Star
“Welcome to Las Vegas! Bienvenidos!” flashed the old sign in Remy’s headlights. This was my first time in Vegas. I honestly thought it would be different circumstances and... well, a different Vegas.
We had landed in Las Vegas, New Mexico, instead.
We’d been riding for hours, and this was where we stopped? I’d never heard of the place and, by the massive swaths of deserted buildings and worn-down roads with no hope of being fixed, apparently neither had the rest of the country either.
Remy pushed his Kawasaki so fast and hard, it felt like we’d ridden back in time. There was nothing out here. The blocky, painted brick buildings were reminiscent of deep, Spanish colonial roots – a ceremonial town that existed only because it forgot to die. This was the kind of town a person could easily disappear in. I now knew why we were in Lost Vegas New Mexico. Or at least, I thought I did.
With Remy, one can never truly know anything.
Remy’s rocket sped us through the dusty, dead center of town. The glowing green and blue display above the gaudy bank pulsed the time. We’d been riding for five hours!
Had it really been that long?
We hadn’t spoken much since we left Muse’s Place aside from a quick pit stop to let me pee. Remy asked me if I was okay. I didn’t really know how to answer that, so we both just got back on and kept riding.
I kept picturing the bodies left in Remy’s wake, littering all around him like he was the center of a furious whirlwind. And here I was standing in the center, raging winds all around me, watching anything that got too close get chewed up.
Jesus… Remy shot his own friend Tee just to keep me alive.
Why was I the anomaly?
Whenever I had the courage to pull my face from his muscled back on the long ride, I couldn’t fight the urge to look over my shoulder for those who might already be pursuing us. I expected to see this Tolkienesque army of bikers, fire and bloodlust carving a dark scar across the barren wilderness.
Of course, there was nothing except that long stretch of infinite black. That silence felt worse somehow like the calm before the storm or like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The idea of riding off with Remy into the sunset was alluring, but it didn’t fit. It was too clean. Too Hollywood. If there were a happy ending in store for us, it would be hard fought.
We’d have to pay for it in pounds of flesh. Of that, I had no doubt.
I didn’t know much about the kill teams that were supposedly on our heels, but the name certainly painted a vivid picture.
A picture in red.
I was scared. How could I not be? Everything was so up in the air. I didn’t know where we were or where we were headed. At the speeds we’d been riding, talking to him was impossible. He had been leaning forward so I had been leaning forward. One wrong move and I would become a bird for a very short time.
Still, despite the danger looming around every corner, I felt glad to be wrapped around Remy. I’d always had a weakness for strong, confident men, and although one got me in trouble before, nobody could compare to Remy. Remy could spit in the Devil’s eye and dare him to move, and I’d put the odds at about half that the Devil would.
For most of the ride, I’d been immersed in haunting memories so recent that I still felt their various sensations. Top’s concrete hands pulling my thighs apart, Rio’s horrid rancid breath on my cheek, and the sting of Muse’s fine-toothed glare when she sized me up in the hallway.
Muse…
I hated her more than the rest, more than even Top. I knew right away what to expect from the massive grief-rattled MC President. But Muse cut me to the bone. I trusted her, and she served me to the wolves on a silver platter. I hated Muse as much as I’d grown to love Gloria. Gloria was a lone sunbeam trapped in a dirty mason jar.
I could only imagine what must be going on in Remy’s head. He’d lost everything today. His family, his livelihood, everything he’d ever known all gone because of some stupid, spoiled girl.
When they voted to kill me, Remy denied his whole MC family just to protect me. I burned that one defiant moment into my mind and would see that whenever I thought about Remy.
I squeezed him tighter and hoped beyond all else that he let me put more cracks in that stone shell around his heart. I needed to know him. I yearned to bathe in the light of his love. I didn’t care that it was a toxic glow which might get me killed.
I didn’t care one bit.
Even sleepy Vegas vanished behind us. I thought we’d never stop. That is, until we pulled into the “Pick and Pay,” a closed-for-the-evening convenience store.
I slid off the bike and stretched. I felt like I’d just gotten off a boat except that I was numb from the waist down and had yet to regain my “land-lubber’s” legs.
Most of the residual vibration was from the ride, but I caught myself biting at the corner of my bottom lip when I realized that some of it – that soreness deep within me – was from him. The dented hood of that car. Remy’s sweating body sliding on top of me. I had to shake those incredible thoughts from my head. There would be time for that later.
