Snow-Capped Mountain Blues

The warm throb in my nose snaked into a trail of blood, pouring from my cheek to my brow. My eyelids fluttered in an attempt to ingest my surroundings. A short-lived fright overwhelmed me before I realized that the blinding white light around me was not the cause of accidental blindness, but rather, a symptom of the densely packed snow that blankets the surrounding mountain. It hadn’t been much longer before my memory flooded back and I realized where I was, who I was, and concluded what must have happened.

We’d spent hours winding around the slick and narrow route recommended by Dave’s Geo app. “It’s the most accurate GPS app.” He had assured me. Dummie David, I thought to myself then and found myself thinking now. I should have known we’d end up in some sort of mess. After I’d taken a few moments to recollect, the feeling in my legs returned along with a new sensation. The right leg had been pinned beneath the glovebox of Dave’s ’03 Ford Escort. A rental that he’d insisted on because it was “built Ford tough and nondescript as Hell.” Dummie David, alright.

The world around me, in its surreal white glow, had been disorienting and unfamiliar, as though I’d fallen through a portal into an alternate world. The great, round stalks of giant oaks and firs grew into the ground around my head and I remembered that the car lost traction, rounding a turn, and we’d rolled down the hill. We’d almost hit something. Something with tall, sharp hooks that spread like roots into the sky above it. Antlers, I realized. We were avoiding a deer.

A damn deer, I thought. One of the many unforeseen roadblocks that we’d come to endure. I guess, that’s what you get when you smuggle a cinder block of heroin across the US/Canadian border. Through the freakin’ Rockies, nonetheless. I guess, that makes me Stupid Steph.

The soothing warmth of the blood on my face fades away and, though I should be concerned, I focus on and resent the chill of the wind against my wet, painted skin. I twist my neck in the hope that I can find an exit but, instead, find an eerily blank stare. Dave’s lifeless body hanging from the driver’s seat by the wide, polyester safety strap. His head sitting cranked to the side from the weight of his body against the Escort’s low-sitting roof. A line of blood poured from his mouth, up his top lip, and into one of his nostrils. It overflowed, dividing into two smaller streams from both of his nasal cavities. Fountain of Dave. Judging by the slow pour, we must have been here a while and he had most likely died before we stopped rolling. Speaking of rolling, why did we stop? Gravity, pulling us both in a vertical slump, implied we were still on the hill. In a quick jerk, I turned my head to the other side and saw that we were pinned against the base of a tree. One of the many wooden fingers, reaching from the dirt, into the heavens.

Relief struck as I accepted the unlikely feat of surviving the accident, only to be undercut by the tense fear of death in my moaning gut. My neck was stiff and sore from the whiplash and turning my head added to the pain. The cold made me vibrate like a Magic Wand and my nerves were overstimulated. I gotta get out, I thought. The numbness in my fingers made it difficult to find the buckle for the seat belt. I’d managed to maneuver my neck in a way that I could see it. My shaking hands pushed into the plastic and my pre-conceived escape quickly turned to dread. My right leg, still pinned beneath the warped glovebox, bent beneath my unrestrained weight. A loud pop filled my ears from the inside, and my head hit the roof of the car.

The short-lived shock wore off and I knew that my leg had definitely broken, if not fractured. For a second, I was actually glad that that snow had numbed my body. After struggling to twist my body, I was able to slither from the cold grip of the contorted American steel and plastic. The struggle had exhausted me and the snow made a comfortable bed. I just needed to rest for a minute. Just a few minutes.

***

The twanging yodel of an old countryman wailed through the static radio of the twisted Escort. The words passed through an auditory haze and began to form through patches of failing power;

“…I’m still breathin’, now

Heart still beatin’, now

That woman she’s so icy cold

An’ she’s got me right in her hold

I would chew through my wrist

To escape from her grips…”

The words rang true. The mountain had me and I couldn’t move. More snow had fallen while I slept and I could feel the weight of it on me. A lightly packed blanket of ice.

“…Yeah, I’m blue

Got them snow-capped mountain blues…”

Wait… The radio’s on… But it can’t be. This song… Is it real? I lifted my head and turned to see the inside of the car. Dummie David’s dead stare hadn’t flinched. His eyes were white, iced over, and dry. His lips cracked and peeled and the skin on his face began to pull back against his skull revealing a sinister grin. The lights on the radio flashed on and off, less than a foot from his face. After a battle of wills, the power gave in and the radio turned off.

