Nineteen.
The bride drew the carriage to a stop on a treelined road.
"Okay," she said. "Let"s get to it." She stripped her veil off and threw it onto the road and reached behind her wedding dress, trying to undo it. "Do you mind helping?" she asked.
"With what?" I said. I was a little dazed. My mind was still trying to catch up with everything that was happening.
"Taking this d.a.m.n dress off. We"re going to have s.e.x."
"I don"t think I"m up for it," I said.
"You came all the way out here with me and now you"re not up for it?"
"Pretty much. What about your husband? Didn"t you just get married?"
"Well, sure, but... hey, you"re not at all familiar with the way things work in our town, are you?"
"I think I have a pretty good idea."
"You just don"t understand. The pressure of living there. The pressure of always being expected to do what you"re not expected to do. That"s why my husband ran off with the carriage driver. He"s not even gay. That"s why the lights are on all night and everyone sleeps during the day."
"But you should do what you want to do. If you want to be with your husband then you should go back."
"And what about you?"
"I"ll be okay," I said.
"Maybe you"re right," she said.
"Anyway," I said. "I think I"ll just be going. Okay?"
"Okay," she said. "I guess it"s for the best but everyone back in town is going to be very disappointed."
"Tell them it was my fault."
"The stranger. They"ll have to believe that."
I hopped down off the carriage. She whipped the horses into action, turning the carriage around, and headed back for town.
I walked along the narrow dirt road, wondering where I would come to next, expecting it to be just as strange as the places I had been. I wondered where I was. Wrench still had the map and I didn"t think asking anyone for directions would do any good. Currently, there wasn"t even anyone to ask. Walking along the road I began humming discordant tunes that weren"t really tunes at all. It was only a matter of time before I became too tired to walk. Then I would need a nap but I didn"t see anywhere suitable for a nap. I guess I could have ventured out into the woods but I didn"t see why I"d want to do that. Taking a nap on a soft bed of chemically purified lawn was one thing. To take a nap on a bunch of moldy leaves surrounded by snakes and bugs and countless other evils was something different altogether. I would just have to walk and wait. Wait to find Wrench and the imposter or wait to come upon the next town or the next city.
"Yeee-ha!" I heard from behind me. A beer can hit me on the head and I looked up to see the black van speeding away. Perhaps Wrench noticed me. The brake lights lit up and the van backed up. I went to hop in the pa.s.senger seat but was met with the dour face of my imposter. He reeked of beer but didn"t seem nearly as happy as only a few moments before. Rather, he now seemed like a child caught doing something he knew very well he was not supposed to be doing.
"You," I said.
The imposter continued to stare at me. Wrench was in the driver"s seat, trying to look around the imposter.
"David? That you?" he said. "Why are there two of you?"
"The imposter!" I shouted.
"I"ve been driving around an imposter?"
"Unfortunately."
I swung the door open and said, "Get out."
The imposter slid off the seat, clutching the flame in his arms.
"No," I said. "You"ll have to leave this."
We both tugged at it. The imposter began making wild hand gestures. I took the opportunity to s.n.a.t.c.h the flame away before leaping into the van. "Let"s go!" I said, placing the flame back on the floorboard.
Wrench hit the accelerator and the van lurched away.
The imposter stood in the middle of the road, hopping up and down.
"Where did you come from?" Wrench asked.
"You left me behind," I said.
"Left you behind?"
"Yeah. At the lake."
"No. That"s where I picked you up."
"That"s where you picked the imposter up. Really, I don"t understand how you fell for that. He"s the worst imposter in the world."
"He looked just like you. He had a beard and everything."
"That was the worst fake beard in the world."
"You"re just being critical."
"Where to now?"
"Not sure. I"ve just been driving."
"Let me see the map."
He handed the map over and I looked at it.
"Do you know where we are?" I asked.
"I think we"re in Kansas."
"Kansas?"
"Sure."
I looked at the map but couldn"t find Kansas on it.
