𝐒𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞 [𝐉𝐚𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐫 - 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭]

6 | Out of His Time

J A S P E R — 1963

            — IT IS THE JUNE OF 1963WHEN JASPER WHITLOCK FIRST MEETS HIS MATE. Not his Singer, which he is immensely glad for because he's only fifteen years into his vegetarianism at this time and most certainly will not be able to restrain himself. But his mate, either way.

            He's driving a cherry red Ford Mustang, newly released that year, wishing he were human for the hundredth time so he'd feel just as excited as the high-school seniors he'd bumped into at the gas station about "How many chicks that thing must drag in!" When it happens.

            The day is safely overcast but still balmy and warm, and if he were human he'd be sweating through his striped turndown and denim jeans. He hasn't yet gotten used to the concept of tight-fitting clothes, so his jeans are a size too big, straight-legged and kept high-waisted by a brown belt, and his shirt is baggier than it fashionably should be, unbuttoned more than what is proper. His dog tags from the Civil War — brass pennies that would be worth more than his car in this day and age — hang like a guilty weight around his neck, clinking against smooth, pale skin in the slit of his shirt, fittingly noose-like in the way they had ultimately put him on the course for this bitter existence.

            The stick shifts beneath his fist, gears changing smoothly as he tears down the quiet rural roads out of Indianapolis, going thirty over the already high speed limit, testing his newest machine. He wonders if one day there'll be a car just as fast as him — wonders if he'll finally find that rush of impossible speed mixed with the twist in his gut he got whenever he drove fast, exhilarating in a whole other way. It is perhaps the only reason he doesn't just go everywhere by foot.

            He probably wouldn't have heard it over the roar of the engine and rock and roll if he were anyone other than Jasper Whitlock. The scream, that is.

            It is pure instinct that drags him to the dry underbrush at the side of the road, ditching the car to slide down the steep, leaf-ridden bank and take off running between the trees, twigs snapping underfoot. The air is so dry with summer heat that Jasper feels just striking a match would turn the entire massive expanse into kindling.

            He comes to a point where the spongy floor tapers off into jagged, chalky cliffs, halting a little too close to the edge. Pebbles topple over the drop with an earthy shudder. Jasper peers over.

            It's a basin; an odd fissure in the face of the earth where water with seemingly no source has gathered in the great absence of stone, like a long-dead god had tried to punch straight through the planet. Nature always made Jasper feel small and reminded him of his insignificance frequently in life, the same way it does now, in half-death. He thinks that maybe a little one had careened off the edge on accident, scanning the still surface of the water for something, some tell-tale froth at the shore. If it could, his heart would be pounding, and venom pooled in his throat with adrenaline.