My hair stuck against my forehead in a matted patch. My forehead must have split from the accident because coagulated blood held it in clumps. What’s this!? My fingers… The tips were black and shriveled. My back and legs itched from the sweat and heat that had been trapped inside my clothes. In a burst of adrenaline, I pulled myself from my icy grave and tore at the buttons and zippers of my jacket and pants. Blood from my hands staining the fabric. My numb, black fingers cracked against the metal teeth of the zipper.

Before long, I’d torn my jacket from my body and slipped myself out of my wet shirt. The snow around me was stained with deep, red pockets where blood had fallen from my hands.

“You’re not lookin’ so good.” Dave’s voice broke the dead silence of the snow-packed woods.

My head jolted back and I saw him. Dummie David’s still-lifeless smile. His voice hadn’t come from him.

“You’ve got to save yourself…” His voice rang from inside my head. “You’re gaunt, exhausted and you need to get that leg looked at. You’re alive but you’re going to die out here. You’re lucky a wolf hasn’t wandered by.”

My body shook violently while my eyes darted around, looking for the source of my mania. There was no way the voice came from him, I’m watching his fat ass right now and he’s not moving.

“Hew’th tare?” My mouth had gone numb my tongue felt nearly solid. The words slurred from my lips, “Hew… cough, cough…” I hacked a dry ball of yellow and red snot onto the snow beside me. “H-hew’th t-t-tare?” I could hardly understand my own voice. Hardly recognized it.

“Eat him.” The voice was no longer that of David’s but of a darkly familiar origin. Mine! The voice was mine. Kind of, at least. It warbled with the deeper undertone of some unidentifiable being, pulling the strings of my mind from deep darkness. “Eat the fat boy. You need the resources or you’re gonna die here with him.”

No. I-I can’t. I can’t do that. I’ve been having a hard time with meat since I saw that stupid documentary, there’s no way I’m eating human! My breathing was shallow and my lungs ached with sharp-pointed pains at each inhale. I don’t… I don’t want to die and no one’s gonna find me. I’m… I’m so fucked.

Wait. The app. I remembered David’s phone. It stayed in the small, plastic clamp that David had brought along with him. It let him watch his phone while he drove without grabbing the attention of the police. Every step had been covered. I reached in and yanked it away, just past his dull, dead face. I squeezed the thin metal button on the side but the screen stayed blank. It’s fucking dead! Where’s my phone? I looked around the car but saw nothing. It had likely been thrown from the window while we rolled. Probably died hours ago.

Tears had begun to build and roll down my cheeks. They obscured my vision into a white glow, filled with dashes of brown and green. I fell back into my icy bed, snow falling faster than ever, and wiped my eyes with my dry-cracked fingers. The tears kept coming and, once again, I fell asleep.

***

A middle-aged man in a green, pleated uniform walked away from our tiny car. His matching puffy jacket proudly displays his position of authority; “U.S. BORDER PATROL.” His dick nearly swung out of his pants as he entered the booth, preparing to tell the rest of them that I was a flirt and that the car was clean. It was clean, now. Thanks to online banking, the money had crossed the border long before us.

“The blondie in the Escort wants it. She was all over me right in front of her man.”

My “man” was Dummie David. We’d passed the border nearly a hundred times together. A Ford Escort, Nissan Altima, or Honda Accord. Always casual. No need to draw any unnecessary attention. A trip only made necessary due to a deal made between a dealer and a manufacturer. They’d worked together for years, decades probably, so when the Cook moved to the Great White North, the Pin decided he’d charge a little more and find reliable transportation. A trustworthy middle-man. Or Woman. David, the dummy-dead, had been assigned as my muscle and, despite my dispositions, we looked completely believable. Dave was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a snake in human skin.

Dave loved playing the jealous boyfriend when the U.S.B.P. made their rounds and, eventually, took their time talking with me. He would laugh and laugh as we drove away, at the joke he’d made of them.

Dummie David wasn’t so bad, but his nickname wasn’t meant to be ironic or funny. He was oblivious. Couldn’t read a room without help. It was like he needed someone to translate the world for him. He was an emotional brick wall with a heart of… brick. A perfect combination for the job. The only time he’d ever overstepped his welcome was when he’d had too much to drink and tried to sleep in the bed with me. We’d agreed that the beds were for me, in the instance that there was only one and that he got the loveseat. He leaned in for a kiss and nearly caught my fist. He never brought it up or tried anything after that.

