Sunbound

☀ West, to the Sun

C H A P T E R  3: West, to the Sun

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    Skylar pulled into a gas station somewhere along the shoreline of Maryland at one o'clock in the morning. He parked the Chevelle at pump four, and he sat there under the harsh, bright lights of the gas station for a long time.

    He heard once that people tend to look how they feel. If that were the case, he must have looked numb. He thought that maybe he felt despondent for so long that he could not feel it anymore; like sitting in the middle of a blizzard until you can no longer feel the cold. That did not mean that the despondency was no longer there, for it was; lingering like the cobalt and byzantine bruises on his knuckles, but maybe it meant more in regards to Skylar. Like maybe he would never feel any other way ever again. That scared him more than anything.

    He sat there for a little while longer, picking at a loose thread on the steering wheel and staring out into the darkness that the station's lights could not obliterate. He must have looked suspicious, he realized, just sitting there, making no move to get gas, even though the Chevelle's tank was nearing dangerously close to the big red E.

    He wondered what the attendant must have been thinking. When he looked over his shoulder into the wide windows of the florescent station, he could see a middle-aged black woman who seemed to be a collection of clever comebacks, sarcasm, and grit. She was staring back at him with a hand perched on one of her wide, child-bearing hips and a crease between her brows. There was a lot Skylar could tell from the lines beside her eyes; like she had been through a lot in her life. Skylar could relate to that.

    He cut the ignition and hauled himself out of the Chevelle.

    The inside of the gas station smelled like an interesting combination of gasoline, bubble gum, cigarettes, and the Royal Pine car freshener. Skylar tossed a nod in the direction of the attendant, who stood behind the cash register in the transparent, bullet-proof barrier that reached up from the counter to the ceiling. Her eyes narrowed.

    Skylar shoved his hands deep in his pockets, wandering down the first aisle of the station. He picked up the local newspaper from a stack on the floor. The most interesting section was that that year's snowfall was predicted to exceed the big storm of '78, which really was not interesting at all. He thought this town — Rockland Bay, according to the header of the paper — was languorously uneventful.

    Beneath the newspapers was last week's issue of US Weekly. He spared a glance at the glossy magazine cover, even turning a few pages. The issue was quintessentially tragic. The cover had been dedicated to some new celebrity-endorsed weight-loss fad that promised extreme results with no exercise required; then, on the fourth page, an article from the family member of someone who had died from the fad. Then there was that week's dead singer, found overdosed in a hotel bathroom surrounded by a plethora of illegal narcotics. Then there were entire spreads dedicated to a celebrity newly diagnosed with HIV, a socialite's divorce, a Hollywood suicide, and an actor arrested for being in possession of child pornography.

    Skylar grimaced. He thought it tragic that some people actually lived for that stuff; their existences were contingent upon other peoples' lives and the capitalization of their transgressions for the sake of entertainment. For a moment, he felt sorry for those people. All of them; from the people that had nothing better to do with their lives than wait for the latest gossip to the sick fuck that got off on kiddy porn. His despondency was all-consuming, then. Not only for himself, but for the whole of humanity; the burden of such a weight was debilitating. He tossed the magazine back into the pile on the floor.