I put the truck’s gear in park. I could see the red cones of light from the brakelights extinguish like torches in the rearview mirror. I turned the key, shutting off the engine and all of the truck lights, bathing us in shadow.
Somewhere, perhaps a couple blocks away, a dog decided to start barking.
Oscar hadn’t spoken in six hours. He seemed to be in a sort of catatonic state, slumped in his seat, staring sightlessly.
I gripped the steering wheel tight with one hand, wrenching, the bumpy textures digging into my palm.
“Tank’s almost empty.” I said it just to say something.
Oscar gave no discernible response. If he was breathing, it was low and quiet. Occasionally, he blinked.
I envied that state. That unawareness of himself. Perhaps of everything else around him.
I’d spent the last six hours in a sort of manic fervor, mind looping endlessly as I drove.
So much so that, for a long time now, I hadn’t looked in the backseat.
Neither had Oscar. Sometimes, even in his dreamlike stupor, he would begin to turn in his seat, glancing over his shoulder. But then, it was as if something would catch him, turning him back, his eyes glassy and refractive.
I started, seeing some slight movement from Oscar in my peripheral.
Oscar still faced forward, but his Adam's Apple bobbed as he swallowed.
“You said she would be okay.” Oscar wasn’t looking at me. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t looking at anything.
There was a momentary catch in my throat, but I managed to speak. “She’s...she’s gonna be fine.”
Oscar swallowed again. This time, his throat made a loud click.
“She’s...she’s just sleeping.” I said.
“Really.” Oscar’s head pivoted toward me, his face lax and placid. His eyes were no longer glassy. Red veins pulsed in the whites. “Then why don’t you lift the blanket?”
My fingers wound tighter against the steering wheel. “Oscar…”
Something thin, hot and wet was winding its way down the side of my face, underneath my eye.
“She’s dead.” Oscar said. It didn’t sound like an accusation, or an indictment. It was just a fact. Like a comment on the weather.
He turned away from me, nodding to himself. “She’s dead.” This time with a downward inflection, a tone of finality.
“We don’t know that,” I said. “She—”
Oscar’s eyes flashed, turning on me. His arm lashed out.
I cringed.
Instead, he reached behind, pulling the blanket off of the backseat.
Jackie was sprawled on her back, eyes closed, hair in disarray, muscles limp.
“If you think she’s alive,” Oscar said, not even looking at her, eyes still on me. “Why have you been driving us in circles? Why didn’t you drive us to the hospital?”
“They...they would ID us…” I said. “We’d all go to prison…or worse...”
“Un-fucking-believable.” Oscar said. His face was twisting, becoming gnarled. “Guess there’s no cloudboxes in prison, huh?”
I didn’t have the energy to defend myself. I could see the pockets of moisture forming on my shirt from the tears sliding off my face.
“O-Oscar...D-don’t…”
Something had gone wrong. I didn’t know exactly what, and I probably never would.
Perhaps it was because Jackie had been registering to the system, synchronizing for the first time, just when the power had gone out.
We’d sat in darkness, until the backup lights had flickered on, revealing Jackie, lying on the floor, only the whites of her eyes visible in their sockets, her entire body trembling.
That was when Samuel(the owner of the old arcade) had pulled his gun.
It wasn’t until afterward, during the long drive, that I had truly put the pieces together. And yet, even in that moment when Samuel had pulled his gun, I had known.
Oscar and I were accomplices. Part of something...illegal. Either altogether, or in the sense that Samuel had obtained the technology illegally, to use for his own gain. It was his golden goose.
Our names were all over the paperwork he gave to his superiors, his records. There was plenty of video footage to implicate us as regulars, even though all we ever did was head into the backroom with Samuel. Plenty of eyewitness accounts to substantiate this, besides.
We needed to get out of there.
Bizarrely, though the gun was in his hand, watching us carry Jackie out of the backroom, it didn’t seem like he was going to use it. He had followed us, running a hand through his greying hair, telling us, Oh god, they’re going to kill me, oh god, wait, you can’t do this—.
