untitled

The girl's no good.

Two months ago, it was New Mexico.

A little town near the border, and just a few thousand feet from the motel room where she slept, the dirt in New Mexico turned into the dirt in Mexico. The border was invisible for the most part, but just up the road a piece from the ramshackle motel there stood a large guard tower and in it sat men with guns. They watched that invisible border all day and all night and when Marlena walked out to the ice machine, the air still and dry around her, the dust kicking up with a passing car in the parking lot and filling her mouth, she could feel the barrell of those guns pointed at her. Sights set at her back, following her until she ducked back into the room with the busted air conditioner unit, the bucket of ice already melting. Marlena didn't like New Mexico but she didn't like the thought of Mexico, the thought of those guns, much more. Mexico had been the plan but then her car had stopped, the engine burnt out and rolling with smoke, and she had stopped, too. In the motel room at night, with her windows drawn and Telenovellas she couldn't understand showing on the TV, it was too hot to do anything but think. Marlena would close her eyes and try to remember where she had come from, where she had been a year, maybe thirteen months ago.

In a motel room on the border of Mexico, Marlena had thirteen dollars left in her pocket. She had the keys to a car that didn't run but she knew she couldn't stay - she couldn't stay there, in New Mexico, in the motel room with the dull carpet and cigarette smoke stained walls.

Marlena closed her eyes and tried to remember home; she couldn't.

(Back-tracking, memories playing in reverse, Marlena would begin to feel nauseous and her hands would begin to shake and she would think of the road through the desert, long and unwinding and she would begin to think of the city that came before.

Marlena would only remember blood on her hands, the steering wheel sticky with it and the way her heart felt like it was going to crawl up, leap from her throat. Her foot hurt from pressing the pedal. The blood wasn't hers.

And in the passenger seat, there was someone else - and when  Marlena looked over, he was pulling a bullet out of himself, his hands were slick and red and he was holding a tiny piece of metal between the point of two fingertips, he was holding it up to the light and it flashed crimson in the streetlights. Marlena knew he wouldn't die, but she knew if he lived it would be worse and she left him, bleeding, outside of an emergency room because the sirens were blaring behind her and she wanted out, she wanted away, she wanted to say sorry but she wasn't sure for what so instead, she said nothing at all. She drove away.

She doesn't remember much after that.)

Marlena tried to forget home, because she couldn't go back there. She tried to forget the blood, the flashing lights, the shape of the bullet and the shape of the hole it left. She burned the car, burned her clothes, dyed her hair in a gas station bathroom somewhere north of Los Angeles. Her home had been him - (he has a name but Marlena doesn't think of that either, the letters jumbled up into an order that doesn't make sense) - and their home had been their car, empty houses, motel rooms where maids hadn't cleaned. The running had become a habit, something she longed for, something as sure and as constant as breathing. Marlena didn't have a choice but to run, to keep running, her heart constantly pounding away in her chest.

Then came New Mexico, the broken down car, the broken down air conditioner, Marlena picking through the scraps of broken glass in the passenger seat of another car. She was never sure what exactly it was she was leaving behind but she felt a strange heat at her back, something pushing her forward and staying static became the thought that filled her with fear. Anywhere was better than here. She dyed her hair again, this time in the basin of the sink in the motel room, brownish red water filling the yellow-stained bowl. She stole a car. She drove East.

In the rearview mirror, her reflection looked tired, older. The sun was burning the sand, turning red and orange, and the desert looked like it was on fire behind her.

She looked away.

Author's Note

Hi! This is just the first part of a short story I'm working on/fleshing out. Please let me know what you think!