Ugly, ugly green vinyl. So ugly. Why the hell was she even staring at it? And why on earth had anyone believed that combining that particular shade of green with fake leather texture was a good idea? And yet it seemed to fascinate her, almost like an imaginary voice in her head telling her she shouldn't look away.

Don't look away . . . .

Right. Exactly like that one.

Chelsea shifted in her seat, her eyes still focused on the appallingly bad faux-leather seat covering in front of her, and she frowned at it.

The texture of the whole thing was the worst part, really. It kind of reminded her of the time she volunteered at the retirement home. More specifically, it reminded her of that one older woman who had been showing off more cleavage than she'd probably intended when dressing herself that day. Her skin from neck to chest had been almost the exact same texture as the horrible sea of vinyl in front of her... like aging pudding mixed with cracked, dried mud.

That whole retirement home thing had been pretty sad and awful as well. During her short time volunteering there she'd lost track of the number of times she'd been mistaken for a granddaughter, or a great-granddaughter. A few had cried because they'd been so happy to see her . . . or at least happy to see whoever they'd thought she was. Most had been so desperate for someone to talk to that it probably wouldn't have mattered if they knew Chelsea wasn't a blood relative. Some seemed as though they could barely remember who they themselves were at times. It was heartbreaking, really, which was why she'd stopped volunteering in the first place. That activity hadn't been the feel-good pick-me-up sort of thing she'd expected, really.

Getting old was really weird, she decided. After all, even that old lady at the nursing home had once been a young girl once, just like her. It was such an odd thing to stop and consider, really . . . that someday Chelsea herself might end up like that, all wrinkled and weathered and frail.

Nothing her parents would have to worry about of course, but she might someday.

Wait . . . what?

No! Focus on what's in front of you. Don't look away.

Right. She was allowing herself to get distracted. Green vinyl. That was what she needed to focus her attention on right now, even if she didn't really understand why.

Chelsea's frown deepened. Other cars weren't upholstered with this horrid stuff, surely. Sure, to some extent this horrible upholstery could be forgiven, considering the car itself - a sixty-eight Mustang that ran like a dream. Even if they were hauling that dumpy little U-haul trailer behind it, it still looked pretty cool. Still, what was wrong with something like a mini-van if you were forced to haul your family clear across the country? Some of them even came with little television screens built into the back of the seats, and Blu-ray players, so anyone who wasn't actually driving could watch a movie or something. Why couldn't her parents have gone for something like that?

Never mind. This was the car she was in, and these were the seats that happened to be inside of it, horrific upholstery or no. She should focus - she had a job to do. This ugly green vinyl wasn't just going to watch itself, after all. Let the staring commence.

She stared.

Hmm.

That was another thing, now that she thought about it. Why was the ugly upholstered back of the driver's seat such a big deal all of a sudden? It wasn't all that interesting a thing to be inspecting this closely, when it came right down to it. Why did staring at it feel so damned important? What if she-

Stop that! Do not look away!

Right . . . the whispered voice in her mind was urgently telling her to keep it up, and it did kind of sound like her own voice. Probably best if she listened to it, even if she didn't really understand the reason for it. She'd always heard her own voice in her head when she was thinking thoughts, or was figuring out test answers, or asking herself questions, or things like that.

But this voice seemed different for some reason.

She briefly wondered if this particular voice had always been there, letting her know what to do, slipping her the answers to tests . . . whispering suggestions into her thoughts without her noticing. If so, it was definitely stronger than it ever had been before.

Chelsea let out a light, frustrated sigh. It was just so boring, sitting here like this, waiting. And staring, of course. That still kind of bugged her. She'd been sitting in this back seat for many an hour this past week, but she'd never once felt compelled to spend all of her time staring at the back of the driver's seat like this. Usually she was looking out the window, watching the scenery go by, or trying to see how many of the passing license plate numbers she could memorize. Why wasn't she doing that sort of thing now?

Well, the car was currently parked, for one. It was more difficult to watch scenery go by when you weren't actually driving around, she supposed.

Out of the corner of her eye, Chelsea noticed some movement outside the front passenger window on her right. Being completely bored out of her skull, she began to desperately wish she could turn in place or move her head so she could get a better look at what it was that was moving . . . but of course she was too busy staring straight ahead at the moment. After all, she couldn't very well turn and have a look out the window while she was doing something important like staring at vinyl, could she?

No, that movement came from your right. That's fine . . . you can look that way.

