I awake in a green reclining chair in a whitewashed room smelling harshly of antiseptic. How cliché. The three small clocks above the door create a cacophonous ticking that make my head spin and my skin crawl. Finally, a fat nurse opens the door, waddles toward me, and starts interrogating me like the goddamn CIA.
She scowls at me before repeating herself.
“Do you have anyone you’d like us to call? Your mother?”
“Yeah, like she’d take a three-hour flight to see me.”
“I don’t know my father.”
“Well, we have to release you to somebody.”
“I’m a grown ass adult. I can take care of myself.”
“Miss, you just had a concussion. We’re required to release you to somebody.”
I play dead, because I hear that helps if you want to avoid people, or make them shut up. It works, because she sighs and closes the door. How the hell am I going to get out of here? If no one shows up to get me, will they ever let me out? I need to get out before I lose it. As my head continues throbbing, I stare at the ceiling for hours. When the lights in the hallway are finally dimmed, I rip out the IV and slowly slink out of the reclining chair and into the empty hallway, my hand gliding across the right wall to try to find an exit. Blood from where the IV was inserted into my arm paints the wall as I stumble in the darkness. Finally, I enter the waiting room, which is bathed in harsh, white light, and the contrast almost blinds me. Suddenly, all eyes are immediately focused on me. I quicken my pace, making a beeline for the door. Out of nowhere, a security guard grabs me firmly by the wrist.
“Miss, where do you think you’re going?”
I smirk at him, before delivering a right jab to his ribs, causing him to double over, as I run out of the waiting room and into the invigorating night air.
After sprinting for what seems like hours, with the hospital far behind me, I pause to stop wheezing and gather my breath. The blood in my head is pulsing, and some blood from the bandage trickles down my forehead before pooling at my chin. I follow the dirt path before me through clumps of evergreens; my feet caked with dead leaves and damp soil. Suddenly, harsh light pierces my vision. I find myself at the edge of a large highway. The neon reds and yellows of car lights cars speed by me. Vera. Pain blossoms in my head, and he’s there again. Vera. I grasp the trunk of a lamppost, pressing my face onto its cool surface. Vera. With my arms fully stretched in both directions, I stride onto the highway. Belligerent drivers honk and swerve around me. By some miracle, I manage to cross the road unscathed. My eyes closed, I stumble in the grass on the opposite side of the highway with my arms stretched in front of me. My feet touch down on rough, textured pavement. I feel a hand grasp my wrist, and immediately jerk my neck upwards, my eyes straining open. The old man places a hand on my shoulder and asks, “Miss, are you alright?” I let out a high-pitched laugh before stroking his face with my fingertips. “C’mon,” he replies, leading me past what seems like a gas station and into the bright lights of the mini mart.
“Do you have a… a phone?”
“There’s a payphone right outside.”
With three unstable strides, I reach the payphone. I dig into the pocket of my jacket, pressing four, frigid quarters into the palm of my hand before inserting them into the slot. After frantically entering in a number, I clutch the phone to my ear.
“Hello? Who is this,” answers a wispy voice.
“Who do you think it is?”
“Vera? Do you realize what time it is?”
“You said I could call anytime.”
“It’s 1:30 in the morning, Vera. Jesus.”
“Come in tomorrow and we can discuss this.”
“I won’t be there tomorrow. I’m going away.”
“I’m going away. I’m going to find him.”
“Vera, as your therapist, I do not approve of this decision.”
“It’s funny that you think, you with your big Ph.D. and awful fashion sense, that you know what’s best for me. You don’t! I figured it out, and I’m going to find him. Don’t you realize, this whole time it's been him, he’s the voice.”
“Vera, right now you’re in a fragile mental state. Your judgment is severely impaired.”
“I don’t care what my mother said, about it not being a good decision to meet him. Blah blah blah! Screw her! I’m going to Denver!” I slam the phone down before he can say another word. I pull out the crumpled slip of paper from my pocket with the address, 1080 Walnut Street, Denver, Colorado, written in charcoal drawing pencil. Ever since my mother gave it to me ten years ago, I have made it a habit to always carry around his address, in case the longing brewing within me became unbearable, and I couldn’t stand not knowing him for another second. But now, standing at the edge of the highway, I am the most stuck I have ever been in my life, knowing exactly where to go but having no way of getting there. With no better plan, I start walking, past the gas station, past the madness. As the lights of cars blur by me, I keep walking, the sky appearing more like a painting than something of reality. The brilliant crimsons and mauves of dawn explode into the dazzling cerulean of morning, and here I am, thumb extended to drivers who wouldn’t let me have a ride if their life depended on it. Although my body feels frozen and laced with ice, my muscles burn and ache, and it’s not long before I’m gritting my teeth with every step, the blisters on my feet scraping against the harsh pavement. Thunder explodes above me, streaks of lightning rippling through the sky. Covering my ears with my hands, I scream out into the void.