"How much longer do you think this is going to take?"
"I don"t really have any idea. Do you?"
"No. That"s why I asked."
"Probably a couple of days, I"d say. If we can find it at all."
"We should probably stop off in the next town and get some rest."
"I agree. I"m exhausted."
"Me too."
Twenty.
We had been driving for at least an hour when I asked Wrench, "Have you noticed the back of the van is filled with corpses?"
"No, haven"t noticed that."
"Well, it"s not exactly filled with corpses but there are a number of corpses back there. Five or six, I"d say."
"That was probably your imposter"s doing."
"You think he"s a murderer, too?"
"No. I think he"s just a corpse thief. We were at the scene of a crime. He kept trying to get me to go into a store and leave him alone for a few minutes. I guess this is what happens. Leave him alone and come back to find the van filled with corpses."
"It"s odd though. They seem to be mostly odorless."
"Maybe he was working on something scientific."
"I guess we should probably try and get rid of them, don"t you think?"
"Yeah. I"ll pull over when I find someplace good to dump them."
"Give me the map again."
He tossed the map over onto my lap. I opened it up but this time it wasn"t anything resembling a territory. It was just a drawing of a dog. A very childish drawing, as all drawings in my life seemed to be, very one dimensional. It was, however, the prototypical drawing of a dog. I guess that made us something like a traveling flea.
"Huh," I said.
"What"s that?" Wrench asked.
"Nothing to worry yourself about," I said.
"Up here," he motioned. "The Flats."
"That sounds like an excellent place to dump a body."
I wondered how Wrench knew we were entering The Flats but, as I looked up from the strange map, I noticed a sign that said, *The Flats." The sign was plywood with black spraypaint dripping down the front of it. It was like we had entered a whole other world. Before, I was accustomed to a somewhat normal world filled with people doing outrageous things. Now the world and the people seemed to be equally outrageous. Everything had an odd, homemade look to it, like we were living in some child"s dream. Or maybe just some not very intelligent adult. Either way, when I looked around the old world, it was easy to convince myself that millions of uninteresting, boring people had gotten together and taken a general consensus that that was how they wanted the world to be. Sort of dull and easily accessible. This new world didn"t seem to have any sort of group thought involved in it at all. In fact, it seemed to be filled with things most people would not want in their world.
The Flats seemed to be several acres of hardpacked, desertlike dirt. Nothing grew there. The road became broken up and, in some places, completely gone.
"We just going to leave them here?" I asked.
"I don"t see why not," Wrench said. "I don"t think anyone will find them. Besides, we didn"t do anything wrong. I can"t be expected to take these corpses back where we found them. In fact, I"m not even certain where we found them. Your imposter"s a drunk, by the way. He forced me to drink copious amounts of beer and then he made me drive."
"Did he talk at all?"
"Not that I remember. He made a lot of crazy hand motions. Hops up and down a lot. Grunts a little bit."
"The only time I"ve ever heard him speak was on the bus but, I think, by that time, it was really the hallucinogenic sandwich doing most of the talking."
"Maybe he"s mute or something."
"I think maybe his voice is even farther from mine than his physical appearance. Maybe you can convince yourself he looks like me but maybe his voice is very high pitched or maybe he has like a French accent or something. Who knows?"
"Who knows. Let"s get rid of these corpses."
Wrench braked the van into a screeching halt. We each climbed out our respective sides and walked to the back of the van. Wrench opened the back doors and we looked in at the corpses. Wrench took the first corpse by the ankles and pulled it out. I took it by the shoulders and walked backwards away from the van. I looked down at the corpse and was startled.
"Jesus," I said. "It"s Mom."
"I noticed that," Wrench said.
"We can"t just leave her out here in the Flats."
The sun beat down on my shoulders. I imagined her body out here, rotting, getting pecked by vultures and other predatory creatures.
"I"m afraid we"ll have to," Wrench said.
"How can you be so cold?"