***

The biting burn of midnight wind sang behind the howl of a hundred dead wolves. The certain, uncaring violence in its tone opened a fear so deeply embedded that I don’t know what to call it. It was the midnight wind of the Rockies, wailing like witches at 3 a.m. How I wished I could get my hands on a broom right about now.

The mountain wore its naturally white dress, both beautiful and savage. The deepening pit of snow that I’d used as a bed had grown into an impressive grave. Deeper. As I reached the snowy wall, I was reminded that I’d removed my clothes. Became unbearably hot. Now, though, my skin feels numb and I’m glad about it. I can’t feel the burning of hardening ice. The tips of my fingers scratched into the walls, harder and icier than I’d thought, judging by the smears of fading orange and red.

The wall proved harder to climb than I’d hoped, and imagined. My leg had numbed, fortunately, but I couldn’t bend my knee. By the time I’d made it out, I was sweating again, against the nudging gusts of wind. The car sat, still, upside down, and against the massive trunk of the wooden pillar. I could still see David’s limp hand, pale and blue, from where I stood.

“You’re back!” He yelled.

“No! No, no no.” I tried to scream but imagine came out as some gruesome, guttural growl. As I groaned, my morbid curiosity drove me to see the rest of him. His face had bloated into a purple ball and looked as sweet as a grape.

“You’re not dead.” His voice was clear through the wind but his mouth hadn’t moved. Somehow, this reassured me. “But you’re about to be. So eat me.”

I… my thoughts trailed off into a distant blur. A mirage. Something was different about him. The light, or lack thereof? Even his words hadn’t sounded as disturbing as before. My mouth, it was changing. I’m salivating, now.

Hungry.

I crawled into the death trap, toward the swelling fruit. A thin, red roadmap scoured his purple cheeks. Saliva rolled out of my mouth and down my chin before dripping onto his plump, blue lips, pulling me closer to them. The kiss he’d been far too forward about wanting was finally manifesting. The same face that I’d, once, been so disgusted by. Repulsed by. I’d given him the kiss that he wanted. A cold, copper, and iron kiss.

My teeth no longer ached from the chattering, satisfied by the destructive clenching of my jaw. His bottom lip tore from his face with little effort, revealing a row of jagged, yellow-brown teeth. A sweet piece of fleshy gum. Chewy and wet. A frozen slug.

The edge of his mouth, what remained of a mouth, twitched into a smile. I’d been doing something right.

“Eat more,” the voice in my head instructed. Dave’s voice. Not Dave’s voice.

Without hesitation, I took a larger bite from the side of his face. My teeth raked across his skull, scraping deeper than I’d intended. A satisfying scrape. The blood in his face fought its way out of the gore-painted cavity. His yellow, gapped teeth vaguely guarded the inside of his mouth.

A stark and jolting crunch demands my attention. A hard, jagged stone — glass, maybe — from inside of his face. Only the windshields hadn’t broken.

I spit the hard thing into my palm and, breaking from my fugue, see that I’d chewed on one of his teeth. A black and yellow molar. My eyes shot up from my hand and the bloody pulp of David’s face became a violent-red cave.

“Eat him,” the voice in my head, quietly, demands. It’s not David’s voice at all. Its vague familiarity unnerves me. It was as though her own voice had been chased, beaten, dragged through gravel, and hung up to dry.

David’s meat fell between my teeth and tongue and the taste of his blood became bitter. There had been no dry-heaving. Anything I might have swallowed had blanketed the ceiling of the flipped car. Torn bits of flesh sat in the un-mixing blood and bile. Oil and water. I quickly backed out of the car and into the hardened snow.

After glancing around, I noticed a small bush covered in berries that grew close to the ground. There weren’t enough berries to do anything more than take the taste from my mouth. The taste I wished I never had to know. My hands reached for the berries like a child reaching for their mother’s breast, overfilling my mouth. The plump berries hadn’t tasted the way I’d expected. They hadn’t tasted like anything. They weren’t soft, either. The thought only occupied my mind long enough for me to see the thick crimson stream that poured from my mouth. My teeth crunched against the berries. Nuts, maybe? I thought. I glanced back to the bush and stopped chewing altogether.

The bush I thought that I’d seen had only been a fallen branch surrounded by small rocks. The rocks that cracked and broke my teeth. The rocks that rained from my open mouth, covered in blood and saliva, clanking against the ground with chipped pieces of white.

I let out a primal scream. A cry. What’s happening to me? I’d only been wasting my time. Dying slowly on the side of a mountain. No, not dying. Decaying.