Oh. Cool! Kind of odd that the voice didn't mind her looking out the window on her right, but whatever. The point was that she wasn't necessarily limited to staring at ugly green vinyl all of a sudden. She had other options now. Sweet!

Chelsea turned her head to the right just in time to see an orange train engine as it roared past the car's passenger window, its horn sounding loudly. It had what appeared to be feline ears near the front, and some of the tubes and other sections on the side of it looked a little like bunches of crouching insects getting ready to pounce somewhere twenty feet in any direction. The combination seemed pretty odd, especially for a train.

There was also the fact that the orange train engine wasn't running on any tracks, but was instead barreling straight down the highway, which did not seem like a very safe idea at all. Then again, apart from the train engine and the highway, all she could really see in any given direction was floaty concrete-grey nothing, so maybe a train roaring down a highway instead of on railroad tracks wasn't all that dangerous. There certainly didn't appear to be anything around it could run into, after all.

That was pretty odd as well, come to think of it.

She squinted and attempted to focus on the grey nothing for a bit, but whenever she tried it would turn into something strange, like a kitten, or a grasping hand. And then after a while it would turn into grey nothing again. Weird.

That particular shade of orange paint rushing by her window reminded her strongly of that one other train engine that they'd driven past earlier, too . . . the one with the rust stains along the sides occurring at semi-regular intervals, almost like stripes. Mom had pointed that one out to both her and Dad when they'd been driving by.

"Oh look, Tiger," her mother had said excitedly. "That one sort of reminds me of you!"

Her father had glanced over at it and furrowed his brow a little.

"You mean the fact that it's old and decrepit?"

"You're not old, Dad," Chelsea had said.

"So I'm just decrepit then. Right-o, Kitten."

And then she'd laughed, and Mom had laughed and punched Dad in the arm, and he'd growled at her and muttered something about losing control, perhaps driving off the road and killing-

Careful . . . .

-them all. And then he'd punched her arm right back, and the two of them had giggled about it like a couple of first-graders, punching each other back and forth a while, each waiting for the inevitable moment when one of them would offer to kiss the other's arm better, because that was just the way they'd always been.

Chelsea frowned. There was something about that last thought that seemed a bit off, like a piece of memory gone missing.

Don't think about it.

Yeah, but it-

Stop it! Stop thinking about that right this minute! Focus!

And then, just like that, she was no longer looking out the window to her right, but found herself instead staring at the ugly green vinyl in front of her once more.

Wow . . . so she was back to this now, was she? It sure didn't take a heck of a lot for the whispered voice to revoke her window viewing privileges.

Chelsea sighed glumly.

Ugly, ugly green vinyl.

This was stupid. Why was she letting some weird voice in her head decide where she could or couldn't look? She was almost seventeen years old for crying out loud! She'd gotten her learner's permit, and had actually driven the very car she was sitting in! Sure, she had done it under Dad's watchful eye, and the car hadn't gone over thirty miles per hour or so the entire time, but she'd still done it . . . and she knew plenty of other kids her age who hadn't. Actually driving a car was a big deal.

And she'd also once drank an entire beer all by herself! That too had also been done under her father's watchful eye, and she'd found the whole experience more than a little bit disgusting, but still!

The point was that she was very grown up for her age already, and didn't need to be told what to do all the time. Why the hell was she even listening to this stupid voice in the first place?

I'm protecting you.

Protecting her from what? She didn't need protecting . . . she was just fine! Sure, she'd been left all by herself in the car, and yes . . . her parents had been gone a fair bit longer than would be considered normal, but they'd be back. What did she need protection from, when her mother and father were right there in the gas station? Even if some scuzzy weirdo came wandering by the car and started hitting on her or giving her a hard time, she could call her parents on her cellphone, or run to the store and grab them, or simply lock the door and wait for them to return from their mid-midwest gasoline bar shopping expedition.

They had been gone an awfully long time though . . . .

Stop it!

And she had to admit that it had been kind of scary when those two sketchy-looking young men had set that string of firecrackers off. She'd flinched terribly upon hearing the loud sounds, and had been a bit scared when it was actually happening. Not exactly the sort of thing you expected to hear when sitting in a car, after all . . . and she was certain that setting off firecrackers anywhere near a gas station was most definitely not safe.