Plenty of time, I hoped.
Remy hunched forward over the handlebars, running both hands over his face and through his wind-tossed, mid-length hair then just stared off into the distance. He was both within arm’s reach and also a million miles away. It had been a long ride, Remy had to have been exhausted.
“Are you okay?” I asked tentatively.
Remy didn’t answer, instead he tugged a crushed pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket. Dark thoughts marred his handsome features, and it was only when he lit the cigarette that I saw his hands were slightly shaking. It wasn’t just the vibrations of the long ride that crept into his bones. It was something else.
Something far more painful.
“Remy?” My fingertips grazed his bare shoulder. We’d tossed his shirt before he killed Rio. Tingling queasiness rose in my ribs. The image of Remy’s thumb in the man’s eye socket made my stomach turn.
I shrank away, but he grabbed my hand and led me back on the bike. I landed side-saddle on the gas tank. Were it not for his strong legs, the explosive force jerking me toward him would’ve knocked the bike over with us beneath it.
My shoulders were pinned back against the metal bars, and the edge of the small windshield pushed into my spine as I lay awkwardly across the bike. His fiery eyes mirrored the burning cherry tip of the lit cigarette. He breathed me in like the smoke.
What was he looking for?
“What is it?” I asked, my heartbeat accelerating under his heavy gaze.
He let me up, turned me around, then snuggled my back against him. Leaning up against the bike, we faced the same direction.
I think it was so I couldn’t look at him, or maybe it was so he couldn’t look at me.
“A ghost.” He exhaled a plume of smoke out the side of his mouth before flicking away the cigarette.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I felt his face press against the back of my head. His anguished breath was hot on my scalp.
“...Maria?” The name Muse told me slipped out of my mouth. I almost gasped when I heard myself say it. I desperately didn’t want to know. I was afraid of Maria for some absurd reason. Did he want me just because I looked like another girl? It was a hard thought to contemplate.
“Doesn’t matter anymore,” he said.
I sat motionless in his arms, hoping to hell he was telling the truth. Everything suddenly felt so fragile that a pinprick might come along and pop whatever was between us.
“Where are you from?” It was the first normal thing he’d ever asked me.
“New Hampshire. Manchester.” The ludicrous thought of introducing him to my parents almost made me laugh out loud.
“Is it nice there?” Remy’s voice in my ear was low and soothing but still distant.
Was he trying to put me at arm’s length? “Some parts. The fall is beautiful with all the changing leaves.” I smiled weakly, but it was gone in a flash.
“I’ve never seen leaves change color.”
Some part of me never thought we’d get this chance to talk to each other on anything other than a primal – carnal –level. It wasn’t that I thought Remy was dumb or anything, I mean it was clear the man was well-read. It’s just... I didn’t know.
I never thought we’d make it that far together.
“We should keep going,” he said finally.
I didn’t want to move at all at the moment. The way he held me... I felt like I was the most important woman in the world. I knew I wouldn’t get many of those feelings which made it was so damn hard to pull away, but I did.
If he had to push me off, it would’ve tarnished the moment.
He oscillated between making me feel like nobody and the most special person in his life. It was an awful rollercoaster ride.
When I stepped away, I saw that Remy’s hands were no longer shaking, and after several long breaths, he was fully in control. Whereas, I couldn’t even stop myself from fucking hiccupping fits.
Had he been trying to remember something or forget?
Whatever it was, he’d put it aside enough to focus on whatever task he felt was next.
“Why are we here?” I genuinely had no idea what we could be doing at a place like this, and Remy didn’t seem like the type to let us stop just to rest our legs.
“Didn’t have time to take my cut. We need some cash.” Remy went around the back of the store, scrutinizing the walls and nooks of the building as he walked.
It took me a moment to realize he was searching for surveillance cameras.
Oh my god, he was going to rob this place!
“Remy, wait!” I half-jogged after him. “Do we really have to do this?”
Given everything else I’ve seen him do, robbery ranked closer to neutral on the morality scale, but for some reason, pangs of guilt compelled me to at least try and stop him. Maybe it was because the “Pick and Pay” looked like a family-owned business, and I still had a lot of trouble shaking off what had happened to my aunt and uncle.
“Tough to pay for food, gas, or lodging without money. Desperation can only get you so far,” Remy spoke with the confident air of experience which hinted at what it must’ve been like growing up for him. He didn’t break his searching to talk with me. Instead, he just motioned for me to stay back just in case.