It wasn’t until we were almost to the front door that something snapped, and he started shooting—loud cracks that echoed inside the arcade, drowning out the throbs and beeps from the machines.
He had missed every shot. I have to wonder how hard he was actually trying not to. Not that there was time to contemplate that in the moment.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Glass had shattered. Chunks of sidewalk had splattered up into the air. Sirens had sounded.
For a while, Oscar had held Jackie in the backseat. She’d wriggled in his grasp, convulsing. Then, at some point, she’d laid still.
Oscar had run his hands over her, shaking her. He’d held his palm a few inches over her nose and mouth, feeling for her breath. Then, he’d pulled his hand away, his whole body sagging.
After a time—I’d been unable to look, instead keeping my eyes on the road—Oscar had pulled himself away, dragging himself up into the passenger seat. And there he had stayed.
Until then, parked in front of the hotel.
Oscar popped open the passenger door. The cool, night air intruded. I hadn’t bothered to turn up the heat in the truck, but there was still a slight discrepancy in temperature, a crisp clearness. Through the open door, the night had a blue, dusklight cast to it, unfiltered by the tinted windows.
I turned, hand still tight on the wheel, as if stuck there. “Oscar, wait—”
The door slammed. The whole truck seemed to shake a little with the force of it.
I stared at my hand. It seemed to have a mind of its own, wrapped tight against the wheel, cord-like muscles rising up through the skin. It ignored my signals, my authority over it.
C’mon...let...GO.
I gasped as I felt the muscles in my arm yielding. My fingers unclenched. I reached for the door lever, popped it, and stepped through the widening gap, out onto the gravel lot.
I could still hear the dog, barking frantically a few blocks off. It seemed I wasn’t the only one, as lights started to flick on from behind the motel curtains.
Oscar was making a slow walk toward the edge of the lot, as if in a daze.
I ran, boots kicking up gravel. In seconds, I caught up to him, reached out, grabbed the sleeve of his jacket.
Oscar yanked, pulling me off balance. The next thing I felt was a sharp pressure in and behind the bridge of my nose. Warmth gushed, oozing down the lower part of my face, running between my lips, tasting the way old coins smell.
I fell to the gravel, scraping my palms. Scraping my legs, even through my jeans.
“Hey!” called some woman’s voice, somewhere in the direction of the motel.“Hey, stop that!”
I tried to turn and look, but instead I saw Oscar’s boot coming directly for my face.
I held up my hands, catching the boot and pushing my own knuckles back into my face.
I keeled back, spitting blood, shaking. I put my arm out, trying to get my balance so I could get back to my feet, knees wobbling.
Oscar was standing over me, rubbing knuckles that were bloody and bruised, the skin broken from punching me. His face had gone back to that placid look, like he was unfeeling—though that was far from the truth. Whatever was going on inside his head, it was beyond words. We were both beyond words.
Suddenly, he was on top of me, hitting me in the cheek, pounding the back of my head into the gravel.
Distantly, I could hear screaming.
I wriggled, legs kicking, trying to scrabble out from underneath him. With every consecutive hit I could feel the skin over my cheekbone splitting, tearing.
My teeth locked together in a clenched grimace. I brought up my right fist, slamming it into the side of Oscar’s face with a loud smack, stunning him, body going rigid for a couple seconds as he fell sideways.
I rolled over on top of him, heart thumping in my head.
Distantly, over the scratch and clatter of gravel as we kicked and rolled in the lot, I could hear the sound of police sirens growing louder. People were yelling. Lights flashed up and down the street, tinting Oscar’s gritted face with hues of blue, white, and red.
There were three loud whoop’s from the approaching cop cars, tires crunching as they slowed to a stop at odd angles in the lot.
Car doors swung wide. Flashlights beamed at us, bobbing and weaving as boots stomped on the gravel. Orders were barked, but I couldn’t make them out. I mostly just saw Oscar’s face, eyes so red the vessels would surely pop. And then I realized his hands were on my neck. And then I realized I couldn’t breathe.