But the taste in my mouth, my bleeding gums, had become sweet. Sweet and savory all at once. The same satisfying taste that I’d first tasted in David. David. His lifeless body is still in the Escort. The death trap.

If I eat him, just a few bites of his glistening face, I’ll have more energy than going back to sleep. I might not wake up. Not this time. The incline wasn’t as bad as some of the others we’d passed. And he was delicious. We hadn’t fallen far either, though. And I’d already taken a chunk from his cheek. The Escort caught the tree early on and the hardened snow definitely helped. He’s already dead, anyway.

After crawling back in, less reluctantly than before, I ripped the other cheek from his pudgy, grape face. My teeth weren’t as sharp as before but I could feel their jagged edges shredding his uncooked flesh. The thick, syrupy blood filled my cheeks and reminded me of something my dad would say when cooking his steak;

“I like ’em rare as Hell. Still mooin’ if possible. The flavor’s in the blood.”

He’d never been more right.

***

My quick bite turned into a meal. Dave’s blood-stained skull no longer looked like the man I’d once known. A palette of red and orange, obscured with random chunks. Even his eyes had been sucked from the sockets, chewed on like gelatin.

And I loved it.

My fingers had turned black and red from the cold and blood. My feet had become completely black. I hadn’t known about my ears or nose. Completely black. The satisfying numbness, destroyed nerve endings, shielded me from the world.

How long have I been here? I hadn’t known that It was my fourth night on the side of the mountain, either.

After I’d gotten out of the car, leaving his remains for another animal, the climb to the road seemed easy enough. The wind died down while I was in the car and the silence became much more unnerving. Has a bear been waiting? Watching the pale, blood-covered thing in the strange, metal box?

No bear. Yet, I still felt like something was wrong. I steadied myself as much as I could so that I could study the area, scanning for the smallest movement. Still, as stone, I waited.

No.

A pair of branches twitched in the distance, against the light gust of passing winds. Not branches, antlers. A thin, elongated face, pale as the snow, tilted from behind a tree not far away.

The deer. The one we almost hit. The one that put me down here. Something’s off, though. Not a deer.

A naked, human hand wrapped around the side of the tree and it pulled itself from hiding. I’d already started lunging up the hill before I could see any more of that thing. It had been watching me and I knew for sure that it was coming for me now. I could feel it, feet behind me.

Gaining.

I stepped onto the edge of the paved road with enough power to throw myself forward. The hard, ice-coated path caught my body with tough love. I needed to keep running from that thing. I need to get away.

***

Jack relieved the pressure on his foot, slowing his truck for the mountain curves. The same curves he’d brought his freighter through for years. Moving produce from California to Missouri. From Idaho to Texas. The same few routes he had won in auction year after year. There were only two separate years that he’d lost out on them and he hated the flatter drives. They’ll put ya’ right to sleep.

The icy cold breeze kept Jack awake. Alive. He would finesse the shallow mountainsides like a pro. The Champ. He had the vanity plate to prove it. There were two things Jack loved about driving his trucks; the sights that couldn’t be captured with a camera and the identity that seemingly came along with it.

Without taking his eyes from the road, he scrolled through the stations of his satellite radio. A trillion channels and nothing to listen to. The voices of people he couldn’t care to hear, spouting bullshit he couldn’t bear to hear.

The grooving slides of glass on tightly-wound steel rang through the speakers of his trucks.

“I got the blues!” He shouted in a broken, singsong voice.

“Got them snow-capped mountain blues,” the radio sang back.

He looked at the radio as he turned it up, so excited to hear the song. His eyes had only been off the road for half a second before a pair of antlers caught his attention. They were too close for him to stop and he could feel the resistance of the meaty body under the impossible weight of the truck.

“Dammit!” Jack said, aloud. “Not another elk. I can’t waste any more time cleaning blood off of you, girl.” His right hand patting the ceiling.

The truck slowly rolled to a stop. Jack opened the door, high up on the side of the cab, and fell to his booted feet. His old knees clicking as he recoils. The click of his heels against the ice broke the snow-packed silence.

Tangled between the wheels of his truck, mangled, bent, and stuck, the pale body of a skinned elk. Only, not an elk. Its ears and nose were black. The teeth were wrong and its lips were chapped. The teeth of a feral beast. Its skin had twisted so tight around it that he came to expect it to tear open. To reveal the answers to this creature.

Its eyes fluttered. A stomach-turning, eyes-pinched-shut kind of howl screeched from its broken jaw. There were no antlers. No horns. It was almost human. It was… It was a girl.