William Rose - Shut the Fuck Up and Die!

While they had still been in the car and waiting for his bleeding to stop, Matt had suggested that she put the thing out of its misery. They’d been able to see it clearly: the way its body twitched with spasms of pain, the quick plumes of steam that snorted through its flared nostrils, how it had gradually lost the strength to even hold its head up any longer. It probably had been suffering… but, in all honesty, Mona had been perfectly fine with that.

Let the damn thing finish out the remaining moments of its life in pain and fear. Served the fucker right… it had derailed their trip, wrecked their car, and—most importantly—hurt Matt. Why should it be allowed peace when the man she loved, the only man in the world who mattered, probably felt like his face had gone twelve rounds with Rocky Balboa?

“Didn’t realize we went off the road. Seemed like there was suddenly just this tree in our way.”

At some point during the wreck, the car had apparently went over a small embankment. Not steep enough to have caused them to flip, thank God, but the hillside was marred with deep, muddy ruts that looked like open wounds on the snow-covered earth.

For a moment, they stood with their arms wrapped around one another and listened to the soft ticking of the cooling engine. Though the clouds of steam had long since dissipated, the smell of antifreeze still hung in the air like the scent of a sweet flower.

Matt held his hand out and the keys jangled softly as he pressed a button on the black fob. Two quick chirps filled the night in perfect synchronicity with the flashing of the taillights. Mona shook her head and laughed in a way that only Mattie could coax from her: it was as if the sound simply bubbled up from inside her, as light and free as a bird in the sky.

“What?”

He tried to suppress his own grin as he looked at his wife, yet his voice still quivered with amusement.

“We wouldn’t want anyone stealing that fine automobile of ours, now would be?”

“Oh, no. Heaven forbid. I hear there’s quite a market for crushed up Hondas. All the cool kids are driving them these days.”

Matt squeezed her as best as he could through the thick layers of parka that separated them and then touched the tip of her nose with the cold, vinyl finger of his glove.

“Stick with me, kiddo, and we’ll own five crushed up Hondas.”

He pulled the zipper on her jacket so that it was snugly beneath her chin and then cinched the drawstrings of the fur-lined hood.

“Come on, Nanook… let’s get going. It’s fuckin’ freezing out here.”

“Tell me about it. You reckon we can find help, baby? I haven’t seen a car since we turned off that four lane.”

Matt held Mona’s hand tightly as he helped her up the incline, taking care to ensure that she didn’t slip in the mud.

“We better.”

Once they’d crested the hill, Matt looked in both directions as if trying to decide which way they should go.

“Otherwise there’s a good chance that we’re gonna die out here.”

The truck bounced over the ruts in the country road with enough force that the passenger had to brace himself with one hand against the dashboard and the other pressed into the roof. The suspension creaked and popped as tires crunched through snow and every so often there was a loud thump from the bed at the same time the man bounced off the ripped vinyl seat like a rodeo cowboy.

“Damn it, Earl, slow the fuck down!”

The driver grinned but said nothing as he gripped the steering wheel with hands so large that it made the cracked leather look like a child’s toy. Perhaps the extra weight the man carried around his midsection achored him more solidly to gravity than his lanky companion: his gut spilled across his waistline, overlapped a belt buckle shaped like a confederate flag, and caused his white tee shirt to ride up just below his navel. . The broad ass that spread across the seat, however, remained firmly planted in the trough it had forced into the springs and cushion over the years. Even the trucker’s cap perched atop his scraggly mass of brown hair stayed in place, not so much as even jiggling as the front wheels plummeted into another snow-encrusted groove.

Whereas the driver’s unshaven jowls were exaggerated even further by a smile, the passenger’s narrow face held the expression of a man who expected to meet the Grim Reaper just around the next bend. His eyes were wide and round with pupils dilated both by the darkness of the night and also by the panic that made him his heart feel as if it were about to leap into the narrow confines of his throat. Thin lips quivered beneath a mustache that randomly curled over the chapped, pink flesh below them and his sunken cheeks were flushed with the warmth of fear. Even beneath the green coveralls that engulfed him, it was obvious that the man’s entire body was trembling.

The truck slid around a curve in the road, the rear wheels drifting in a way that made it seem as if the back half of the vehicle were moving independently of the front. The driver jerked the wheel in the opposite direction as he let out a whoop and his passenger slammed into the door. From the bed of the truck came a sound like plastic sliding across metal, immediately followed by another thud.

“You’re gonna kill the both of us, Earl! If you don’t slow the hell down, I swear t’ God I’m tellin’ Mama.”

The smile disappeared from the driver’s face as quickly as the flakes of snow melted on the warm windshield. He shot his brother a glance that could have flash frozen that same slush as his lips pulled back into a sneer.

“You ain’t telling Mama shit. I’ll pound your ass so hard, Daryl, you won’t see straight for a week, hear?”

Daryl stiffened and dropped his gaze to the empty beer bottles that clinked against one another in the floor board. He swallowed hard and then looked back up.

“I… I don’t care. I’d rather take an ass whoopin’ than die. And Mama would have your hide if she knew you were drivin’ like…”

“I ain’t scared of Mama, you little pussy.”

Earl’s voice was softer and his foot eased off the gas pedal just enough that the bumps would no longer jar his brother’s spine and cause his teeth to clack against one another. He adjusted the brim of his hat with one hand, looked at himself in the rear view mirror, and scratched his chin. For a moment, neither man spoke: now that the truck no longer clunked with the washboard like ridges in the road, the soft strains of Willie Nelson singing Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain crackled through the dashboard speakers, fading in an out through the hiss of the heater like a memory that refused to surface.

“I ain’t scared of Mama.” Earl finally repeated. “But, at the same time, I reckon she could live the rest of her life without knowing ‘bout this little argument of ours. Sound about right, Daryl?”

Daryl only realized he’d been holding his breath when he let it free with a quick sigh. The air pulled the tension that had gripped his muscles for past ten miles from his body and he slouched back in the seat as he closed his eyes.

“Right as rain, brother… right as rain….”

Ten minutes later, the rusted Dodge pulled onto a wide place on the shoulder of the road. Its headlights punched holes in the darkness that surrounded it, illuminating the trunks of trees that were clustered together so tightly that it almost seemed as if they were seeking shelter from the frigid wind that whipped through their boughs. Some of the branches glistened beneath sheaths of ice and they clicked against one another like chattering teeth as the truck’s engine rumbled and sputtered below. Except for these sounds the night was silent: no owls or whippoorwills called out from the forest, no insects chirped amid the rustle of unseen creatures slipping through the underbrush. It was almost as if Winter had laid claim to everything living thing within those dark woods, swallowing them into the glacial caverns of its gullet where the warmth and light of the sun would never touch them again.