CHOLESTEROL-MONOXIDE
THE FIRST TIME Rodney saw the car, he couldn’t believe it was real, and for the time being he didn’t have to. He probably got some of the details wrong, anyway.
The car was bone white. Not in the superlative sense of “bone-white”, assuming that was something people did, but more like actual bones; that kind of yellow off-white. He’d never seen a bone that didn’t belong to a bird, but he heard they looked like that, and this car definitely, you know, looked like that. It was on the other lane, across the divider, wobbly like the driver was drunk. Or . . .
Or maybe the car was drunk.
Maybe Rodney was tired. He’d been choking down the I-45 for a few hours now, and as calm as the Vyvanse had him, it wasn’t any excuse not to take a break. Dallas was close, though. He’d stop in an hour, once he got there.
That was a mistake.
***
Rodney hadn’t gone an hour before he saw the car again. Couldn’t miss it. Couldn’t miss the feverish-red and choking-blue lights that twirled around its interiors. Couldn’t ignore the churning siren that screamed for him to pull over.
Something caught in his throat.
. . . no, he could do this. Vyvanse wasn’t strictly illegal, and neither was antique furniture. Besides, it wasn’t like he could’ve outrun the car on a straight line.
Rodney pulled over to the shoulder and waited. He’d be fine. He looked white. The Vyvanse was unmarked. The furniture was plain antique and was going to his friend. He’d be fine.
The first sign he’d been lying to himself came when the car awkwardly swerved onto the shoulder and rear-ended his own, and something in his chest tightened. Being rear-ended shouldn’t have had an associated “feel”; why, then, did it feel so wrong?
Rodney wasn’t going to be the first one out of the car, and the cop must’ve felt the same. He hadn’t been keeping an eye on the clock, so he wasn’t sure how long he’d sat there, waiting for something normal to happen as the humidity crept down his neck.
It was almost a relief, seeing the door open; “almost”, because that wasn’t quite right, either. There looked to be a bit of give to it, like the metal had to be pried off, like a piece of taffy being pulled from the whole. It didn’t look like the kind of illusion Rodney would’ve seen on a hot road, and he certainly wasn’t far enough away for those to be a problem. Maybe.
A boot stepped out. Pivoted, dragged something with it. A shape unfolding out of the car. Cop.
Rodney swallowed, and waited.
The cop ambled over to Rodney as gracefully as he’d driven, all wobbly and zig-zaggy. There was still no question he’d make it to Rodney, but in seconds or minutes?
No, focus. Relax. Look the cop in the eye, like it’s a wild animal. Say as little as possible. That was what you did in the event of a cop, right?
Rodney looked out the window, and the cop looked back through glossy sunglasses.
Right, right.
Rodney nodded, rolled down the window, and tried as hard as he could to focus on whatever was behind those sunglasses. “Is- is there a problem, officer?”
“Is there a problem, officer?”
Rodney blinked. The cop had spoken the words back as if he were a vicious child, or perhaps a vicious adult speaking to a child. It was the kind of thing that might have confirmed Rodney’s worst fears, if he’d had grasp enough of the situation to conceptualize one.
The cop pulled his face away from the window, standing to a full height of six foot something. He was . . . well, he was shockingly normal. Dressed like a Texas State Patroller, probably, something Rodney would have been able to confirm if he’d strayed much from Galveston. Rodney was unsure why his eyes continued darting around for something to disprove him for a mirage, or why he smelled faintly of lemon juice.
The cop cleared his throat, which is where Rodney’s eyes inexplicably focused. “Do you know why I had to stop you?”
Rodney opened his—
“No, you don’t, do you? That’s your problem, ain’t it?”
Mouth was dry. “ . . . I . . . I don’t understand what you mean, s-sir.”
The cop laughed, harsh and without warning, like a substitution for some kind of violence. Then, with even less warning, the cop was scowling again. “The Ay Gee Tee Gee You Tee, Section 23. You’re in violation of the third article of faith, which means you’re in violation of all six. That’s not even a jail sentence, kid; jail’s what you wish you got.”
Rodney blinked.
“Tell me, kid.” The officer leaned against the car door, and Rodney’s eyes found themselves locked out of his sunglasses. “What’s your story?”
“I’m, I’m a . . . I’m a mechanic, sir.” The words had forced themselves out of Rodney’s mouth. “I, you know, I fix things for people.”