My stomach growled at the mention of food. I was really hungry. Fuck, I hadn’t eaten all day. Why’d he have to say that? “I still have that money you gave me!”
He looked at me with those heavy eyes then sighed in resignation. I
t would take more than that to dissuade me.
“You have fire, Star. It’s what saved your life.” The corner of his mouth spread into a devilish smile, but faded as quickly as it appeared. “But you don’t have the skin for this. We need to get you somewhere safe before my past catches up.”
“Don’t push me away, Remy. You brought me this far.”
“You didn’t deserve to die at a gas station.” His soft words were barely audible.
“I can help you. I’ve always been good at reading people. Tell me what your plan is. Let me help you!”
“Godammit, Star! Are you fucking suicidal?” Remy blew up. His volume stayed steady, but his tone sharply hardened like a deadly spike of ice hanging over a doorway.
I backpedaled a step.
He saw that and softened immediately. “I have a nasty way of getting the people around me killed. My own brother is dead because I was careless.”
I hesitantly reclaimed my step toward him and put a hand out for him. He really hadn’t had the time to cope with his brother’s murder, and I wanted to comfort him.
“I don’t want your fucking pity.” He slapped my hand away then slid a hand on along the side of my face and forced me to look him dead in the eyes. “You need to understand. Without protection, everyone will be coming after us. The kill teams, Los Lobos, the cops, everyone. There is no way this doesn’t end with your glasses under someone’s bloody boot. You need to go far away. To somewhere that’s safe. Safe from me.”
“I’m tougher than I look,” I offered with a surprising amount of resolve.
Remy snorted, turning away for a moment before continuing, “This thing I dragged you into – this life. Violence, chaos, blood. That’s home to me. That’s where I live. Not fucking Manchester, New Hampshire. I belong here…” Remy swept his hand out to the blackness of the highway. “You don’t.”
“I don’t have a home anymore!” I blurted at him.
Normal life wasn’t a fucking light switch I could just flip back on. New Hampshire felt like a cheap fairy tale now with nothing but painted false walls that hid actor egresses. It was a movie set town in my mind now – a pretty façade, but empty on the inside. How could I go back to that life now after everything that’s happened?
“And if you stay with me, you won’t have a future either,” he warned with a growl before pushing me away, then he kicked in the back door of the convenience store.
Rio’s punch hurt far less. I struggled to collect myself as Remy rummaged around inside. I went back to the bike in a daze. All I could do was wait for him to come out.
What was my place in Remy’s world? Would I just slow him down? Was I just weakness given form? Something that he had to lug around from one dangerous situation to the next?
No. I held my own against Rio.
Because of Remy, I’d found an inner strength I didn’t know I was capable of, and it felt good, even empowering. I would prove to him that I was worth the extra weight on the back of his bike. I was useful and resilient enough despite the horror. Maybe I could find my own place in the dark lifestyle.
I refused to let him abandon me.
A short time later, Remy walked out the front door with a plastic bag full of money and another with snacks. He flipped through the pages of a worn paperback novel that must’ve been the clerks with the casualness of a man who’d done nothing wrong. He was a man completely unbothered by consequences. If he wanted something, he took it.
I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not, but it did scare the hell out of me.
Remy tossed me the bag, having taken out a few protein bars and a bottle of water for himself.
At the sight of the small bounty, my stomach growled away any of my lingering principles against stealing the food. I was hungry enough that even off-brand bags of chips and super-artificial convenience store pastries looked way more appealing than they had any right to.
It was funny. Growing up, I was always taught to eat healthy. Sorry, Mom, but desperate times…
We ate in silence with me furtively glancing over at him from time to time. I wanted to rekindle that conversation we’d had right before he went in. I wanted to tell him how strong I was, how I could help him, and how I wasn’t scared of what was coming. Every time I’d mustered the courage to say something, the introspective look of determination on his face stopped me. Something seemed even more off-putting about him since he came out of the store.
Giving up on my appeal, I instead tried to feel him out, to discern what that look meant, but to no avail. What is going on in that conflicted mind of yours, Remy?
“Do you smell that?” The dim whiff of smoke caught my nose. I thought it was Remy smoking a cigarette at first, but he’d switched over to eating a bag of chips and reading. Besides, it was a different kind of smoke – more like burning tar paper-covered wood, old paint, and plastic.
