Deer Crossing
by Lily Tatara
The Ohio State University
Lily Tatara is an American writer based in Columbus, Ohio. She is currently studying writing at The Ohio State University. She was awarded Western Michigan University's Gwen Frostic award for Fiction in 2024 and was the runner-up in Ohio State University's Jacobson Short Story Contest in 2025. Most recently, however, she has been awarded the R.L Stein award. She is a writer primarily concerned with the strange and macabre, which she likes to blend with the oddity of everyday life.
Of course, I never said it to her, but I always thought Lydia's dad was kind of a dick. He was the type of guy who pushed you too hard in the interest of ‘good fun’. He came from money but loved to use the term ‘self-built.’ He was ten years older than his wife. He hung the head of a stag that he had shot on his den wall, even though he spent the weekend hunt huddled up in a deer stand, luring them close for the kill with some sweet-smelling gas.
He never liked me; that was for sure. Even after three years with his daughter, I was still just her “friend from college.” I was broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped enough to keep him throwing footballs at my head, but my breasts and vagina ensured that the only playful nickname I’d receive from him would be a colorful assortment of words better left unsaid.
Anyway, Lydia's father had just died.
Heart Attack. Woo-hoo! His life of fatty steaks and golf-induced alcoholism had caught up to him. I was there when Lydia got the call. Four in the morning in our cold studio on the West Side, she cried until the sun seeped through the slats of our blinds, and the winter birds tapped at the window. More so than ever, I kept my mouth shut.
I let her buy me an ill-fitting black dress. I helped her put the brown box dye on her faded blue hair. I offered to drive the whole way to her hometown in Illinois for the funeral, and I sat in silence for hours when she decided she didn’t have it in her to listen to music.
By the time we got off at the Patridge exit, it was night. A particularly bad blizzard had delayed us by a few hours, and my only goal now was to get to her childhood home as soon as possible, so we’d hopefully get enough sleep before the eleven o’clock viewing.
I turned onto Rabbit Run Road, which I thought would connect to the State Route that led into the nicer part of town.
“You made a wrong turn,” Lydia said quietly, picking her head up off the window and looking over to me.
“Huh? No I didn’t. That was Rabbit Run.”
“Rabbit Run goes towards more farmland.” she spoke softly, her eyes focused out on the passing barren fields.
“It connects to the State Route. I saw it on the map. Don’t worry, I’ve got this. Just focus on getting some shut-eye.”
“You’ve driven here like twice- I lived here.”
“Four times,” I corrected.
“What?”
“Spring break senior year, Christmas the year after, your brother's graduation, Fourth of July. Four times.”
“Fine. Four times. But that doesn’t make you an expert,” Lydia rubbed her eyes.
“Lydia, just go back to sleep, okay?”
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
“Well, maybe you should,” I exhaled and placed my free hand on top of my baseball cap.
Lydia went quiet and turned to look back out the window. I tried to suppress my impatience with her stubbornness. Stubborn like her father.
“I wanted to get there while my mom was awake,” she said. I looked at the clock– it was nearly midnight.
“Don’t you have a spare key?”
“I wanted to see her before tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry,” my lips pressed together, “I’ll get us there, I promise.”
“Okay. Thank you,” she said, “You should turn around.”
I sighed and pressed harder on the gas pedal. I could smell a faint sweetness in the air. Out the passenger window my headlights hit a road sign.
Deer Crossing.
“Marlowe. Turn around for God’s–”
He must have seen me before I saw him, but when I noticed it was too late. The stag straddled the yellow double lines of the road, antlers so tall they looked like spiraling tree branches, skin as white as snow. I took control of the wheel before I could think, whipping my little red Honda sharply to my right, avoiding the stag and taking us offroad.
We hit an oak going fifty-five miles an hour.
↠
I once watched an episode of MythBusters that asked if the airbags in a car break the thumbs of the driver when they detonate. I don’t remember what the answer was, but I mulled it over while my ears rang, and my vision started to blur. I flexed my hands, back and forth, in and out, side to side, wondering if I could feel my thumbs alongside the rest of my fingers. I let my head drop down to my chest, watching the airbags deflate and trying to get a look at my hands– they were covered in blood. I looked beside me in the car and there was Lydia, crushed by the tree's impact through the windshield and splattered against the seatback.
