Shut The Fuck Up And Die! (3 page)

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
K
s and
C
s 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 . . . it's 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.

While they had still been in the car
and waiting for his bleeding to stop, Matt had suggested that she
put the thing out of its misery. They'd been able to see it
clearly: the way its body twitched with spasms of pain, the quick
plumes of steam that snorted through its flared nostrils, how it
had gradually lost the strength to even hold its head up any
longer. It probably
had
been
suffering . . . but, in all honesty, Mona had been perfectly fine
with that.

Let the damn thing finish out the remaining
moments of its life in pain and fear. Served the fucker right . . .
it had derailed their trip, wrecked their car, and – most
importantly – hurt Matt. Why should it be allowed peace when the
man she loved, the only man in the world who mattered, probably
felt like his face had gone twelve rounds with Rocky Balboa?

“
Didn't realize we went off the road.
Seemed like there was suddenly just this tree in our
way.”

At some point during the wreck, the car had
apparently went over a small embankment. Not steep enough to have
caused them to flip, thank God, but the hillside was marred with
deep, muddy ruts that looked like open wounds on the snow-covered
earth.

For a moment, they stood with their arms
wrapped around one another and listened to the soft ticking of the
cooling engine. Though the clouds of steam had long since
dissipated, the smell of antifreeze still hung in the air like the
scent of a sweet flower.

Matt held his hand out and the keys jangled
softly as he pressed a button on the black fob. Two quick chirps
filled the night in perfect synchronicity with the flashing of the
taillights. Mona shook her head and laughed in a way that only
Mattie could coax from her: it was as if the sound simply bubbled
up from inside her, as light and free as a bird in the sky.

“
What?”

He tried to suppress his own grin as he
looked at his wife, yet his voice still quivered with
amusement.

“
We wouldn't want anyone stealing that
fine automobile of ours, now would be?”

“
Oh, no. Heaven forbid. I hear there's
quite a market for crushed up Hondas. All the cool kids are driving
them these days.”

Matt squeezed her as best as he could through
the thick layers of parka that separated them and then touched the
tip of her nose with the cold, vinyl finger of his glove.

“
Stick with me, kiddo, and we'll
own
five
crushed up
Hondas.”

He pulled the zipper on her jacket so that it
was snugly beneath her chin and then cinched the drawstrings of the
fur-lined hood.

“
Come on, Nanook . . . let's get going.
It's fuckin' freezing out here.”

“
Tell me about it. You reckon we can
find help, baby? I haven't seen a car since we turned off that four
lane.”

Matt held Mona's hand tightly as he helped
her up the incline, taking care to ensure that she didn't slip in
the mud.

“
We better.”

Once they'd crested the hill, Matt looked in
both directions as if trying to decide which way they should
go.

“
Otherwise there's a good chance that
we're gonna die out here.”

SCENE THREE

The truck bounced over the ruts in the
country road with enough force that the passenger had to brace
himself with one hand against the dashboard and the other pressed
into the roof. The suspension creaked and popped as tires crunched
through snow and every so often there was a loud thump from the bed
at the same time the man bounced off the ripped vinyl seat like a
rodeo cowboy.

“
Damn it, Earl, slow the fuck
down!”

The driver grinned but said nothing as he
gripped the steering wheel with hands so large that it made the
cracked leather look like a child's toy. Perhaps the extra weight
the man carried around his midsection achored him more solidly to
gravity than his lanky companion: his gut spilled across his
waistline, overlapped a belt buckle shaped like a confederate flag,
and caused his white tee shirt to ride up just below his navel..
The broad ass that spread across the seat, however, remained firmly
planted in the trough it had forced into the springs and cushion
over the years. Even the trucker's cap perched atop his scraggly
mass of brown hair stayed in place, not so much as even jiggling as
the front wheels plummeted into another snow-encrusted groove.

Whereas the driver's unshaven jowls were
exaggerated even further by a smile, the passenger's narrow face
held the expression of a man who expected to meet the Grim Reaper
just around the next bend. His eyes were wide and round with pupils
dilated both by the darkness of the night and also by the panic
that made him his heart feel as if it were about to leap into the
narrow confines of his throat. Thin lips quivered beneath a
mustache that randomly curled over the chapped, pink flesh below
them and his sunken cheeks were flushed with the warmth of fear.
Even beneath the green coveralls that engulfed him, it was obvious
that the man's entire body was trembling.

The truck slid around a curve in the road,
the rear wheels drifting in a way that made it seem as if the back
half of the vehicle were moving independently of the front. The
driver jerked the wheel in the opposite direction as he let out a
whoop and his passenger slammed into the door. From the bed of the
truck came a sound like plastic sliding across metal, immediately
followed by another thud.

“
You're gonna kill the both of us,
Earl! If you don't slow the hell down, I swear t' God I'm tellin'
Mama.”

The smile disappeared from the driver's face
as quickly as the flakes of snow melted on the warm windshield. He
shot his brother a glance that could have flash frozen that same
slush as his lips pulled back into a sneer.

“
You ain't telling Mama
shit.
I'll pound your ass so hard,
Daryl, you won't see straight for a week, hear?”

Daryl stiffened and dropped his gaze to the
empty beer bottles that clinked against one another in the floor
board. He swallowed hard and then looked back up.