Broken Fairy Tales

2

A full belly did make all the difference. I felt almost happy as I rode down the open road. I was nearer to the rocky mountains, starting to get more and more foothills as the earth began to creep slowly upwards underneath me. The engine of the bike humming between my thighs in a peaceful rhythm. The sun was bright overhead and the air was clean and crisp.

I liked this, the smell of nature and the open quiet of nature. This was better than the city. Everything there always felt like it was pressing down on me. The tall buildings blocking out the sun and moon from ever reaching the ground. Getting money was easier in a city, there were always jobs for someone who was strong and hard for a human to kill. But city life always felt like it was choking me. Like the cement that covered the ground buried me too and left me unable to breathe.

Thankfully, the past few years had been good, and while my cash supply was running low, as soon as I made it to the next town I would be able to refill my wallet and then I would be there, in the mountains where I would carve out a life for myself until the world ended or became safe again.

I had tried to fight before. I failed. The mountains were filling up the skyline now. Many still capped white even as the land under my own feet grew greener with almost every hour. Summer never came to some of the heights, cold chill air covering them year round. Inhospitable and thus a perfect place for me to hide.

My mind briefly wondered back, to the latest pretty waitress. Taller than most, she had been a pretty pretty girl. Not as pretty as my Gloria had been, but no one ever would be. I knew what she wanted to say, how our conversation would go. Because I had done this all before. She saw something that wasn't real, that because I wasn't an obvious monster, she thought she needed to save me. That she could save me.

That she could turn me from rogue to respectable pack member, the story spinning in her head so loud she might as well have screamed it. But just because I am polite, doesn't mean I'm not a monster. That I don't deserve this life. This is the life that I do deserve. This is the life I made for myself. I deserve worse than a life on the road, and mountain isolation; my only tie left to any family being the bike underneath me. Stolen from my uncle's garage. He wouldn't be using it from the grave anyways.

Ever since the world first started to vibrate I have felt off. Like there was a pressure to the very air itself that was only relieved when I finally hit the road and headed across the country as fast as I could through smaller back roads. I slept rough the night after my delicious diner meal, nothing but the sky overhead, and a tree at my back. But even the rough sleeping wasn't enough to explain the headache that plagued me when I awoke.

It got marginally better as I repacked my saddle bags and hit the road again. But it was like there was rhythmic pressure in my head. Almost like I had repeated the night where I drank a keg to myself over a few hours. Showing off to my young idiotic friends.

They were all dead now. Like everyone else I had known. Because of me.

I shook my head, trying to wipe the memories of what I had done. But no matter what I did, those nightmares haunted me. While I slept they tormented me in my dreams, and while I was awake my own guilt ate at me alive.

I drove down the only road, knowing I had to follow it most of today. Trying to ignore the pounding in my head. I hadn't had any alcohol in weeks now. Why did it feel like I had a hangover this morning. Nothing was making any sense. The world was ending, or Fae was exploding, either way I was getting the fuck out of the way.

I kept driving, knowing I should probably stop, and wait for the feeling to pass. But I am foolish to my core and kept going. I must have dozed off though, or had some kind of medical episode; because I awoke as my bike went over a ridge. Crashing over the bank, my bike veering wildly to the left or right as I tried to avoid large rocks and trees as the bike plummeted down out of control. I was heading towards one of the largest willow trees I had ever seen. I had no time to turn, or avoid the collision. This was how I died, I could feel it. I was ready as the first trailing branches of the willow whipped at my face..

I swear I felt the moment my bike hit the tree, but instead of pain or instant death I heard a clear melodic voice almost purring in my ears, so musical sounding and bigger than a single voice. "I used to take a toll of iron, but this, I like this more. You may pass." Then it all went dark, and a deep sense of nothing washed over my entire body.