“Bet you dig holes, cause that’s a boring way to start.” The cop smiled. His teeth were far too white. “I want to hear your story, not your backstory. You gotta have something of worth tucked away under all that mud.”
The cop reached through the window, touching Rodney lightly on the neck. His hand was feverishly warm.
“I think it started when I was a kid.” He hadn’t said that. “That’s when you’re watching cartoons too much, getting lost in . . . fiction, you know, books and movies and lots of these parallel worlds.” He definitely hadn’t said that. “And you, uh, you wonder: why here? What’s so special about the flesh, blood, the dirt and the concrete and, and everything else?” No matter what came out of his mouth, Rodney especially hadn’t confessed to that.
The cop’s finger hadn’t moved from Rodney’s neck. “Well, that’s all it is, isn’t it? Laws are dirtsprout documents for dirt like Pasadena and dirt like you, worth the dirt it’s printed on.” He laughed again, and it was even more apparent that this was some kind of punishment. “You’ve got a dream there’s more than that?”
“There . . . there has to be, y’know?” Rodney shivered, and tried fruitlessly to pull away from the cop’s warm and sticky finger. “Something beyond living like an animal. Being, you know, being your best self. I mean, I’m transporting antiques to my friend, don’t you know?” While the rest of Rodney froze at the confession that had almost certainly secured a few more hours with the cop, his mouth continued. “That’s not just . . . I mean, would an animal do that?”
“Total depravity, broski.” The cop’s smile barely kept itself from melting into a full-blown snarl. “Neurochemical in, neurochemical out. Your body ain’t nothin’ but dirt, and it ain’t got a place in a perfect autobahdy.”
The cop peeled his finger from Rodney’s neck; the sweat, if that was what it was, had congealed into a boogery consistency, making a disgusting squishing noise on the way back. Rodney immediately put his car into drive and peeled away.
He got as far as maybe three hundred feet before his back tires sizzled into a slurry, grinding his vehicle to a halt.
“Oh, too bad! You almost got away from me, there.” The cop seemed to be yelling in the same intonation in which he talked, save an increase in volume. “Might not want to exit the car, though, got a real nasty puddle pooling ‘round the bend.” Its words were followed by a sudden sizzling from the front.
The cop, once more, took its sweet time ambling toward the car; the malice behind every zig and zag was even more apparent. Had it wanted to prolong Rodney’s torment? Was it some coded message of violence? Rodney’s mind was racing as if, somehow, piecing together the cop’s puzzle would save him, even as his empty gut roiled itself in knots over the inevitable death or worse that awaited.
Rodney’s mind rifled through the items in the car. Most of the furniture was stuck in either the hatch or the back seat; of them, the antique lamp was the only thing he could feasibly pull out. His glove compartment didn’t have anything but pills, and he didn’t need to give the cop anything more to arrest him for. The bottles on the floor of his car were plastic, of no use in a fight. Maybe . . . maybe he could just close the window and hide.
Rodney looked out his window to gauge his remaining time, and nearly leapt out of his skin to see the officer standing in front of his door, pearly whites glistening through a chimpanzee’s grin.
The cop stuck a finger onto Rodney’s neck, too fast for the window to go more than a third of the way up.
“W-what do you even want me to say?” Rodney couldn’t shut his mouth. “That I, that I don’t belong? That I’m a parasite in a host I don’t want to guest inside? That every time I turn on this car, every time I pick up groceries or go to the movies or get, you know, get gas that the weight of it all puts a hairline fracture where it hurts? I don’t want to take up space. I don’t think anyone wants that!”
“Awful elephant for a cheap tick.”
“I . . . I can’t help it.” Rodney tried to move his left hand back to the window button. “I’ve got cousins in the third world. How do I look ‘em in the eye and tell them my grocery commute’s worth a cut of their future? Transcendental’s all I fuckin’ have, man.”
“Then I guess you got nothing, man.” It snickered, like it was being funny, somehow, and hardly noticed Rodney’s hand reaching for the window button. “Don’t you think people who are worth nothing deserve to die?” It paused. “ . . . I don’t know if I’m talking about you or your cousins. I don’t think either of you deserve to live. They probably feed off the road, too. I’ve heard it’s a lovely road trip, wherever it is. Hard to make a road trip look ugly. Maybe the people on it.”
