“You miss him, Mattie?”
He looked over at his wife with a smile that somehow didn’t match that pain in his eyes. Steering with one hand, he placed the other on top of hers and squeezed so gently it almost seemed as if he were afraid of crushing her bones.
“I don’t know if I miss him, per se. But he understood, ya know? I could tell him about….”
“Mattie! Look out!”
Mona’s voice was a shrill squeal and her hands flew to the dashboard as if she’d suddenly realized it was rushing toward them and needed to be held back. Matt snapped his head back to the road just in time to see something large and brown in the road ahead. Its eyes were silvery in the oncoming headlights and its white tail twitched as its haunches tensed.
Matt slammed his foot onto the brake as if he intended to ram it through the floor and jerked the wheel to the left. At the same time, the car seemed to be embodied with a life of its own: the tail end swung around in what seemed to be a slow motion spiral while the world outside the windows blurred.
Something hit the front of the car with enough force that Mona felt the dull thud within her chest and there was something rolling across the hood, something with antlers and spindly legs that clattered against the windshield. The glass shattered into a spider web of cracks and she vaguely heard Matt cursing. A tree seemed to hurl itself toward them and Mona’s scream was drowned out by the crash of the car’s hood crumpling around the trunk. She pitched forward so sharply that it felt as if her head were about to wrench free from her neck and for a moment everything seemed to still be spinning even though she knew perfectly well that the car’s inertia had been brought to a halt.
Mona watched steam drift from underneath the buckled hood of the car and it almost seemed to possess some sort of gravity that drew her in. It was so pretty, so ethereal against the dark backdrop of the night. It was how she’d always imagined a soul would look upon exiting the body: soft and billowy, seeming to be trapped somewhere between substance and a dream.
Perhaps it actually was her spirit. When their little Honda smashed into the tree, maybe she’d hit her head or snapped her spine. Maybe she was simply sitting there, watching her soul drift off into the atmosphere while her body struggled to come to terms with the fact that she was dead. Within minutes, her empty shell might simply collapse onto the seat as a great and final darkness settled her world. She had no delusions about Heaven… not after the type of life she’d led. But Hell would be fine; just as long as Matt was there by her side and they could spend….
Matt.
The thought of her husband was like a splash of cold water on Mona’s face. She jerked, as if startled from a dream, and then scrambled for the seat belt.
“Matt! Are you okay, baby? You okay?”
Matt had his head thrown back over the seat and one hand cupped his nose. His eyes were squeezed shut so tightly that creases formed at the corners of his eyes, giving subtle hints of the old man he’d someday become.
She scampered across the seat and grabbed him by his shoulders.
“Oh shit, baby… oh shit… you’re bleeding.”
Spurts of blood leaked between Matt’s fingers and trickled through the grooves formed by his knuckles.
Mona’s head whipped to the side where she saw the battered animal kicking in the snow as if it could somehow find the strength to rise up on its shattered bones and scurry into the night.
“Fuckin’ deer! Fuckin’ piece of shit, apple eatin,’ salt lickin’ son of a bitch!”
Her voice was a shrill screech and she punctuated each word by punching her fist into the foamy covering of the roof.
“Mona… baby… I’m oday, sweetie.”
Matt’s hand muffled his voice, yet it still sounded as stuffy and congested as when he’d caught the flu a few months earlier. It robbed his voice of hard sounds, smoothing Ks and Cs into something that sounded more like a D and dropping the letter G altogether.
“Fuddin’ busted my nose on the fuddin’ steerin’ wheel. You oday, baby? You hurt?”
Mona had leaned over the seat and pulled clothing from one of the duffel bags hurled forward upon impact. She snatched a t-shirt as if ripping a tissue from its box and wiggled her way back into the front of the car again. Bunching the shirt up, she pulled Matt’s hand away from his face gently and winced. His nose had already swollen to the point that it looked as bulbous as a drunkard’s and his palm had smeared blood across its bridge. Crimson finger marks trailed across his cheeks and his nostrils looked so much smaller surrounded by the puffy flesh that imprisoned them.
“Damn, baby… you whacked yourself good.”
She pushed the t-shirt against his face and, for the first time in her life, wondered exactly what was meant by apply pressure. How much pressure? Did she need to press the cloth against his injury so tightly that she risked hurting him? Or could she simply dab it against his face and allow the fibers to soak up the blood so it could begin clotting?
“Does that hurt? Shit, Mattie, this ain’t right, it just ain’t right.”
Matt took the t-shirt from her and pushed it onto his nose with both hands.
“You oday, baby?”
Mona had begun stroking his hair almost before the shirt was even out of her grip. She needed to be doing something… anything. She just couldn’t sit there and watch her man bleed: she wanted to scoop him into her arms, to bury his face into her chest as she rocked back and forth, to somehow reach deep inside him and take the pain away.
For the first time in the last year and a half, Mona felt as powerless and ineffectual as she had during the majority of her life. She felt small and quiet, like a shadow that had fooled everyone into thinking it was a person… but this man had saved her from all of that. He’d shown her that she could be strong, that she was worthy of being loved, that she deserved to be treated so much better. And now, when he needed her most, she was trembling like a child as she sniffled away the tears that blurred her vision.
“Mona! Are you oday?”
“Shhh… I’m fine, baby, I’m fine. I just can’t stand to see you hurtin.’ Do you need something cold? I think there might be a pop in the cooler or I could dunk a shirt in melted ice or get some snow from outside or….”
Matt chuckled and glanced at her from the corner of his eye.
“I been worse. ‘member that time outside Ronoade?”
Mona forced herself to smile as she continued to run her fingers through hair that was as soft and fine as individual fibers of silk. It splayed over her hand, tickling the little webs between her fingers.
“How could I forget something like that?”
It was typical Matt, reminding her of a time when she had been strong and fearless. He’d been hurt so bad back then… much worse than a nose that bled like a staked vampire and which probably wasn’t even broken. He’d really needed her and she had risen to the occasion.
“Turnin’ oudda be one helluba honeymoon, huh?”
By the time the couple staggered out of the car, the deer was dead. Its body lay motionless in the snow; only the unnatural stiffness of its legs and an antler that looked as if it had been snipped off with a bolt cutter betrayed the fact that it simply hadn’t laid down for a little rest. Mona expected to see red stains that had seeped into the drifts around it. But there were only a few drops, like tiny rose blossoms, directly beneath the beast’s dark mouth.
“Piece of shit!”
She kicked the carcass and her combat boot thumped hollowly against the tawny fur… its dark eyes never blinked, never shifted in panic or fear. They simply gazed into whatever void its spirit had slipped into as flakes of snow slowly melted on their surface.