SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

After school she walked to the gas station. Usually when she got to work she’d buy some chips or a chocolate bar, get whoever was going off shift to ring it up so nobody could say she hadn’t paid for it.

“How come I’m not hungry?” she asked when she had the place to herself.

You are; you just can’t perceive it.

It was a quiet night. The gas station across the highway had posted a half cent lower so everyone was going there. Usually she’d go stir crazy from boredom but today she just zoned out. Badly photocopied faces stared at her from the posters taped to the cigarette cabinet overhead.

An SUV pulled up to pump number three. A bull elk was strapped to the hood, tongue lolling.

“What was the deal with the bear?” she said.

The bear’s den was adjacent to our crash site. It was killed by the concussive wave.

“Crash site. A spaceship?”

Yes. Unfortunate for the bear, but very fortunate for us.

“You brought the bear back to life. Healed it.”

Yes.

“And before finding me you were just riding around in the bear.”

Yes. It was attracted by the scent of your blood.

“So you saw what happened to me. You watched.” She should be upset, shouldn’t she? But her mind felt dull, thoughts thudding inside an empty skull.

We have no access to the visual cortex.

“You’re blind?”

Yes.

“What are you?”

A form of bacteria.

“Like an infection.”

Yes.

The door chimed and the hunter handed over his credit card. She rang it through. When he was gone she opened her mouth to ask another question, but then her gut convulsed like she’d been hit. She doubled over the counter. Bile stung her throat.

He’d been here on Saturday.

Jessica had been on the phone, telling mom’s voice mail that she’d walk out to Talbot Lake after work. While she was talking she’d rung up a purchase, $32.25 in gas and a pack of smokes. She’d punched it through automatically, cradling the phone on her shoulder. She’d given him change from fifty.

An ordinary man. Hoodie. Cap.

Jessica, breathe.

Her head whipped around, eyes wild, hands scrambling reflexively for a weapon. Nobody was at the pumps, nobody parked at the air pump. He could come back any moment. Bring his knife and finish the job.

Please breathe. There’s no apparent danger.

She fell to her knees and crawled out from behind the counter. Nobody would stop him, nobody would save her. Just like they hadn’t saved all those dead and missing girls whose posters had been staring at her all summer from up on the cigarette cabinet.

When she’d started the job they’d creeped her out, those posters. For a few weeks she’d thought twice about walking after dark. But then those dead and missing girls disappeared into the landscape. Forgotten.

You must calm down.

Now she was one of them.

We may not be able to bring you back again.

She scrambled to the bathroom on all fours, threw herself against the door, twisted the lock. Her hands were shuddering, teeth chattering like it was forty below. Her chest squeezed and bucked, throwing acid behind her teeth.

There was a frosted window high on the wall. He could get in, if he wanted. She could almost see the knife tick-tick-ticking on the glass.

No escape. Jessica plowed herself into the narrow gap between the wall and toilet, wedging herself there, fists clutching at her burning chest as she retched bile onto the floor. The light winked and flickered. A scream flushed out of her and she died.

A fist banged on the door.

“Jessica, what the hell!” Her boss’s voice.

A key scraped in the lock. Jessica gripped the toilet and wrenched herself off the floor to face him. His face was flushed with anger and though he was a big guy, he couldn’t scare her now. She felt bigger, taller, stronger, too. And she’d always been smarter than him.

“Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing, I’m fine.” Better than fine. She was butterfly-light, like if she opened her wings she could fly away.

“The station’s wide open. Anybody could have waltzed in here and walked off with the till.”

“Did they?”

His mouth hung open for a second. “Did they what?”

“Walk off with the fucking till?”

“Are you on drugs?”

She smiled. She didn’t need him. She could do anything.

“That’s it,” he said. “You’re gone. Don’t come back.”

A taxi was gassing up at pump number one. She got in the back and waited, watching her boss pace and yell into his phone. The invincible feeling faded before the tank was full. By the time she got home Jessica’s joints had locked stiff and her thoughts had turned fuzzy.

All the lights were on. Gran was halfway into her second bottle of u-brew red so she was pretty out of it, too. Jessica sat with her at the kitchen table for a few minutes and was just thinking about crawling to bed when the phone rang.

It was Mom.

“Did you send someone to pick me up on the highway?” Jessica stole a glance at Gran. She was staring at her reflection in the kitchen window, maybe listening, maybe not.

“No, why would I do that?”

“I left you messages. On Saturday.”

“I’m sorry, baby. This phone is so bad, you know that.”

“Listen, I need to talk to you.” Jessica kept her voice low.

“Is it your grandma?” Mom asked.

“Yeah. It’s bad. She’s not talking.”

“She does this every time the residential school thing hits the news. Gets super excited, wants to go up north and see if any of her family are still alive. But she gives up after a couple of days. Shuts down. It’s too much for her. She was only six when they took her away, you know.”

“Yeah. When are you coming home?”

“I got a line on a great job, cooking for an oil rig crew. One month on, one month off.”

Jessica didn’t have the strength to argue. All she wanted to do was sleep.

“Don’t worry about your Gran,” Mom said. “She’ll be okay in a week or two. Listen, I got to go.”

“I know.”

“Night night, baby,” Mom said, and hung up.

Jessica waited alone for the school bus. The street was deserted. When the bus pulled up the driver was chattering before she’d even climbed in.

“Can you believe it? Isn’t it horrible?” The driver’s eyes were puffy, mascara swiped to a gray stain under her eyes.

“Yeah,” Jessica agreed automatically.

“When I saw the news I thought it was so early, nobody would be at work. But it was nine in the morning in New York. Those towers were full of people.” The driver wiped her nose.

The bus was nearly empty. Two little kids sat behind the driver, hugging their backpacks. The radio blared. Horror in New York. Attack on Washington. Jessica dropped into the shotgun seat and let the noise wash over her for a few minutes as they twisted slowly through the empty streets. Then she moved to the back of the bus.

When she’d gotten dressed that morning her jeans had nearly slipped off her hips. Something about that was important. She tried to concentrate, but the thoughts flitted from her grasp, darting away before she could pin them down.

She focused on the sensation within her, the buck and heave under her ribs and in front of her spine.

“What are you fixing right now?” she asked.

An ongoing challenge is the sequestration of the fecal and digestive matter that leaked into your abdominal cavity.

“What about the stuff you mentioned yesterday? The intestine and the…whatever it was.”