“I lit the store on fire.” Remy finished the bag of chips, tossing it on the ground then drained a bottle of water.
“What?” I must’ve heard that wrong. Glancing over to building, I saw one of the windows flash with an orange glow.
Holy shit! The building was on fire!
“What the fuck, Remy! Why is the store on fire?” I gaped, my blood pumping faster.
“Localized surveillance cameras hardwired to a safe bolted to the floor. The safe wasn’t fire-rated. This way, I know they’re destroyed.” Remy reached past me and started the bike without getting on.
In the distance, fire engine sirens pierced the calm, predawn darkness.
“Shit! Shit! Shit! What do we do now?”
“There is no we.” Remy squinted at me. “You’re staying here.”
“What? No—”
“Get. Off.” He cut me off.
“Remy, don’t do this! You’re only in this situation because of me. I want to help you.”
Remy grabbed my arms, but this time, it hurt! His hands were steel traps devoid of even a fraction of the tenderness from earlier. He hauled me off the bike and then climbed on. “I warned you of who I was in the hall at Muse’s.” His eyes were cold and radiated simmering hostility. “Do you think that just because I saved your life that I love you? I don’t love anything! You’re nothing to me.”
I was mortified. I couldn’t find the strength to move. As the sirens grew louder, I hoped this was just some twisted joke. “Gotcha!” he would say, completely out of character, and we would ride off and evade the police.
No, of course not. That wasn’t the case.
“I can be helpful… Be worth my weight...” I grabbed his arm and stumbled horribly through the empowering speech I’d been rehearsing in my head.
“Star, get your hands off me. I don’t want to have to hurt you.” The approaching blue and red lights of the cop car accompanying the fire truck reflected off the store’s windows, casting Remy’s face in chilling, hellish shades, making him look truly monstrous.
If he didn’t care about me, why hadn’t he sped off yet? It wasn’t like I could physically stop him, but why wait until the police pulled in? Maybe I was wrong, though. Maybe he realized that he did make a mistake choosing me over his real family.
“Remy.” Even now, despite everything he said, I didn’t want to lose him even as his bike crawled forward. I couldn’t just let him go.
“Bitch! Get the fuck on, or I will fucking end you!” Remy yelled as the police cruiser and fire truck were arriving.
What? My expression twisted up. Did he just say get on?
Although Remy was definitely yelling at me, it felt like his yelling wasn’t actually for me. He glanced past me and yelled far too loudly for someone just a foot away. I’d seen Remy mad. His tone didn’t get louder, only...sharper. I didn’t know if I was just fooling myself, but all of this felt disingenuous.
Remy ripped open the plastic bag of money, scattering some across the pavement, then he shoved me. I never took my eyes off him as I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. He didn’t look at me after that.
“Freeze!” Police officers screamed. Remy disregarded the officers’ cries and sped off. One of them squeezed off a few rounds, but Remy’s bike was far too quick. They’d never catch him, and they knew it.
I laid there, crying on the cold pavement, as I watched him disappear like a waking dream.
“Stay where you are! Don’t move! What happened here?” The flashlights blinded me so I couldn’t figure out which officer was questioning me. I guess it really didn’t matter.
I finally noticed the heat emanating from the front door. God, this building went up so fast! Errant water spray from the fire truck’s hoses sprinkled me. The officers kept interrogating me, but I wasn’t talking. Impermeable. My senses shut down. Too much was happening.
Everything was too surreal.
“Your name, Miss. Tell us your name. I think she’s in shock.”
“Looks like there was a struggle, but cuff her just in case.”
When the officers flipped me onto my stomach and I felt the pinching chill of handcuffs, I gasped for air. I surfaced after what felt like a lifetime under water. The daze started lifting. “What’s going on?” Although I knew what was happening, the words came out automatically like it was something I was just supposed to ask in situations like these. Didn’t one of them ask my name? “My name is Star Keller.”
“Keller... that name—”
“Oh, shit! That’s the girl who was abducted in Oklahoma. Get those fucking cuffs off of her!”
An ambulance showed up some time later. After a thorough examination by the EMT, he cleared me and I was taken to the station. The ride, the questioning, the paperwork... I ate something at some point, I think.
I was so mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted that it all became a blur. I just didn’t care anymore. Remy’s last words ran laps in my head. I tried to make sense of it all, but there was nothing to make sense of. There was no normal to compare it to. What was left of me?
