CHAPTER 35.

The latest winter weather advisory’s radar put the wall of white about twenty minutes behind her, due northeast, she having just joined the early morning commuters ahead of sun up.

Thirty odd minutes between his and her place dictating how many miles would drain the tank and how much more frequently anymore, the indicator had held just above empty for at least seven miles, it’s warning light only now sending forth the accompanying chime. Bypassing the convenience store, she could make it home on fumes if she coasted the hills. Timing was everything.

Two monster lights, enlarging toward her, passed by heading south. Where to, at this hour? And, that lone white SUV, always parked at the Blue Spruce motel?

Flipping from 60s to 70s and 80s and then back, on the car radio, her ear settled on the familiar strains of the sixth decade of life in the century of her birth. Those songs always brought the scent of varnished wood floors, and noisy feet traveling them, into school and out again past the stacks of galoshes and racks of patrol raincoats in the east foyer; of delicious, pre-pubescent fantasy now only fleeting as she recalled one realization now over four years history. How could he still be alive, diagnosed with COPD so many years earlier? Had she been taken in, yet again, by the wiles of the mind of homo sapien, male?

Steven Greer held some credibility, he with his own history as lead physician to the E.R. Surely one could put stock in his claims of alien life already embedded within society as they had all come to know it. Perhaps her fifth grade crush wasn’t a native of the planet; maybe he possessed some bionic, self healing powers, and the mind to match, gaming the system just like regular earthly citizens. She turned the corner, taking the outer lane’s wide arc, and followed the grade up past the zoo to the next intersection.

More white headlights moved beside her and behind, maneuvered by headless horsemen of the Apocalypse. No voices spoke on the radio anymore, just the songs presetting the stage on their tape loop assigned to the hour. The Kwik Fill was dark. She passed the only high school left in the city, still too early for police vehicles to be parked anywhere on its premises.

The radio moved to MoTown. Dennis Edwards really was Aisha’s father, then. A wife, alleged to have abused him, in the months before his death. She could still recall Aisha’s proud face, hear her magnificent voice. No memory of a mother. Only one car, at the corner gas pump, exhausting angrily at a closed store. Getting home was just a goal; fumes couldn’t hold out much longer. She rolled on, toward the grocer.

Turning into the wide open lot, she wound the car toward and around. Empty gas pumps and their vacant attendant station basked in the hum of dusk to dawn fluorescence. The chime was relentless, now. Out, and right at the signal, to the Country Fair.

Gliding up to the first pump she stopped, and turned off the ignition. 5:27 am, on the dashboard clock. Snow was nowhere. Digital hotdogs and colas polkaed the marquee. The radio sang, alone:

“Everyone’s gone…….to the Moon…….”

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© 2/7/18    Ruth Ann Scanzillo.   All rights those of the author, whose story it is, and whose name appears above this line. Happy Birthday, James and Sierra.

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