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☀ Just Another Death Trap

C H A P T E R  20: Just Another Death Trap

☀ ☀ ☀

"You never really know how close you are to death until you realize the burden of continuing to live afterwards..."

Everything felt like too much to Skylar. Breathing was a chore, and peeling his eyes open to the early morning sky was the greatest hassle. When he tried to move, little bombs beneath his skin erupted like all of his cells were a minefield. He didn't think he'd wake up at all, but if he did, he thought he'd wake up to an emergency room or a jailhouse. He didn't think he'd wake up in that same cold plot of dirt that the redhead and her band of heroes left him in. He figured the bartender would've called the cops at least. It's not like it mattered much, however. He felt like he deserved what he got.

Skylar Glass had a terrible habit of unintentionally laying traps and falling into them himself. Often times, face first. This one had to have been the worst, but he was sure it wouldn't be the last. That surety became concrete when the notion of going back to Santan Valley crossed his bruised head. That night was just another death trap that had hollowed out all six feet of his soul. The Hell that festered in him and the constant need to purge it had been beaten out of him and all he wanted now was a familiar face and maybe a long sleep.

He told himself it was a bad idea to go back. He tried to convince himself that there wasn't anything to go back to; that no one would even want him back and that he needed to learn how to leave the past behind. But like everything else in life, it's much easier to say things than to do them.

After all, Skylar felt like he needed to apologize. If not to the redhead who's face he couldn't remember, or the group of men who stopped him from doing the very thing that ruined him at nine years old, or every star and satellite above him that bared witness, then at least to Scout. She didn't deserve to be left behind, and she surely didn't deserve having her face superimposed on the body of the redhead to make Skylar realize he was wrong. If nothing else, Skylar owed her an apology.

After awhile of staring up into the clouds until they parted and the sun glared back with a hellishness, and after moving each toe and finger one by one just to make sure everything was still operational, Skylar managed to sit up. The pain in his rib cage took his breath away like all the air had been compressed right out of him. It wasn't a pain unfamiliar.

The first time Skylar had a broken rib was when one of his mother's many boyfriends sucker punched him in the gut when he was twelve. Skylar took a cigarette that he had assumed belonged to Jackie, and that was when he learned not to assume things. Sometimes, too deep of breaths were the reminders that it never healed quite right. That was one of the ironies of Skylar's life. How was he ever supposed to leave the past in the grave Jackie had dug for herself when something as simple as breathing was the shovel that kept burying him there?

After awhile longer, Skylar found his way to his feet. Puddles of dried blood by the dozen made an outline where he had laid. It reminded him of the chalk outlines of corpses at TV-show crime scenes. He kicked up the dirt, but some of the bloodied clumps were fixed to their spots like decades-old tree roots. He briefly considered the idea of an orange tree birthing small suns in the spot where he almost lost his life, but there was nothing in his DNA except all the awful things he had been fighting his entire life. Something that had been dead for years couldn't possibly fathom orange trees or sunflowers or faces like Scout's. For the latter, he decided that he could at least try.

The Chevelle sat where Skylar had parked it the night before. He fell into the driver's seat with the carelessness of throwing a trash bag in the dumpster. Another sharp pain shot through his midsection. He leaned back into the headrest, closed his eyes and waited for it to pass. By the time it somewhat subsided, he had lost fifteen minutes of the morning.

Skylar glanced at himself in the rear view mirror. A large, open gash was coated with a mixture of fresh and dried blood over his left brow. He figured then that it may have been worth the hour and the charge to visit a medical professional. He walked into the nearest clinic with a bruised rib, the same one that snapped like a twig against concrete at the age of twelve, a concussion, and a collection of bruises that reminded him of the chunks of ruby and amethyst that he had seen in some nature shop in the Midwest. He walked out of that clinic two hours later with all of that, plus nine stitches over his brow and a hospital recommendation that he would never use.

The highway back to Santan Valley seemed longer than it had been when he left. The concrete and the sand and the ripples of heat pulsating over the ground seemed as never-ending as the ocean to a drifter. He could've taken that as the sign that he wasn't meant to go back. After all, the closer he got to Santan, the more everything seemed to ache. He was gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white and the bruises on his hands looked like they could imploded. The older bruises, the yellow ones, became angry honey bees all over again and stung with an anger as absolute as the nauseousness in his stomach. He had half a mind to turn around, but the mile marker indicated he had made it as far as twenty minutes outside of Santan. There was no sense in turning back anymore.