I am awakened by the sound of a gentle voice. “Miss, are you alright?” Blinding light floods my senses.
“Sure,” I respond, my eyes still closed.
“Is there any way I can help you?”
“No…. Wait, do you have a car?”
Turns out Joe is a trucker. An all-American, KFC-obsessed trucker with a severe nicotine addiction. Trust me, I know all about him. Throughout the ride, he doesn’t stop rambling on and on and on about his pathetic little farm boy life. It’s like watching Duck Dynasty and being handcuffed to the seat, powerless to avoid the stream of verbal diarrhea and cultivated ignorance. He’s on his way to Boulder for a potato conference, five miles outside of Denver, and has agreed to drop me off at the city limits. While he continues ranting, I rest my face against the glass of the window, watching the passing landscape gradually become more rugged. The farther south we travel, the more the trees seem to disappear, making the air drier and harder to breathe. After hours of what feels like imprisonment in the truck, I am restless and miserable, and keep having to kick my feet against the dashboard to stop them from falling asleep. Joe doesn’t seem to mind. He seems cheery as ever, after blasting banjo music and singing along to his favorite redneck bands for the past few hours. When Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” comes on the radio, he gets really worked up, proceeding to sing the chorus in a grating, unbearable voice. Despite the echoes of Joe’s haunting falsetto, I somehow manage to fall asleep.
A man sits in the corner of a dark room, illuminated by the pale flame of a long, thin candle. Something about him seems vaguely familiar, yet distant and uninviting. His eyes pierce right through me, making the acid rise in my stomach. “Hello, Vera.” From his left hand dangles a female puppet, which he makes twitch and dance with the slightest movement of his fingers. As I near the marionette, a sense of foreboding courses through me as its familiar features come into focus. Its chocolate-colored hair and blistered feet send a kind of wild electricity down my spine. My body is paralyzed, eyes fixed to this all too realistic woman. “Boo,” he whispers into my ear, causing me to fall backward and bang my head on the hard wooden floor. He erupts into a fit of laughter, and then the candle is extinguished. I wake up with a start.
“Whoa,” Joe shouts. “What happened to you?”
“An IHOP is coming up in a few miles. We should stop and eat.” Half an hour later, we are parked outside of a small line of stores on the side of the highway. Since I have no appetite, I take the opportunity to walk around and stretch my legs while Joe eats. Jesus, I swear I almost got a blood clot from being held up in that truck for hours. The rocks in the pavement bury themselves into the scabs in my feet, making me scream out into the ruins of suburbia. Finally, I spot a message from God: a Payless. I get black tennis shoes, which are ugly as hell but so damn comfortable.
Joe is surprisingly quiet for the rest of the day, lolling in his carbohydrate daze, and before sunset we reach Colorado. My eyes paint the passing road with the words I have not yet spoken, spoken to him. The almost three days on the road have been three days too long. I need to find him now. Joe pulls over to the side of the road just outside of Boulder to stop for the night, and before long he’s out cold. Rifling through the glove compartment for the hell of it, my fingers brush across something cool and metallic. Grabbing it, I sneak out of the truck and cross to the other side of the quiet road, pressing the gun against my head and pretending to shoot. Boom. I double over with hyena-like laughter. Like I’d ever kill myself. Ha!
With labored steps, I walk toward the bright lights ahead, my eyes making out the outline of a bus stop in the distance. As I take the gun off safety, an almost mystical sense of power and control courses through me. I’m not Vera. No, right now I’m Superwoman: a gritty goddess with the searing vengeance of a thousand yellow jackets. After arriving at the bus stop, I sit down, pulling the hood of my jacket over my head to avoid being seen.
“Who are you dressed as?” an elderly woman with long silver hair and chestnut eyes asks me.
“It’s Halloween. Who are you dressed as? Jessica Jones? I mean I just figured, with the gun and all.”
“Who’s that?” I respond before quickly tucking the gun into the right pocket of my jacket.