They asked me what happened. I told them I was kidnapped by bikers. They asked if I knew which club took me. I told them no. They asked me if could identify the man on the bike that took off. Again, I said no.
Why was I protecting him?
Some part of me knew I wasn’t protecting the Steel Veins from the police but that I was protecting myself from the Steel Veins. I think it was seeing how easily the officers at Muse’s Place were sent away that made me keep quiet. I wanted to trust them, I really did. I wanted to tell them everything down to the shape of Top’s bent dick, but I kept learning the hard way what happened when you trusted freely.
I mean, these were the same guys that showed up and put me in cuffs before even finding out who I was.
Professor Baker back home, Muse, and now Remy... Maybe my parents were right after all about always making the wrong kinds of friends. Somehow, I always found the worst people in life and orbited around them like a moon. Scorched in the light and frozen in the darkness.
The officers were all nice, but I could tell that it was because of a nagging worry over the potential of a PR shit-storm. “Abducted girl rescued from brutal biker gang only to be abused by local police!”
That would probably make an embarrassing headline for the Lost Vegas PD.
They told me I could call my parents, but I politely turned them down. It was too late for that – not for them but for me. I just wasn’t prepared for what would be a very long, very emotional call.
I’d always been a night owl, but dawn was usually a bit much for me. I walked across the quiet station and peered out the window at the brightening sky. Across the street was a traffic rotary with park in its center. The beautiful scorching hues of sunrise gave the few green trees surrounded by the rest of this dusty desert town an otherworldly glow.
Despite the surprisingly pretty view, my eyelids felt as if they were full of wet cement when I realized just how little I’d slept these past few days. Fortunately, one of the officers set me up on a couch in the coffee area just outside the grid of overworked, near-empty desks. They would have given me an actual prison cell, but none were empty, and they sure as hell weren’t having me share.
Heh, my first night in jail, I thought as I was given a blanket and pillow. I bet Remy wouldn’t ever be treated this nicely if he were ever picked up.
The moment my head touched the pillow I was done. I was exhausted to the point of near immobility, but when I closed my eyes, all I could see was Remy. My heart was so full with hurt that there was barely enough room for it to beat. Why would he save me just to abandon me? Well, I’d finally woken from an awful, violent nightmare and was now able to go home. I would get to step back into the warm, familiar shoes of my old life like nothing ever happened.
The tears came in force.
Why did it hurt so much? I was so angry at Remy, yet burned for him at the same time. He was unbridled adrenaline. I felt like I was so much more just by being near him. It was intoxicating. I was drunk off Remy like I was off Jonathan, but this time it was real, not just a dirty student crush.
I should be elated to even be alive, but being in this police station, knowing New Hampshire was my next stop, I felt like the part of me that was truly happy was starting to die off. I was free to go back to being the boring, timid version of myself that everyone overlooked or took for granted. I was free to be a burden on my parents who would again, have to pick up my pieces.
In my freedom, I was poisoned.
Finally – mercifully – the calm of sleep finally took me.
I awoke to a biblical-level of commotion in the mid-morning. The station was filled with people running around and yelling on the phone. For such a small town, I couldn’t believe that this amount of activity was normal.
Something big must’ve happened.
I stood up as fast as I could, but my ass, legs and arms were still sore from where Remy pushed me off the bike.
The officers were strapping on thick, bulletproof vests and divvying out larger weapons like shotguns and assault rifles. It was like something out of a movie.
War came to sleepy Las Vegas, New Mexico.
I was so swept up in all the excitement that I kept catching myself looking around for Remy even though it wouldn’t make sense for him to be here. At least not on this side of the bars. I guess I’d come to associate Remy with action, and despite myself, it made my heart race a little.
I couldn’t deny the thrill of being so close to it all.
I rubbed the last of the stubborn weariness out of my eyes. “What’s going on?” I asked the older blonde lady at the desk across from where I’d just been sleeping.
“Police business, ma’am. Nothing to worry about,” she curtly replied after hanging up the phone. The officer had cropped, short hair and carried herself with the same hard demeanor as the other men and women gearing up.
When I saw the handles of the wheelchair behind her, I understood why she wasn’t getting ready as well. “It’s Ms. Keller, right?”
“Star is fine.” I attempted a polite smile. “Is everything okay?”
“Nothing we can’t handle,” she said with a confident toughness that only came from hard experience. She asked me to hold on as she answered the phone.
