Route 99
Route 99 has a reputation for darkness.
The trees are in on this rumor and blanket the winding roads with devilish shade even on the sunniest of days. Home to wolf packs unafraid of blinding headlights and families of deer who almost purposefully blockade the highway’s exits, not even road workers bother to light the path, forcing drivers to rely on their navigation systems, if the service doesn’t cut out mid-trip. There’s a single gas station about 17 miles further into the forest’s grasp, but not even the gas jockey would unlock his grimy glass doors to service you.
The highwaymen make sure of this.
Which makes my job much easier.
My colleagues prefer a more obvious approach to our shared craft. They set up cozy stands and makeshift huts beside the roads, encouraging drivers to pull over off the concrete and onto the glass glittered mud beside the road and stop for snacks. The signs would read, “Caramel Apples For You And The Cids” in multicolored bubble letters. Their unfortunate spelling often worked well in their favor, encouraging at least 3 cars of writhing children and whining parents to pull over off state property onto highwaymen territory each season. And each season 3 missing families appear on the news before getting pancaked beneath the hundreds of unsolved cases that occur each year.
My colleagues enjoy the adrenaline.
They crave the rush in their veins while the police search endlessly through the mountains, except they never search the highway. But there’s always a chance. They take that chance with a stale beer and a rock hard candy apple.
But if you ask me, I don’t love the idea of spending my life behind bars with an overly affectionate roommate who’s love language requires his fists to make bloody love to my face.
I have a different approach.
I’d wait behind trees with a foldout chair, a flashlight, and a bucket of rusted nails to “fertilize” the roadway. Anything to stop a vehicle, not total it, but encourage it to pull over onto my territory. After all, a popped tire is a far less suspicious reason for a vehicle to pull over for, rather than a candy apple stand in the dead of nowhere. The others would see from the treetops, beneath the shrubs they fashioned into turtle shells, or behind the shack they stole from the farmer about an hour up the road, and they would know that this was my prey to taunt. But tonight, I changed my approach when I saw the creeping light through the foliage, a petite Sonic Grey Honda slowly rounding the bend, most likely spooked by a prancing deer or another mirage of Route 99.
I pulled up the hood of my puffy jacket and adopted the hitchhiker bit that only worked about 9% of the time. I folded my chair, dropped it to the ground, and crept out from behind my tree. I waited by the side of the road, preparing myself to take on the role of a lost camper. With my thumb out, my face in artificial shock, and my flashlight waving, I managed to flag down the car. But in truth, It didn’t seem like the driver needed much convincing. The window rolled down, and amid the gasps of skunky smoke and the low gritting whine of whatever Frank Sinatra song was playing on the radio, there was a red-eyed, lazily smiling girl with one hand on the wheel and the other lazily gripping a roll with two fingers.
“You need a ride?” her voice was sweet like the apples just up the road and around the bend. Kind. Naturally giggly. Young. It almost made me feel guilty for taking her offer. It almost made me feel guilty for the dull rusted knife hiding in my pant pocket. But they’re all sweet, all kind, all hopelessly gullible before they’re about to die. So maybe I don’t feel guilty. Maybe I should just enjoy the blasting heat, Sinatra’s scratchy “That’s Life” and the eye-watering secondhand smoke from inside the car.
Her hair was dirty blonde, visibly unwashed and from the corner of my eye I swore I saw a leaf stuck in her messy bun. She wore a stained white tank top in the dead of October with unbuttoned jean shorts and heavily worn cowboy boots, showcasing the half-finished patchwork on her arms, neck, and upper thighs. Her driving hand tapped the steering wheel to the beat, checking and grinning into her rearview mirror as if there wasn’t a strange man right beside her. I guess I was a little excited, so much that I hadn’t mentioned where I’d like to be dropped off. But then again, she didn’t ask either.
“You a local?” I asked, my predator senses stumped by my prey’s behavior.
Finally, her giggly eyes found mine, before swaying back towards the slithering roads, “You could say that.”
Her smoking hand locked the doors. Big mistake.
I nodded softly, grabbing the handle of my knife in my right-hand pocket. I don’t know what it was, but something felt off about this hunt in particular. Normally, my pulse would be racing by now, hard with anticipation. Normally, by now I could feel the fear fizz on the tip of my tongue. Normally the fly I caught in the web I spun would know they had made a grave mistake. Maybe it's the contact high, but I couldn't stop wondering why this girl kept smiling into her rearview mirror. It wasn’t too obvious, just a slight smirk. But then again, I am a paranoid high.
“I’ve never heard of a camping ground near Route 99. Pretty ballsy of you.”
I nodded again. I try not to make it a habit to converse with my food.
The moon was especially large tonight, stationed in between the small patch of open sky uncovered by the trees.
“Mother moon is saying hello,” she gasped, her puffy eyes no longer entransed by the yellow highway paint. “Don’t you think?” she asked her mirror.
She was definitely out of it, breaking the silence seconds later by softly duetting with Sinatra,
“...Many times I thought of cutting out, but my heart won't buy it,” her lips curled into a smirk, but I didn’t understand the joke.
Her foot pressed on the gas, and her grip on the wheel tightened as the speedometer inched toward 90 mph.
Her car swerved dramatically with the slowly growing excitement of the song. And whether it was the high or the tables that had now suddenly turned onto me, I had a sudden dream of not only selling candy apples, but in places like apple orchards and farmers markets. Not on the side of a sketchy highway.
“...But if there's nothing shaking come this here July…”
I thought of how many stranger’s cars I’ve sat in, how many cars I drove into out of state lakes, how many times I said that this would be the last one.
“…I'm gonna roll myself up...”
I thought about my childhood dog, Kimberly, and how much she loved my sister. Much more than she loved me. I remember how badly i wanted Kimberly’s attention, and how far I was willing to go to get it.
“...In a big ball…”
I still see my mother’s face when I think about it. I see her shock, her disgust, her utter hate when she had found out about what I had done. I see Kimberly, and how her tale didn’t wag anymore, or how she would hide beneath my sister’s bed, even though she knew as well as anyone that she wasn’t coming back. After all, Kimberly was the one who dug her up.
“...and die…”
No more games. No more trips down memory expressway. I slid the knife out and pressed it against my thigh, letting the light bounce off the blade, just enough for her to see it, “Pull over.”
“Aw, have I missed your exit?” Her laugh morphed with Sinatra’s screeching ballad, her eyes smirking into the rearview mirror once again.
Smoke crawled out from her nose, “You were easier than we thought you’d be.”
But before I could strike, her smoking hand bent backward, and a larger, black gloved hand stretched out from the darkness behind me and accepted the joint, “I’d put that back in my pocket if i were you.”
The voice was deep, dark, and directly behind me. And the knife he held to my neck was shinier, sharper, and much larger than mine. But I guess this is the price I pay for victim shopping on Route 99.
“My, my…”