↠
I was out of the car and on the road in seconds, scrambling against the cold metal siding and running around the back, past the flashing tail lights and the “I Brake for Wooly Bears” sticker that Lydia and I had picked up from the National Park in Ohio. I grasped onto the passenger side door handle and got another glimpse at my hands. This time, they were pristine and devoid of carnage, as if I had imagined the crash completely.
When I tore open the door, I saw Lydia, clinging to her seat belt, pressing against the airbag. The tree was still upright, and my car, though crushed in the front like a pop can, hadn’t caved on top of her.
“Lydia— God— Lydia,” I said, unbuckling her from her seat and throwing my arms around her, “Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry.” Lydia took a soft gasp of air.
“It came out of nowhere,” she said, looking out the driver's side window into the woods where it had run off. I slumped against the car’s side and pressed my hands to my face.
“I’ll call someone– give me just a second to catch my breath. I’ll get some cops out here and they can take you to your moms. I’ll deal with all of this” I leaned my head against the bottom of Lydia's seat and tried to regulate myself. We were fine, we were alive. They wouldn’t bury us in this trash town with Lydia's asshole dad.
“I’ll make the call. Just stay put.” I managed to stand.
The night was bitterly cold, so I grabbed my coat from the back seat. Lydia blinked vacantly, staring ahead at the fallen tree, the front of the car, the moon. Nervously, I fumbled my phone out of my pocket and dialed 9-1-1.
Ring, ring, silence.
The call dropped. I tried again.
Ring, ring, silence.
I pulled my phone from my ear and bit my lip.
“Lydia, can I borrow your phone?” I asked, walking back to her car door on shaky legs, “Mine isn’t working right.”
“Sure.”
I stepped away from the car and dialed again.
Ring, ring, dead.
Ring, ring, dead.
I went back to the car and pulled the envelope from my visor, silently searching for the number of roadside assistance with shaky hands.
“What's wrong?” Lydia asked
I found the small card, and dialed the number listed, Lydia squirmed and frowned with frustration.
“Marlowe,” she protested.
Ring, ring, dead
I sat in the driver's seat and let the phone drop into my lap.
“I think– hm. I think we don’t have any service?” I said, staring down into the barrel of the dark, tree-lined road. My heart was beating faster and faster; there was something wrong, something so deeply and intrinsically wrong I couldn’t begin to fathom it. Whatever it was, I told myself to keep it pushing.
“Stay here,” I said, departing once more from the faint warmth of the car.
“Where are you going?” Lydia asked.
“I’m going to walk up the road and see if I can find us some help– or some service. Stick by the car, okay? Keep dialing 9-1-1.”
“Hell no. No way you're going alone.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I told you, it's just Farmland up here,” Lydia crossed her arms.
“When I hit the State Route they’ll be a gas station or something, I’m sure.”
“Oh my god there is no connection to the state route.”
I shut the door and faced the darkness again. No part of me wanted to be involved in this. Not the crash, not the fighting, not the Asshole's funeral. Regardless, I began the trek into the dark, clutching my phone to my chest and checking for a bar. The moon burned a circular hole in the night sky above me.
I imagined that back home, the engagement ring was burning a small hole into my nightstand. I had bought it in May, and not once had it moved from that spot. I wondered if Lydia had ever encountered it when she cleaned. I wondered if she was upset that I hadn't used it yet.
If anything, the crash should have taught me that it was time to put a plan in motion, but something in my gut still churned at the thought of it.
The trees looked identical as I walked, each contributing to a mass blur of thin, dark lines. Finally, after a minute or so of walking, I could catch the reflection of a yellow road sign ahead.
“Deer Crossing”
Just past that, a small dark car had crashed into a tree. I quickened my pace, and with it my heart beat faster and faster. Someone else had crashed here, not far from us, in a similar manner. I hoped to God I’d find them in good condition with the police on the way.
When I got close enough to make out the back of the car, I saw a bumper sticker that read
“I Brake for Wooly Bears,” and the shimmering silver logo of my red Honda.
I slowed to a complete stop, staring ahead in bewilderment, before looking behind me into the dark. Had I walked in a circle? Had I turned around at some point? No, that was impossible. But what the hell happened, if not that? I nervously approached the car and peered inside. There was Lydia, waiting for my return. She jumped when she saw me. I opened the car door.
“Back already? Did you find anyone?” She asked, her hands nervously gripping her sweater hem.