I watched her without feeling any pity for her. If anything, I felt a sense of commonality. We both survived something potentially life-ending and we were still here. By the way she’d talked to others both on the phone and to those who came up to her, she had a demeanor that demanded respect. She was the kind of person who lived on her own terms.
I wanted the strength that she had.
“You’re not being charged with anything. You can call your parents if you’d like.” The officer’s stern face cracked me a small, disarming smile.
My parents? With the thought of them came the crushing weakness of the person I’d once been. I began to dread that life. “Yeah.” A pang of dread stabbed me in the ribs. “I should call them.”
“You can use that desk in the corner.” She pointed across the bustling room then immediately went back to work.
I gave the officers a wide berth on my way to the empty desk. The room was wider than it was long. Drop ceilings and carpets made it look like countless of other office buildings I’d seen before. I strolled slowly to absorb as much as I could, as I desperately wanted to know what all the commotion was about. With everyone talking over each other and phones and walkie-talkies going off, everything was so loud and layered. Once I reached the desk, I closed my eyes and focused on the fragments of conversation to piece together what was going on.
“Shots fired at the Super 8! Emergency Responders—”
“—Martinez is down!”
“—have SWAT team en route. ETA in—”
“—looks like it’s Los Lobos—”
“Yessir! It might be connected to the fire at the Pick and Pay. Both have connections to Lobos and—”
What was I doing?
My eyes opened. I wasn’t in that world anymore. I was safe now. I needed to let it go.
As the officers filed out the front door, I picked up the phone and dialed my mom’s cell, surprised I actually remembered her number. I had grown so accustomed to just calling people’s faces or names that it was easy to forget the actual digits.
More fragments caught my ear through the dial tone. “—rival motorcycle gang. Best guess? The Steel Veins out of Oklahoma. Put me thro—”
“Hello?” The curiosity in my mother’s voice at the unknown number was both hopeful and cautious.
I opened my mouth to speak, knowing that I could be on a plane home in a few hours. This was where my story ended.
“Confirmed. At least one member of the Steel Veins MC. Proceed with extreme caution,” the officer in the wheelchair warned over her walkie-talkie. She was one of the very few that remained here at the station. She barked commands with a phone in each hand, occasionally snapping her fingers for other officers to come over and execute her orders. She seemed to be organizing everything. Despite whatever happened to her, she chose to be here and because of that, she’d become indispensable.
“Hello? Is there anyone there?” my mother asked again.
I reached over and mashed my fingers on the switch hook, killing the call.
I had a choice, too.
If the Steel Veins were at that hotel, then that probably meant Remy was too.
So what? He abandoned you. It’s obvious that he doesn’t want you.
Was it, though? For the first time I looked past the torrent of emotions and broke down what actually had happened.
He’d gone to extreme lengths to pull me out of danger. If it was just for sex, why bring me to New Mexico? He could have easily given me to Tee and the other biker. Then there was the convenience store. He was so different when he came out. He wasn’t distant. He was deliberating! He’d made up his mind. He left me there knowing I’d get picked up by the police… Then the show when they arrived and how he demanded I get on the bike after telling me to get off. He was giving me probable deniability. The cops would think I escaped from him rather than being abandoned.
Remy was trying to save me again…
Well, fuck him! I didn’t want to be saved this time!
No. People had been making decisions for me my whole, fucking life. I didn’t want to get sent to the armpit of the Midwest for some bullshit degree that I didn’t want. I didn’t want to be taken by bikers and almost gang-raped to death.
And I didn’t ask to be saved from Remy.
I rooted around the desk until I found a set of car keys. I knocked over a small picture frame of the man’s family in the process. The frame held a Christmas scene – a pregnant wife, a little boy, and even the dog all wearing ugly sweaters. It was sweet. I promised myself that I’d take good care of the car and abandon it the first chance I had. Then I’d leave an anonymous tip where it could be found. I’m sorry, Vasquez family, but I really needed this right now. I had made up my mind.
I hesitated. Some of my righteousness dissipated. Stealing a car was an actual crime. This was a serious line I was about to cross.
I had a dream once when I was very little that always stayed with me. Well, two dreams actually. In one of them, I was on an island being chased around by people-sized forks and knives which was probably some residual anxiety over always being told to finish my dinner.
But the second dream was intense for a sheltered, eight-year-old girl who came from a quiet town…
Years later when I started college, my roommate was all about studying the meaning of dreams. The Gateway to the Subconscious was a club she had that held its meetings in my dorm room. Which also meant there was no escape when I was too hungover to move.
