John Warner (Working Title)

The sky that night was like a dark chasm blanketed by unseen clouds that covered the stars. It was hot as hell too, but the humid sticky kind where the air felt heavy as you breathed. The nearby lights of the town pricked through the dark like tiny lit cigarettes. Insects hummed in nearby corn fields. It was growing tall, and it swished in the faint breeze from what little Cecilia could see of it from her timid headlights. She had pulled her truck to the edge of the road and got out to lean against the driver side door to smoke. Didn't want to ruin the interior. She'd been too grossed out by the inside of her grandfather's truck being stained yellow as a kid.

Her mother always begged her dad not to smoke around the kids. It was quite a sight. She'd start crying and the whole works, whining about "second-hand smoke" and all that. Grandpa Park never seemed to care much. He'd sit and pull on his long yellowed beard while she gave her performance. There was a constant look of amusement on his face, as if he could very well see the future of the first time Cecilia would take out a pack of Marlboro Reds she stole from the gas station and light up. He was funny like that. He spent most of his time making grand predictions about the end of the world, broadcasting them to whoever was forced to listen. The only one that ever seemed to entirely enjoy his theories was her Uncle Craig, a diagnosed schizophrenic who would be ushered out of the room as soon as Grandpa got the chance to start talking about the government being full of Russians who were actually aliens.

She wiped her eyes as she thought of Grandpa Park. Bringing her cross necklace up to her lips, she kissed it. It had become a habit, and one that persisted long after she had left the church in search of something else. It was just one of those cheap ones with a string that started to fray and would probably snap soon, but she kept it close and tucked it back into her t-shirt.

Taking another long drag, she looked up the hill where the road twisted left into the trees. Not a single car passed by. It was too late at night to worry about that, and her watch reassured her when she looked to see 2:00 a.m glowing on the screen. Why should she care? Cops wouldn't come by this road anyway and the nearest house was half a mile away, which belonged to some lady that was older than sin and probably fast asleep since 7:00. It was a gravel offshoot with the land surrounding it owned almost entirely by farmers, barring the old lady.

She was entirely alone, and the vast sky seemed to swallow her whole as she looked up into it. A low moaning sound came from somewhere in the fields, and the ravenous howling of coyotes picked up. The warm wind subsided to a cooler one and goosebumps prickled on her skin. She turned her attention back to the road, greeted by the small yellow eyes of something glinting at her from the ditch. It moved too fast for an opossum, and the logical explanation was a mangy stray cat. She had nothing against the strays unlike her cousin Danny, who tried to hit them whenever he could, but this was no time to be distracted by some furball. Stepping forward, she picked up a rock and threw it. The creature hissed in response, and scurried off into the brush. However, John Warner remained unmoving on the asphalt in front of her with his body shattered and twisted from the impact.

Notes:

Stay tuned for more. If there is any, I suppose. I tend to write small snippets like this that never really come to fruition as a full story.