“No– sorry. I came back for my gloves,” I said, taking a deep breath. There was nothing I could say that would be productive, I decided. Nothing that wouldn’t spark another argument, at least.
“I didn’t see you walking back,” she crossed her arms and looked out onto the road. She doubted me– of course– she always doubted me.
“You know me. I’m like a ninja,” I gave her a faint smile and pulled my gloves out of the cupholder beside the driver's seat, “Be back soon.”
“Really, please let me,” she began, before I closed the door, and focused on walking in a straight line, each foot placed in the center of the road.
Trees, trees, trees. The moon.
The engagement ring.
Trees, trees, trees.
Deer Crossing.
“I Brake for Wooly Bears.”
God Dammit.
This time, I turned right back around, unsure of what compelled me to do so. I ran as fast as I could, holding onto my hat with one hand and my phone with the other, away from the sign and the crash, and back into the dark, careful to keep my feet on the yellow line. Until, of course, I came upon the Honda.
Lydia tumbled out of the car, eyes wild and terrified.
“Marlowe! Are you okay? What's wrong?”
I stopped and stared at her, deep breathing as I tried to form some sort of rational sentence.
“It's a loop,” I settled on. Which ultimately wasn’t the best phrasing.
“What?” Lydia narrowed her eyes.
“It's a loop— the road. It’s a loop. I went down the road and came right back to the car, so I turned and went the other way and came right back here. It's a loop—a short loop. How the hell did we not—” I gasped, putting my hands on my knees and trying to collect myself.
“Marlowe, what?”
I took Lydia by the hand and dragged her behind me, trudging down the road with sudden dedication.
“We’ll be back here in a moment,” I told her, ignoring protest, and focusing on the feeling of her hand in mind. It felt like forever, since we walked hand in hand.
Lydia shivered as I brought her further out into the cold, but I persisted regardless, dragging her along past the rows of identical trees, until we came across the road sign.
“Look,” I pointed. Lydia let go of my hand.
“That's our car,” she said.
She turned around and looked behind us, from where we came, before continuing right up to the door and looking in. She met every detail with the curiosity of a detective, looking back and forth between the car, the woods, the moon. Then, she looked down to her feet, and the crumbling road beneath them.
“Right? It totally seems like the road is straight. But we must have been driving in circles,” I said.
“The road is straight,” she corrected.
“Seems like it, yeah.”
“You turned onto this road by the highway. It’s straight. We would have seen any other road entrance if this was it. It's not a circle,” Lydia crossed her arms. Her signature move, by now.
“Maybe we’re just imagining things. Maybe we hit our heads.”
“My head feels fine.”
“Then–”
“I’ll be back in a second,” Lydia took off perpendicularly from the car into the side of the woods the stag disappeared into.
“Lydia, wait–”
“My turn. Stay by the car,” she said. My feet stuck to the road. Lydia was gone for all of thirty seconds. She disappeared into the darkness of the trees, and reemerged from the other side, by the tree I crashed into. Then, she looked back into the woods the way she came. I blinked at her.
“Let me call the cops again,” I said.
Lydia opened the car door, put on her coat, and sat in the middle of the road.
“Okay, sure,” she said, her focus floating back up to that bright, beautiful moon.
My fingers could barely type with my nervous shaking, but I tried anyway, pulling two fingers from the gloves and dialing the three magic numbers.
I was reminded of my father, that noble, small-town cop. I remember calling 9-1-1 in kindergarten, hoping he’d come pick me up from school. I remember seeing the flashing lights of his car when I was a teenager setting off bottle rockets behind the high school. I wondered how such a number could hold every memory, all at once.
Anyway, I held the phone to my ear.
Ring, ring, dead
“No answer,” I said, looking back at Lydia, who was still focused on the moon. She closed her eyes.
“Alright,” she said with a pained whisper.
“I’ll try again.”
“Nobody’s going to come,” Lydia looked back at me. There was something different about her, something translucent, vague, unfocused, and all-accepting.
“Someone will,” I managed, swallowing the lump in my throat. Never before had I felt such terror, looking at her. Even when she was at her angriest, even when I pissed her off the most.
“Marlowe,” Lydia closed her eyes tight and sucked in air through her teeth. As if she was telling a child bad news or hitting a deer that stumbled onto the road.
“What?” My desperation grew and grew.
“I don’t think we made it out of that crash,” she opened her eyes, and turned her head to the driver's side door.