It occurred to Chelsea just then that she should perhaps mention it to her mom and dad when they got back, or make a point of notifying the local authorities that there were two young men running about and doing stupid stuff like that. At that same moment she seemed to become aware of the flashing red, white, and blue lights she could see out of the corner of her eye. Very patriotic colors. Hopefully they belonged to the police, or the sheriff, or whatever they called the person in charge around this place. With any luck they'd find those sketchy teens and give them a stern talking to, maybe straighten them out before someone got-

Careful . . .

-hurt, or something bad happened.

But the point was that she could take care of herself! She didn't need some stupid voice trying to do it for her. After all, being scared by a loud noise, or several loud noises in rapid succession, well, everyone reacted that way to that sort of thing, didn't they? It wasn't the same as needing to be protected, because-

Those firecrackers had sounded like they'd gone off somewhere to her left. To her immediate left, just outside the car, and fairly close by. And the voice kept telling her it didn't want her looking that way - had her staring at the back of some stupid, ugly green car seat instead. Could that be significant?

Stop thinking these things! Right now!

Chelsea was starting to get a bit angry with the voice all of a sudden. What would it possibly hurt to look over to her left . . . maybe just have a little peek? The store was over there, Mom and Dad were over there, and-

Now she remembered, kind of. There had been the loud noise, and another, and-

Oh no . . . .

Do not look away!

Nope, no looking away. She'd be a good girl . . . do exactly as the voice told her and stare straight ahead. No looking anywhere else, especially not to her left! Left was where the scary stuff was. The voice knew what it was talking about after all, and she now knew she should pay very close attention to it.

Yup. Stare straight ahead. Breathe. Try not to think about-

Stop thinking about it, goddamn it!

Right. Because this whole thing could be nothing - everything could still be fine. Perfectly fine. She'd been mistaken before, right? Sure, it didn't happen all that often, as her teachers often pointed out, but it could still happen. How much did she really know about what had happened over there, by the shop doors? She'd barely caught a glimpse of anything, really. When the first of the loud 'bang's got her attention and she'd looked over at the entrance to the store, she only remembered how strongly it reminded her of a firecracker going off . . . like one of those big ones you could get at the flea market, or a 'swap meet' as her mother used to call them.

Used to?

No!

And then she remembered being confused, and the banging noise happened again, and a third time-

Don't do this!

-and that had been the point when she knew it wasn't firecrackers any more, because there was also yelling, and a ferocious roar, and the sound of someone screaming, and more loud bangs, and-

Please Chelsea . . . don't!

-and then she remembered that something else had happened . . . something weird that she couldn't quite make out through the glass door of the shop. Something that was awful, and red, and that made her heart hurt in ways she couldn't rightly explain, and when she thought she'd figured out exactly it was she was seeing she'd immediately turned away and focused on the back of the chair in front of her and . . . .

She felt a single tear spill down her cheek.

Okay. Chelsea, honey, you need to concentrate. Stare straight ahead. Focus on the back of the driver's seat, and think of all the things you don't know for sure yet. Just consider the infinite number of possibilities. What you saw could have been anything . . . just about anything at all. Right?

Right. She nodded in agreement to no one in particular, wiped the tear away and adjusted how she was sitting in her seat. Her arms were trembling slightly, she noticed.

Yes, the voice was right, absolutely. What she'd seen lying half-in and half-out of the shop door could have been anything, anything at all. Just because it wore something that resembled her mother's neck kerchief, and seemed to have her mother's dark skin and her large, lovely brown eyes staring up at-

Chelsea . . . .

Yes, of course. Stop that. No thinking those sorts of thoughts. Her mother was always telling her not to be so pessimistic all the time, and this was a perfect opportunity for her to focus on positive thinking. She'd wait, and she wouldn't look out the window on her left. At all. She'd listen to what that voice was telling her. Both of her parents had told her to wait in the car, and that's exactly what she was going to do. Chelsea would show them, too . . . she'd be the absolute best at it. Just like she was the best at anything she put her mind to. She'd sit in place, and she wouldn't look over there, to her left. Not once.

Because looking might make it real.

Before too long, however, she found that even the simple act of staring was becoming more of a challenge, what with the addition of even more colorful flashing lights in her periphery. Some of the light even found a way through her window and onto the vinyl seat covering, illuminating the parched-looking surface, making the lights even more difficult to ignore.

