Jack

White sun flashes off the hoods of cars. When you look at all of them at once, it looks like cytoplasmic streaming, and we are tiny things inside a tiny cell, moving along a tiny outer edge. There is a loudness to the world, its traffic jammed into a single highway, there is such a roar of machinery. Until all the sound is shook from me.

I am bleeding. There is a screaming of tires.

The car in front of us is white. A white Mecedes Benz. I remember the man who drove it kept adjusting the rearview mirror, his watch throwing sunlight against the glass.

I drop, and smell blood.











press my palms against the pavement, push myself up, my face hot

“Jack,” I try, and it’s the strangest sound I’ve ever heard



The heat came early

in the parlor beside Margaret

slaves to it.

Static. No stations.

“You’re distracting me,” Margaret tells me without looking up.

“I’m checking for civilization.”



He’s pulling over.

The Alpha Correction Home and Estate.

Wide, low stone buildings, and a thousand windows that might as well be barred.

sun glancing off the wide doors. 

   

It was constantly flinging itself off the edge of my bed when I wasn’t looking