Rodney forced himself to think: “Come on, you know, look into my eyes.” Miraculously, the cop did. “There’s something behind it, right? Not a big lump of meat with no reason. You gotta value some of that, yeah? Something like—”
Whatever Rodney was going to say next didn’t matter, because the window suddenly pulled up, ripping the cop’s finger off of his cheek and pinning its arm between the window and the frame, where it—
—cleanly sliced off, spilling a foul green slime over the door.
Rodney screamed, pulling away barely in time to avoid much more than a spot on his sleeve. Whatever it was ate clean through, dropping onto the seat and continuing to eat through that. That it only took a bead-sized hole out of the seat was offset by the mess of slime sizzling out of the wiggling bit of arm, taking everything it sunk into and leaving only a sharp scent of rotten lemons in its wake.
The cop cackled, slamming its good hand on the roof of the car. “Mundane shit, man, that’s an assault charge on top of loitering, and if it gets to the engine you get manslaughter on top. I’m really gonna have to flip you inside-out like a turkey after this one, broratio.”
Something gave, and the car tilted to the left. Rodney choked against his seatbelt on the way to the passenger seat. He probably made it to the other side, once the slime had melted through his beltage. Hard to make sense. Much to think about.
The cop pushed through the driver’s side door with its stump, like a finger breaking through wet tissue paper that burnt and hissed and meant certain death if Rodney didn’t cling to the passenger seat for dearest life. “You still there, Hot Rod? You’ve got a date with Moloch. ‘Nice to eat you’, he says.”
Rodney’s fingers smacked their way across the door for the handle, forcing it open and almost, almost scuttling the rest of him into the shallow pool of slime collecting outside. It took all Rodney’s effort not to stumble back again.
The cop’s stump was still poking through when Rodney looked back, wiggling around like it was trying to widen the hole. A thick membrane was scabbing over the stump, barely keeping the wound closed even as the cop’s arm spewed and spewed and spewed. That was what it sounded like. Rodney couldn’t look at the rest of his arm. He couldn’t.
“This is normally where I read you your rights, yeah?” The cop laughed, like it had just said something funny, and Rodney laughed too because it was funny, wasn’t it? “Okay, okay, ‘ll bite.” A terrible horking sound came from its general direction. “You have the right to remain sizzling. Anything you say will be ignored. Yaldabaoth, your Lord and Father, has the right to expel anything found scuttling throughout his vascular system. Armilus, your Lord and King, has the right to enforce his laws. Moloch, your Lord and Savior, has the right to claim burnt offerings from the useless dregs of this lukewarm nation. You are afforded damnation through the gospel of Rousas John Rushdoony, for thus his screeds speak for themselves: ‘Yaldabaoth, who art in the heavens, dreaded be his name. His maw draws close, his hungers insatiable, on this solitary archonate of dirt and flesh. Give him your flesh, and suffer in your unconditional depravity, as all your kind suffers, and think not for one second you’ll be anything more than—’”
The car rocked violently to the right, throwing Rodney out of the passenger door and onto the grass. He almost missed the high-pitched shrieking from the other side of the car, more of a testament to the shock than any quality of the screaming. It rang too sharp to fully ignore.
It took Rodney a while to realize he was curled up on a cool patch of prairie grass, still very much alive.
Rodney stood up, turning back to what remained of his car. The first thing that struck him was the overpowering miasma of lemon-spiked mist sizzling out of his vehicle, or what remained of it; the slurry of melting plastic and metal was beginning to look less like a car and more like . . . it didn’t look like anything, really. It struck Rodney that the officer was either nowhere to be seen, or eminently seeable in the acid splattered over his car.
It took a reasonable effort to approach, and unfortunately, his worst instincts had been right. Rodney’s car didn’t look like his car because it wasn’t just his car: it was also a state patrol car, crunchy and totaled, but quite real.
Whatever the first officer had been, it had melted the left side of his Civic through, giving the impression that it was absorbing the patroller. Both had welded together to the point where the only way to tell where the patroller ended and the Civic began was the shattered windshield of the . . .
. . . oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.
Rodney ran past the wreck to look for the human officer. It wasn’t hard to find him, neck broken, run across the asphalt like sandpaper, with naught but a broken brown bottle to cling to. There was nothing to be done to save his life.
The dying cop twitched, and for a moment it looked as if the road twitched with him.