↠
Once, when I was a kid, I thought I was going to die. My mom had me for the weekend, and she took me out to the quarry just past her mobile home to swim. Jude, her new boyfriend, came too. He didn’t like my dad– hell, he didn’t like me much either. Mom sat in a spot by the sand and lit up a menthol, and Jude watched me as I climbed to a tall peak and plunged down into the cold abyss. Nobody told me not to.
I remember how it felt when I hit the water like a sharp sting. It was deeper than I realized, and the force of the impact rendered me confused. I sank, for a minute or so, drifting into colder and colder depths, and I remember looking up through the reflection of the water and wondering if it would be the last time I saw the sun.
A minute or so later I woke up on the shore to Jude’s hands pressing down on my chest, as he scolded me for jumping in the first place.
I never felt good about swimming after that. Hell, I didn’t feel good about losing air in any context. I refused to hold my breath as I passed graveyards on the school bus, I never shotgunned a beer, and I sure as hell never put my head under water. Once, in college, a girl tried to choke me while we fucked in her bunk bed. Seconds later I was out the door with my clothes half-on.
But this, this feeling on the roadside, it could not have been the sensation of dying. Because I did not feel like I was drowning.
↠
Lydia looked at me, resolute in her theory. We were dead, she seemed to believe. Dead and still walking around. Thinking, feeling, talking, breathing. Dead.
“Lydia, please,” I said, when I was able to think again, and fear turned to agitation, “now's not the time to get spiritual on me.”
“We hit a tree and landed in a magical loop with no way to contact anyone,” She said, voice soft and careful.
“Let's be rational here,” I said, and Lydia’s softness melted away.
“God, don’t take that tone with me,” she snapped.
“I get it, okay? I do! But don’t work yourself up. I’ll get us out of this.”
“All you’re doing is talking in circles.”
I looked back down at my phone. I was nearly out of battery. I turned away from Lydia, and began dialing.
Ring, Ring, Dead
Ring, Ring, Dead
Lydia didn’t say a word. Neither did I. I lifted the phone above my head and brought it back down. No dice.
“Lydia, can I use your phone?”
“I don’t have it,” she said, as if it were obvious.
“Is it in the car?”
“No. I don’t think so. It just disappeared. So did the airbags, if you’ll notice.”
“Lydia, C’mon.”
I looked into the car. Sure as hell, the airbags were gone. Maybe they went back into the dash— if that was even a thing— or maybe they never came out at all? After all, my thumbs were still intact.
I walked around the back of the car to the passenger's side. As I went, I tried not to notice the lack of a bumper sticker. What did it say, again? I forgot it even existed once I passed it.
Lydia sat against the cold, asphalt road and leaned against the car door, silently running a hand through her hair. Anger melted from me. She was scared, that was all. Scared, misinformed, and ready to jump to any conclusion. I crossed over the front of the car and looked at her. Her newly darkened hair shined in the moonlight, pale skin, circular face, so beautiful, I thought. Then she spoke.
“I don’t believe in God,” she said cautiously, eyes drifting up towards me. I nodded.
“I know, sweetheart, I know,”
“But I think I believe in Heaven. Like Dad did– I like to think my dad’s in Heaven.”
I tilted my head slightly to the side, and let her continue.
“Can’t you feel that? That sudden cold– that weird humming sound in the woods? Whatever's happening here isn’t right. I don’t think I’m being irrational. I’m being optimistic,” she paused, looked back down at the road, and at her hands, “I swear, I used to be bleeding. I swear I felt that impact–heard it too. I didn’t know sound could be so terrifying. Sorry– I guess I don’t know what to say. I spent all that time in church growing up. Maybe there's still something in me that wants to believe cosmic shit like this can be divine.”
“So, you think we're in Heaven?” I smiled softly.
“No,” Lydia turned her head away from me, “If Heaven is you and me eternally in the cold dark? No way. But maybe we can get there.”
I puzzled over what Lydia could have meant for a moment, staring down at the road and my battered old shoes. Devoid of blood, of course.
“Marlowe, do you see that?” she asked, fixated on something deep in the woods.
I looked out into the tree line. In the distance, beyond the rows of black, I could see something shining from within.
“What the hell is that?” I asked, fixated on the form as it slowly shifted in the darkness.
“I think it might be the stag,” she answered.
Within a moment, she was on her feet, and approaching the woods, filled with a sudden zest for life I hadn't seen since before the crash.
“Don’t scare it–” I warned.