Their meetings, which were too esoteric for my tastes, weren’t as bad as I thought they’d be, but that was probably because they always brought weed with them. I did try not to be close-minded, but to me, there was nothing mystical about dreams. They were basically just a messy filing system that organized all the crap you saw the past few days, and yeah, every once in a while, it occasionally hiccupped into a nightmare or some really crazy shit. But at least for me, that was always super-rare.
Still though, all my skepticism aside, one of those crazy hiccups stayed with me for some reason. I even shared it with the dream group after I was good and high. The look of speechless horror on their faces afterwards was something I’d never forget.
They looked at me like I’d just killed someone.
In the dream, I floated through this endless hallway of doors, or maybe I fell? I wasn’t sure. Open doorways on either side of me that led to different paths my life could take gently closed on the right and left as I reached them. I was able to catch the briefest glimpse into each one just before the portal was shut forever. The rooms were lush. Full of color, life, and warmth, but somehow they seemed alien to me as if they were paintings of a memory.
Deep within each room, there was a distant entity watching me patiently. Barely noticeable at first, just an errant dark splotch on a beautiful, bright horizon that lingered at the edges of each bypassed life. The further down the hallway I traveled, the more different the rooms were before their doors closed. Sometimes, they’d be a city scene where I was successful entrepreneur or a peaceful farm where I milked cows. Infinite, unique possibilities like countless paintings in an endless gallery show.
However, despite the radical differences in each room, the black ink splotch always remained in the distance until it too, began to change into a being of swirling, blackish smoke that coalesced into a dark parody of a person.
Then it stepped forward.
As her face came into view the closer she got, I could tell that form was my own, dark reflection – my elongated, nearing-dusk shadow given a mind of its own. That Star regarded me with contempt. “I’m coming,” it had said, but not with words. Her approaching gait had an unhurried tempo of resignation or inevitability.
Chilled to the core, I raced down the hallway as fast as I could to escape.
In each room I passed, that same figure stepped ever closer to the doorway, before being blocked at the last moment by the closing door. Faster and faster, I ran or stumbled, and the closer she came to reaching me. More closing doors blurred passed. All these chances at different lives slammed shut, every one of them imprisoning that dark version of me.
I then noticed the hallway was coming to end and that all the doors had shut. This realization made me afraid for another reason. I had been the one closing these doors all along as I passed to stop the shadow version of myself from getting out.
Had I wasted all my chances at a better life because I was too afraid to face her?
The end of the hallway barreled toward me at breakneck speed, and now there was only one door remaining. It opened before me just before I crashed into it.
The dark figure stood expectantly in the threshold, her wispy arms set wide, waiting in an open embrace to receive me. The room behind her was starkly empty just a white canvas.
I was done running or falling, and weirdly all of my anxiety drained away. I was filled with a sense of belonging like I had found my real path. At the last moment, I embraced the darkness, and as I collided with her, I came to understand that I was the impostor.
This shadow version was the real me.
Together as one, we tumbled into the unpainted room behind her. Now whole, we could paint it anyway we wanted. The real me whispered one word in my ear before I woke... “Finally.”
My roommate found another place to hold her dream meetings after that, and wherever it was, I wasn’t invited.
Now with everything that was going on inside the police station, I simply walked toward the entrance completely unnoticed. Right by the front door was a rack with the town’s brochures. I grabbed the Super 8 pamphlet and slipped outside.
Luckily, the car had a remote key. I hunted around the parking lot, clicking the button, until a tan, mid two-thousand Nissan Altima winked its headlights back at me. The car door opened, and I was in. Easily the craziest thing I’d ever done! I mean, I did shoot a guy, but that was barely a choice and I wasn’t the one to kill him.
This, though, was all me. My hands were shaking as I opened the brochure. On the back was a small map that showed the area surrounding the motel. I scanned through the car windows and found a street sign, then I found it on the map and plotted a course. The motel was actually very close. I would be there in no time.
The car started right up, and that thrill surged within me. I pulled out of the parking lot and was on my way.
I’m stealing a fucking cop’s car!
If I got arrested or killed, it’d be because of the choice that I made. Right or wrong, I refused to be along for the ride in my own fucking life. For the first time in my life, I made my own decision. I was done running or falling. I was embracing the real me. The one who belonged with Remy