Bad Sun Rising

     There was a hangnail moon in the sky, which meant the devil was hanging up his coat for the night. Though Sielle had only ever heard the saying from her mother, it was the dominating thought in her mind that night. Everything else Sielle was doing was just as automatic as her lungs breathing and her heart beating. It was with the third eye that Sielle drove on these roads without seeing the darkened trees, or the twists in the cracked pavement that snaked down the mountain. Maybe she saw them too many times in the past to need to see them tonight.  There was only one thought pulsing through her mind, flashing like the neon signs she’d seen the one time she’d gone to Vegas. The devil had hung up his coat, and he was meaning to entertain some trouble. Earlier, Sielle had kept the thought to herself, not wanting to scare anyone more than they were already. Now she was alone in a truck that wasn’t hers, except for ghostly memories sitting shotgun, with someone else’s blood on her knuckles, beneath her fingernails.

 

     It was not so much the blood that bothered her. In the Appalachia, everyone saw the black of the mines, the blue of the mountain, the grey of the silver tree trunks, and the clearness of the moonshine, but no one ever saw the red of blood soaking into the soil. It had only ever been a matter of time before the red had painted her too, and Sielle need not worry about the when and how anymore.

 

     The cross tied around the rearview mirror swung violently every time she had to swerve or hit a pothole. Truth was, God had been reaching out to her as wildly as the cross swung around now, but Sielle had always kept herself just out of reach. The only salvation she was looking for was the early light of dawn, ending the night so that it could never be revisited, and telling Sielle that she’d driven enough miles.