“Dad!” Lydia called “Dad–Dad? Is that you?”
“Huh?” I asked, following her into the tree line, “Lydia, come back!”
“Dad!”
The woods were cold and quiet, perfectly manicured like a painting, with a soft glowing beacon guiding us further inward. There, we came face to face with the stag, glowing white and cradling the moon with its antlers. That bright, beautiful moon, swaddled in the night sky like a baby, circular and bright like Lydia's face, like the ring in my nightstand, like the loop of the road. For a second, standing there, looking at that impossible beast, everything was still, calm, and quiet.
Then, the stag turned and ran. We followed, through the trees and out the other end, back to my red Honda, the beast nowhere in sight.
“Dad!” Lydia let out one last exasperated breath before she deflated back into misery.
“It’s just a stag,” I said. This time, Lydia didn’t fight back. Instead, she circled around the car and sat back down on the road.
↠
My dad once told me if I wanted to make it, I needed to toughen up. Keep it pushing. Death would bite you in the ass if you didn’t outrun it fast enough. Being miserable was as good as dead. As was being poor, like Mom, and Jude, and us, for that matter. Men who let shit happen to them ended up criminals and bums. Men who let troubles consume them ended up dead and worthless. Keep it pushing, Marlowe. He’d say. If you’re going to be successful and happy, you’ve got to just keep it pushing. He had always been a good man. A hardworking man. A self-sustaining man. A man who really hunted deer, not like Lydia's father, with his stands, and his gas, and his pageantry.
↠
Lydia put her head in her hands, and I sat beside her. There was a solution to this. I knew there was, even if Lydia didn’t.
“Can I ask you something?” She looked up at me.
“Of course.”
The night was silent. There wasn’t a firefly in the sky, or a frog in the tall grass. I felt for my phone in my pocket and was unable to locate it.
“When hours pass, and the sun rises—or doesn’t— and nobody comes, and the car and the trees disappear, and it's just you, me, and that deer, will you admit we’re gone? Or will you keep looking for a way out?”
“Lydia,”
“Or rather–if the sun rises, and we do get found, will you admit we took the wrong turn?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I made a wrong turn,” I ran a hand through my hair.
“You don’t believe that.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t. Just like you don’t believe you were the one who lost the remote two weeks ago, or how you don't believe my dad liked you.”
“Lydia, your dad didn’t like me.”
“I don’t want to fight about it,” Lydia hung her head for a moment before continuing. “I know what my dad was like. I know he stressed you out. But he was my dad, and he loved me. Even if you two didn’t get along–Hell, I've never even met your family. You and I swerved around talking about it all the time. But my dad never ignored you. You came up in every phone call. He asked how you were, what you were doing. He liked your job, your ambition, how much you cared. He was an asshole to your face. I know,” Lydia ran out of words, and slumped over even more. “I just. He hated the gay thing. Not you. It's hard to explain, I guess.”
I watched her, Lydia, who was always so sure, fight for words.
“Whatever,” she said after a moment, “he’s dead. We’re dead. All you can do is live until you die, right?”
“Don’t say that,” I said, “we have more living to do. I've got this new gig, it's better money– Remember that apartment we toured on the North Side? We have so much time for nice apartments and adventures and growing old. I’m sorry about your father, I’m sorry he and I–”
“Did you see us getting married?”
Silence permeated. It was a simple question, wasn’t it? It hadn’t been said with malice. Still, I couldn’t answer it.
“Don’t you?” I asked.
Lydia pulled away from me, and my bare, mysteriously gloveless hand slid down her back. The air felt colder.
“I don’t know. Well, honestly, no. not really.” She said, I felt my heart sink to my feet. What the Hell was she talking about?
“We’ve been together for three years.”
“Well sure. But we only just moved in together– and we took a break there, for a while.”
“Lydia, what are you saying? We’ve been serious, haven’t we?”
“Sure. Serious for our twenties. Serious for college,” she shrugged, as if that were obvious. As if that were simple.
“Lots of people marry young. My parents married out of college,” I swallowed the lump in my throat. I could hear a childhood worth of arguments yelled through the wall. But other people married and stayed married. I knew they did. I knew love could start young. I knew I didn’t have to be like them.
“Theres an engagement ring in my nightstand,” I managed to tell her, each word spouting from my lips like bile.
I saw Lydia's face fall. My vision felt like it was blurring.
“Oh, Marlowe.”