A pair of hands seemed to appear out of nowhere, grabbing Oscar by the shoulders and pulling him off of me.
The throttling pressure disappeared from my neck. I coughed, feeling hoarse and sick.
“Stay on the ground. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
I squinted, unable to look directly up at the cop due to the way he was shining his light down at me.
“Can I see some ID?”
I blinked, squatting, holding my hands off to either side of my torso. “Do—do you want my hands where you can see them, or do you want my ID?”
There was a tense pause after that. I couldn’t see the cop’s face. “Which pocket?”
He didn’t sound mad.
“My right.” I said.
The dark silhouette of his head nodded. “Slow.” His arm flexed as he unsnapped his holster.
I did move slow, slipping only two of my fingers into my jean pocket, carefully gripping and sliding my wallet up and out. I could hear the other cop talking to Oscar just ten paces away.
I handed over my ID. The cop held onto it.
He moved the beam of the flashlight away from me and over to the pickup. The driver door was wide open.
“Is that your vehicle?”
I looked away, suddenly fascinated with all the bystanders standing out in front of the motel, their doors ajar.
No matter how long I stared, it seemed I couldn’t quite block out the image in my head of Jackie lying limply in the back seat, lifeless and doll-like.
“Sir?” The cop said.
Just lying there on the floor, eyes rolling, lights flickering—
There was a crackle as the cop grabbed his radio. “Yeah, can you run those plates? And the ID? Yeah, here it is…”
The cop went on to read off my license number.
She peed herself. That vivid detail, withheld by the same part of my brain that had kept me driving thoughtlessly for hours, came whooshing back. The dark, warm, growing stain on her sweats as Oscar and I had lifted her up.
“Stay right here,” The cop said, suddenly. “Don’t move.”
He walked away from me, past Oscar and the other cop, toward the pickup.
Oscar was prostrate on the ground, hands spread, while the second cop stood over him.
I felt an insane urge to call out to him, say something. Instead, I coughed and spat, hacking up blood onto the rocks. I could feel the blood from my broken nose trickling down the back of my throat.
“Hey!” Someone yelled. It took me a second to realize it was Oscar. He was still flat on the ground, head cocked at an awkward angle, looking at the cop approaching the pickup.
“Hey!” He yelled. “Stay away from her!”
The cop slowed, turning to glance at Oscar. Then, something about that seemed to worry him, because he sped up, jogging toward the car.
“HEY!”
Oscar pushed himself up onto his feet.
The cop standing next to him grabbed his shoulder, his other hand going to his gun. “I’m gonna need you to stay on the ground—”
Oscar spun, knocking the cop’s hand aside. There was the sound of gunmetal rubbing leather as the cop pulled his gun.
The cop started yelling. It was so loud and aggressive, words running together. He was telling Oscar to step back, get way, to put his hands on the ground, “—RIGHT NOW!! RIGHT NOW!! RIGHT NOW!!”
Oscar didn’t step back. He didn’t get away. He didn’t put his hands on the ground. Instead, his arm whipped out, reaching for the cop’s gun.
There was a flash of light, a tiny prick of yellow lightning in the dusk.
I flinched, eyes clamped shut. I could feel a high-pitched ringing in my left ear. It was already gradually falling away, being replaced by a dull, painful throb in the ear.
When I opened my eyes, Oscar was on the ground. The cop was stepping backward, putting distance between them, handgun gripped tight in both hands and held at arm’s length, levelled at Oscar.
I was already moving.
I heard multiple shouts. The cop who shot Oscar rushed forward, tried to put himself between us. I swerved, ducked under one of his arms. I slid to the ground, scraping my forearms.
He was already a shell. I remember thinking that.
He was on his back, one arm broken from the fall, twisting out at an angle. His face was turned sideways, facing me, eyes unblinking.
Something dark was leaking out the back of his head, seeping into the gravel, pooling like a thick resin.
I felt hands grab me, pulling me back. I thrashed, screaming, struggling, even after the handcuffs had clicked home, numbing cold metal encasing my wrists.