She knew what those lights were trying to do, of course. They wanted to trick her into taking a quick peek over to her left, if only so she could assure herself that the lights were coming from something silly, like a window shop strobe light, or a police cruiser that had been called in to investigate some random firecracker incident. How gullible did those lights believe her to be, thinking she'd fall for something like that? There was no way she'd-

A patch of concrete-grey nothing shifted and morphed into a slightly person-shaped blurry thing, appearing next to the left passenger window, temporarily blocking the flashing lights from view. That was handy, she decided. She could simply focus all of her attention on ignoring this big blurry thing standing between her and the lights.

Chelsea heard a muffled, unfamiliar voice say something that sounded a bit like "Oh . . . hell."

There was a tentative rapping of knuckles against her door window.

Don't look. She didn't even need the voice to tell her this time. She wouldn't turn to her left, not even a little bit. She'd just keep staring straight ahead. Like a good girl. If she was a good girl, and did as she was told, then maybe everything would be okay.

The rear passenger door on her side opened slowly, carefully . . . almost like an apology. Chelsea didn't move her head even the slightest bit, but could make out what was happening to her left out of the corner of her eye.

Don't look away.

Nope, not even an option.

She stared at the back of the driver's seat with all of her might, wishing fervently that whatever it was that was going on to her left would simply ignore her and go away, leave her the hell alone.

"Uh . . . Miss?" an uncertain voice ventured.

Don't acknowledge . . . don't look.

Chelsea continued doing nothing, and with an intensity that would have shamed a zen priest.

"Miss? Are you . . . have you been injured? Shot, I mean? I . . . uh, damn," the trooper-like silhouette managed to stammer. "Are you okay?"

Ignore. If she did that hard enough, she had a feeling this intruder would go away. She didn't need this fellow there right now, engaging with her, tempting her to look in his direction, to her left. Nothing good would come of something like that.

She continued staring forward. Her lower lip felt like it was trying to pull itself downwards.

"Miss? It's okay, really. Look, it's all over, and I just want to help. Are you injured?" the trooper asked, his voice leaping into tenor range every few seconds or so. Obviously this particular trooper or whatever hadn't had much experience with this sort of thing before. You know, dealing with the bloodshed, the survivors, the human wreckage, the-

Oh God!

No, no, no!

"This is Gary again . . . I need that ambulance after all. Girl, late teens, don't think she's been injured, but likely in shock. I . . . I don't know. No, just her . . . she's all alone out here, from what I can see."

God. She was.

Alone.

Everything around her came crashing into her with an intensity she couldn't even fathom. At that moment, she knew what the voice had been trying to protect her from, she knew what it was she didn't want to look at - never wanted to see again. And yet she could suddenly see everything more clearly than any other thing she'd ever remembered, ever. It was . . . .

It . . . .

"Mom?" she heard herself say, her voice a bit raspy.

"Look, it's going to be okay, alright?" the trooper-voice said, sounding supremely unconvinced of the words coming out of his own mouth. "Everything's going to be okay . . . just hold tight. Denise! I need that ambulance now!"

A terrible avalanche of truth hit Chelsea all at once.

And everything was as bad as she'd feared.

That was her mother, or what was left of her, apologetically holding the gas station door open with her head, or what remained of-

Don't look!

She wouldn't. No looking. But she knew . . . .

"Mommy?" Chelsea whispered.

Her daddy was dead too, she realized. If his heart still beat in his chest she knew he'd be there with her, making everything okay. Or he'd be keening over her mother, perhaps punching her in the shoulder in an effort to get her to punch him back. Because that's just how they were.

And now they weren't.

And there she was, sitting in the back seat of a car, only now understanding. Remembering. Staring at the back of the seat in front of her.

Ugly, ugly green vinyl.

"Okay, Miss? Everything's going to be alright. We're going to get you some help, and soon. I promise. It doesn't look like you've been shot, so you're going to be okay. Just stay with me, alright?"

"Shut up," Chelsea whispered.

"Uhm, what?" is what the young-ish trooper managed to ask.

"Shut up!" she cried.

And then she cried the other way. A lot.

The trooper looked startled at that, but he didn't say another word. The look on his face, however . . . it told her enough. Things were not going to be okay. No matter what he'd said.

Chelsea could feel her lower lip trembling.

Don't look. Please . . . Chelsea, I know how this will go. Please don't do it. I'm begging you!

"Mom?" Chelsea managed to croak.

Please! Don't!

"Mommy?" she shrieked, suddenly no longer in control of what she was doing.

She spun to her left, looking out the window, and she saw-