“Oh, she’s an interesting character from this wonderful new series on Netflix. I first saw it with a man named Harvey; we matched on Plenty of Fish...”
Before she can finish, the bus approaches us, screeching to a halt. As I get on, I pray that it is going in the right direction as I stare out the window at the falling snow. "I hear there’s going to be a blizzard." As the woman from before sits down next to me, continuing her little directionless story, I push past her and towards the front of the bus, sitting down on the floor next to the driver’s seat. He turns to me, giving me a quizzical expression.
“Miss, what are you doing?”
“Yeah... I need to go to Walnut Street."
"Miss, I can't just take you anywhere you want."
I reach into the pocket of my coat before placing a hundred-dollar bill in his lap.
"I'm sorry, but I can't accept bribes."
My hand dives back into my coat before taking out an additional four hundred.
An hour later, I get off the bus, now filled with puzzled passengers, and knock on my father’s door. A middle-aged woman with vivid rose lipstick and frizzy blond hair opens the door in her pajamas.
“Hello? Who are you? Do you know how late it is?”
“Hi. I’m looking for Calvin Peterson.”
“How exactly do you know my husband?”
“Let’s just say he’s an old friend.”
“Alright...” she responds, her shifty eyes seeming to examine every bone and muscle in my face. “Cal works the night shift at Cork, which is a little ways down the road. It’s to the left of the gas station. You can’t miss it.”
I stride away without looking back or thanking her for the directions. A few minutes later, the gas station comes into view. A strange silence pervades the snowy air, and there is no one in sight. Next to the gas station, a red neon sign with the word Cork flashes above the entrance to a small bar. Inviting myself in, I step inside as the wind chimes above the door jingle harshly.
“Hello? Who’s there?” asks a coarse voice from behind the dark bar. “It’s two in the morning. We close at two every night. Everybody knows that.”
“I’m actually not interested in alcohol at the moment,” I retort, coasting gradually to the bar. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“Oh yeah? What for?” The man flicks a switch, filling the room with the glow of fluorescent lights. My father is a tall, wiry man in his early sixties, his skin weathered and tan from years of living in the Southwest.
“Does the name Geraldine Black ring a bell?”
“Geraldine? How do you know Geraldine?”
“Wait are you....... Vera?”
“No, she had another child whose father left her.”
“Vera,” he says, reaching out his hand, which I slap away.
“Don’t touch me, you monster! It’s all your fault.”
“Why did you come all this way if you’re just going to call me names?”
“I wouldn’t have. Honestly, I wouldn’t have wasted my time. But then one day it all made sense, after all those years of useless medication, that I’m not crazy. It’s you.”
“What do you mean it’s me?”
“It’s you. You’re the voice in my head.”
“Jesus Christ. You know what? You’re just as crazy as I thought you’d be. Why the hell do you think I left? It wasn’t your mother. It was you. Even then, when you were three, I knew you were just like her, my mother. She heard ghosts in her head, and after a while nothing she ever said made sense. I left her, and I had to leave you. People like you just imprison everyone around them. I think I’ve had enough of you for one lifetime. Good night and get out.”
With one fell swoop, he picks me up, throws me over his shoulder, and carries me out of the bar and toward the gas station. Shrill screams erupt from deep within me, and giving up, he finally puts me down.
“Get yourself a cab,” he growls at me, pointing to a nearby phone booth.
“I don’t think so,” I snap back, pulling the trucker’s gun out of my coat and pointing it at him, steadying it with both hands.
“You’re not in your right mind. Give me the gun,” he responds, walking towards me. With that, I pull the trigger, sending a bullet right through his head. For a few minutes, all is still, and silence is by my side. Then I hear static in the back of my mind, like a radio stuck forever between two channels. Laughter pierces the static, and then I hear him again. Oh Vera. What a silly girl you are. You thought it was our pathetic little nobody of a father. I’m so much stronger than he ever was. You’ll never run away from me. You must know who I am now. Look in the snow. Through the dim light, I can just make out the words “never forget” spelled out in a gasoline rainbow around my father’s body. Suddenly, the finality of it all comes crashing down around me, and I can’t breathe.
“See you in hell,” I respond, before putting the barrel of the gun to the roof of my mouth and squeezing the trigger.
Snow sugarcoated the towering evergreens. My father lay sprawled on the cool pavement; his limbs twisted beyond recognition, forming an ironic snow angel in the dusted fluff, a pained expression on his ghostly face. My body lay beside him. Finally, there is silence.
