiss of hydraulics; the solid thunk of a wedge spearing its way through the base of a skull – the thick, hoarse, wet cry of something dying, then the slumping thud of dead meat against a slaughterhouse floor.

The smell of sawdust still makes me want to vomit.

“How the fuck do you know about that,” I whisper.

“You told me.”.

“I’ve never told you shit, fuck-o. This is the first time we’ve met.”

“In this life.”

My fingers seize the side of the table in a white-knuckled grip. My voice comes out as little more than a low, throaty growl: “Oh, you better be screwing with me. Past-fucking-lives shit? Is that what this is about?”

“Not quite. I’m not in the best position to explain.”

“Who the hell is?”

“The person who I am taking you to.”

“Sanctuary,” I say.

“Sanctuary,” he repeats.

The waitress returns with our food; I down my pancake with a voraciousness that surprises me. The detective eats sparingly, and with a slow deliberateness that leaves nary a crumb of crust or a drop of milk spared. He dabs his mouth after every bite, and when he’s not eating, he’s either looking out the window or watching the door.

“Okay,” I tell him between bites, my cheeks starting to puff out. “I’m going to make you a deal, Mr. Nifty Fifties.”

“Yes?”

“Either this shit starts making sense by the time we get to ‘Sanctuary’, or I’m splitsville, okay? Pod-people or no pod-people. This whole ‘I’ll tell you when we get there’ deal you’ve got going – it ain’t my kind of train ride, you dig?”

For the first time I’ve met him, I see the detective smile. In some respects, it is a frightening thing – all mouth, no eyes.

“As you like, ma’am. In that case, all aboard. Next stop, Crazy-ville.”

Crazy-ville indeed.

Sanctuary is a two-hour drive to a trailerpark in the middle of I-Have-No-Fucking-Clues-Ville. We arrive after midnight, pulling slowly into the driveway. Gravel pops beneath the weight of the Chrysler’s tire treads, scattering beneath the undercarriage. Dimly, I make out the lights of windows, winking in and out beneath the flapping sleeves of laundry left to dry.

“This is, like–where the hell is this?” I ask him.

“It is the home of a man who once saved the world.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, should have guessed that one.”

He gets out of the car. I manage to get the door open before he can get around to the other side to open it. When I jump out and kick the door shut, he just shrugs. Then he turns and weaves his way through the assortment of trailer homes propped up on cylinder blocks. While we walk, I pepper him with questions.

“So, this guy knows me or something?”

“He knows about you.”

“More than you do?”

“Not really.”

“Then th’hell are we doing here? I told you, if this doesn’t start making sense–”

“He has something that belongs to you,” he tells me. “Something you left for yourself long ago, in expectation of a day when you would no longer remember who you are.”

“Messages in a bottle,” I say, sighing. “Great.”

“It should explain a great deal.”

“You don’t even know what the fuck this thing is, do you?”

Dead silence.

“Jesus fucking Christ, man.”

“You never told me.”

“Seriously? You’re dragging me out all the way to the Dumbfuck Boonies to open up some moldy old package and you don’t even know what the hell it is?”

We’ve reached the door of one trailer in particular. It’s like something torn out of a magazine ad from the seventies; it’s got some sort of funky rhombus-shape thing going on, with wood-textured siding. Bits and pieces of paper are lined along its edges, carefully glued down. When I lean forward to take a closer look, I can see that they all have a variety of strange interlocking geometric patterns drawn on them – really ornate, indepth stuff.

The detective knocks firmly on the door. We hear bottles clatter on the inside, followed by a series of throaty curses. When the door opens, there’s a fat, balding middle-aged man behind it – wearing a pair of ridiculously thick coke-bottle glasses. He shoves them higher up along his nose with one pudgy finger, takes a look at me, then takes a look at the detective. Then his eyes bulge and his brows pinch together. Like he’s about to take a shit right on the spot.

“Oh, oh, oh God,” he says, his voice breezy and low. “Is that–is that–”

“Yes,” the detective replies. “Harold Dinkle, meet Miss Lucky Monday. Miss Monday, meet Harold Dinkle – until recently, the world’s last wizard.”