walking

Three AM is the best time to go walking.

 

The reason being it's June in Arizona, and during daylight hours heat radiates from all directions and makes even the smallest tank tops and short shorts cling to you with sweat.  Or at least that's what you'd tell anyone who asked, not that anyone has ever asked.  Maybe it's the absence of people and noise that's lured you to this nocturnal schedule, or something else entirely, but whatever it is it's the real reason, not avoiding heat.

 

You think about this as you cross the familiar neighborhood golf course with long, purposeless strides.  The moon stains everything almost abnormally bright, like it's still daytime--but not quite, because going outside before 8 PM now hurts your eyes.  Trees are bent shadows in the distance and you tell yourself for the thirtieth time they're not nightmare creatures.  For someone who's as nervous in the dark as you are, you've chosen an odd lifestyle.

 

Mostly during these trips you sing in your head and avoid thought altogether.  There's entirely too much time for thinking here, another reason why it's odd you still do this.  You think about food as you pass cheap 24-hour places, glad you left your wallet at home.  You think about strangers and rapists whenever a car passes by and seems to slow the slightest bit as it does (but who'd want you, you also think).  You think about unbidden things when you pass the train tracks, already heading back toward home (has an hour really gone by?).  Whenever you do, automatically the thought comes--there is a train that passes at 5 AM.  You could just lay down and fall asleep.  You're a heavy sleeper.  You hate yourself for these thoughts and you never break stride as you walk up and over, but you still have them and they push against your brain tissue as if trying to get out.

 

As you cross the street and are about to turn back into your neighborhood, you feel something tighten in your chest, and out of the corner of your eye a black car (maybe blue, you can't tell in the glow of the streetlight that seems to leech color from everything) does slow.  You take a few more steps, swallow hard, stop as it does.

 

The man who leans out the passenger side window is entirely unremarkable.  Even when remembering him you can't be sure if he had facial hair, any hair at all, a kind or a sinister face.  The voice that floats out to you is just as unremarkable; you remember the words but they're like print on a page.  "Do you need a ride somewhere?"

 

In your head, you may have laughed a confident laugh and responded "I've seen the movies.  I get in there and I'm as good as dead in a ditch."  You may have gotten in the stranger's car without hesitation, hitchhiking to nowhere.  You may have been chopped to pieces and not cared.

 

In your body, you're shivering, and you take a step back and say "No, I'm good," inwardly berating yourself for not adding thank you like your mom would have wanted, even though you know it's stupid.

 

The man in the car shrugs, and rolls up his window and drives away, and you let out a breath you hadn't realized you'd been holding and iron bands around your chest seem to burst open.  It's a few minutes before your legs stop wobbling, but they do and then you're walking back toward home, the train tracks far behind you and the car far ahead, taillights winking.

 

Three AM is a terrible time to go walking, but it's the only time for you.

Author's Note

more of a journal entry than an actual story. took a lot of going back and revising to keep all my i's capitalized and the whole thing in second person.

Reviews

[ashley]

This is brilliant. I love the voice you have in this. You're really talented, you know. I could see the places and feel the emotions... you put me in this perfectly. Fantastic job, for real. Love it :)