Chapter 21

"Puddles bared her teeth and snarled like a wolf."

Photo by Jingxi Lau on Unsplash

“Where are we going, maithili?” Puddles asked after a while.

Heath took the exit onto the highway. “Why do you ask?” he said.

“Because you’ve been driving us in circles for the past two hours,” the Dancer said levelly. “We get on the highway, we get off the highway. What are you doing?”

“Looking for something,” Heath said shortly. He dropped into the hammer lane and put the pedal down. “Colin, could you figure out the Bluetooth on the stereo?”

Colin fiddled with the aftermarket head unit for a minute. “Orright,” he said warily. “Consider it figured out. What would you like to me do with it now that it’s figured?”

Heath glanced in the rearview mirror. “Puddles, would you mind connecting your phone and playing us some music? I don’t care what you pick, but shuffle the tracks.”

Colin broke into a knowing smile. “Ah,” he said.

The Dancer’s expression was genuinely bemused. “O…kay,” she said. She got out her phone and tapped at it.

“Ah?” Clorox asked, looking at Colin. “What’s ‘ah?’”

“Shh,” the Greyhound said, putting his finger to his lips. There was a brief piano flourish, then:

You were waiting outside for me in the sun

Laying down to soak it all in before we had to run

came from the speakers. Heath’s face went entirely blank, and his head tipped to one side. He looked as though he were receiving instructions from something other, something no one else in the car could hear. He jerked the wheel to the right, sending the Jeep careening across three lanes of traffic and onto the exit from the highway.

“Hey, hey, hey!” yelled Clorox. “What the fuck you doing, Ridgeback?”

Colin, who had braced for the turn, pointed out the window at the sign on the movie theater next to the U-Store-it franchise, which read “COLORING OUTSIDE THE LINES—SUNDAY SHOWTIMES 1PM 320PM 640PM”

“Do shut up, Tiny,” he said through clenched teeth. “‘Eath knows what ‘e’s doing.”

From the highway, the view of the marquee would have been obstructed, and it seemed possible that the only thing visible from the driver’s seat of the Jeep as it passed would have been “U OUTSIDE SUN.”

Oh the glory of it all was lost on me

‘Til I saw how hard it’d be to reach you

And I would always be light years away

Puddles frowned. Heath stomped the brake, throwing his passengers forward, and came to a halt at a red light. The blank look had not left his face. He looked like he was somewhere unreachably far away.

The winter sunlight reflected dazzlingly off of the polished chrome sign welcoming visitors to a chain restaurant called “Old Glory Barbecue” on the other side of the street, and the light seemed to bend very slightly in a way it should not have as it passed through the driver’s side window. Puddles bared her teeth and snarled like a wolf. It was an immense, inhuman noise, and it sounded too deep and primal to have possibly come from a human throat. She lunged forward savagely, clawing seemingly at nothing.

There was a screech of rage, and something hazy and indistinct that looked for a moment very like a six-foot orange cartoon rabbit in a white basketball uniform thrashed in the Dancer’s grip like a wild thing with its foot caught in a trap. A half-chewed cartoon carrot fell from its hand as it tried desperately to escape the enraged Puddles, who wrapped her arms and legs around it, roaring, and sank her teeth into its neck.

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