Silence overtook us. She looked at me, silent, sympathetic. Her hand rested on mine.
“I wasn’t planning on moving to the North Side with you.”
I looked down at my feet. A sharp ringing overtook my hearing, and I could feel an impact on my chest. Were my thumbs breaking?
“I love you. But I don’t think we work. Long term.”
“Because I’m a girl?”
“Because we fight. Because we can’t stay together for more than a couple months before taking breaks,” she said. “I thought we were on the same page about that.”
I didn’t think to speak, so Lydia continued.
“I guess it doesn’t matter, does it? We died together. That's more than most couples can say. They can bury us like we were a great love story. I wouldn’t mind that at all,” she rested against my shoulder. Like that was a compliment.
I thought about the quarry. About Jude, my Mother, the smell of Menthols. Getting choked in a dorm room, calling Dad to pick me up for the weekend and not getting an answer. Meeting Mom and Judes new baby girl and knowing I wouldn’t be all too important in her life. Sending money monthly to Mom even though she never paid child support. Going to school because Dad said it would be good for me, majoring in what he picked, getting straight A’s. Changing myself again and again and again. Chasing and chasing until I’ve caught what I was after and not letting it go. Staring into the eyes of the stag on Lydia’s dad’s mantle, and seeing my own dad’s eyes, and my eyes, and his eyes, and Jude’s eyes, staring back at me through it. I took a sharp gasp of air and clenched my fists together. Not broken, still alive, still breathing, but I was beginning to feel as if I was drowning, and the water around me was getting colder and colder.
“I took a wrong turn,” I said, remembering the intersection of the State Route on the old map– Red Ridge Road, not Rabbit Run. Damn alliteration.
“I misplaced the remote. I hated your dad. Hell, maybe I just hated my dad. I don’t know why I didn’t just hit that damn deer. I've wasted my life waiting for the next big thing, and nothing ever happened, and I fuck up all the time, and I’m so damn scared of fucking up in front of you. In front of anyone.”
Lydia was quiet.
“And you and I never worked, and dammit you drive me crazy and sometimes I can’t stand it when you speak. But I wanted to marry you anyway. How strange is that?” I looked upwards to that sky, and all those beautiful stars, bright and sparkling like diamonds. Mom once told me our fate was already mapped out for us, somewhere up there, in the stars. I'm sure Lydia's father had told her the same, as she knelt for prayer at her bedside.
Lydia looked up at me, her face a perfect full moon, radiating light into the darkness of the roadside, her skin growing colder and colder. Somehow, she was smiling. I remembered summers spent yearning on campus, road trips in our car, nights at the bar where we pretended not to know each other, just so we could experience the thrill of introducing ourselves again. We weren’t good at living together, heaven knows. We were messy and neither of us cooked, and we hated sharing a bed if we weren’t fucking in it. But there was something so wonderful about hating each other in place of ourselves. I pictured us old and spiteful in the retirement home, the straightest gay couple you know, wishing they never legalized lesbian marriage so we both could have been free of the other long ago, and a smile crept onto my face. Oh God, I loved her. And I hated loving her, and I loved hating her.
“You–” she stopped, for no reason I couldn’t make sense of.
Around us, the sky brightened to a brownish grey only found in beautiful, backwater towns, and I couldn’t think of a more fitting place to drown.
“You were something,” she said. “The most important thing I had. I don’t think the hole in me could have ever been filled. But you gave me an excuse not to fill it.”
She settled into the crook of my arm. Somewhere in a West Side apartment our plants were dying without anyone to water them. Somewhere in a countryside mini-mansion, a woman was waiting for her daughter, while in a trailer park states away from there, another woman was forgetting hers. And somewhere, in those repeating woods, the stag was watching with horrifying indifference. Just another deer crossing the road, no clue what he brought in his wake.
“Marlowe,” Lydia whispered, her voice trailing off into nothingness. I forced my eyes open, sore and tired. There she was, splattered to the seatback, no longer recognizable from the girl I met in college.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“The sun's coming up,”
And so it did, rising just above the tree line and streaming glorious gold onto the roadside. The moon fell away, out of sight and out of grasp.
My hands gripped the steering wheel of the little red Honda. I flexed my fingers back and forth, thumbs unmoving like the rest of them. I tried to breathe through the clustering smoke and felt quarry water fill my lungs.
The sunlight reflected off the rearview mirror and into my eyes.