Skylar parked his car in the same spot he had the first time he saw Santan Valley - behind V&L's and Santan Single-Stop. This time, Santan wasn't like a beacon in the middle of the desert after miles of nothing but cacti and little sand storms. This time, Santan stared back at him like the mother of the girl he put through Hell or the dad who waited up all night on the front porch with his shot gun in his lap. Skylar wasn't welcome.

Skylar sat there for a while, staring at the town through his windshield. He noticed that the sign that read Santan Valley - POPULATION 873 had been repainted. Now, it read 872. Someone had died. His mind immediately went to Violet and Lily. They were older than the dirt in that town, so it was only a matter of time. Skylar sighed one of those long, exhausting sighs that started at the toes and worked its way up until every air molecule had been squeezed out. It hurt his rib much worse than before. It felt like the pillar of a colosseum crashing down and bringing the rest of the structure with it. If anything else happened to anyone he cared about, he didn't know if he - or anyone - could ever recreate that colosseum.

Skylar's eyes had dropped and settled on a leather stitch coming loose from the steering wheel. He only looked back up when he heard a shout from the motel. Violet had wandered outside with a broom, raised it over her head, and came down with a fury on one of the large cracks in the parking lot.

"I TOOOLD YOU," Lily hollered from the office porch of the motel, "TO LEAVE THE DAMN GARTER SNAKE ALONE."

"NO," Violet hollered back. "I don't mess with your beetles or your critters, BUT I DRAW THE LINE AT SNAKES."

Violet came down once more on the crack like Poseidon with his trident while Lily shook her fist from the porch's bottom step.

Skylar leaned back into his seat and sighed once more, but, unlike the last, this one started at his head and worked its way down to loosen all the knots that had settled in his stomach. Violet nor Lilly had been the minus one, so he could relax - for the moment.

After another thunderous SMACK of the broom on the crack, and after realizing the snake wasn't coming out, Violet huffed, dropped the broom where she stood, and retreated back into the motel's office. Lily chuckled in triumph and followed her companion inside.

Skylar cranked the engine and barely three minutes later, he was pulling into Santan Valley Auto Repair's dusty parking lot. He felt alright, until he got out of the car. Then, Skylar was a wreck. Those old, yellow bruises turned from angry honey bees to hornets in a hive on fire. His legs became stilts propelling him into the atmosphere. He vomited on the pavement. There was nothing in his belly to dispel but stomach bile that burned the back of his throat. The thought of Scout's face was like a heart attack. It was the reminder of his hands digging craters into the redhead's pale skin until she was a pitted as the moon. He felt like he did something horrible to her body, like that night would alter her for the rest of her life. He was both her cancer and her radiation scars. He wasn't sure if he could face this anymore. He wasn't capable of facing anything. He thought that someone who spent their entire life running from everything was not made to confront their faults, no matter how much he wanted too.

Skylar was halfway back inside the Chevelle when Scott opened the garage door.

Scott stood there, one hand holding a steaming coffee mug and the other over his eyes like a visor to stare in the direction of the Chevelle. He had that familiar scowl. Skylar thought for sure that that scowl would deepen and he would be ran off the property. Then Scott's face broke into a wide smile. He used the hand that had just been a visor as a signal for Skylar to come inside.

Skylar walked the distance from the Chevelle to the garage with half a mind focused on swallowing down the bile creeping up his throat and the other half imagining the walk being lined with bright, yellow caution tape.

"You just gonna stand there or you gonna help me change this tire?" Scott said.

Skylar had stopped in the middle of the garage doorway, staring at a spot on the ceiling because he wasn't sure where else to focus his eyes. Despite that, he noticed that everything was where he left it. It wasn't like he expected the little universe that was Santan Valley to flip on its side in his absence of a few days, but he expected something. Maybe he was too full of himself to think anything would change because he left, or maybe he just hoped someplace would actually miss him for once. He wasn't sure which one he preferred.

Skylar walked over to the tool cabinet and came back with a lug wrench. Scout hoisted the car up on a jack while Skylar squatted down with a sharp wince and began removing the lug nuts. They worked quietly. Although Scott wondered what had happened to Skylar and why he looked half dead, Scott wasn't much of a talker or one to really pry, especially when there was work to be done. That was one thing that Skylar really appreciated about him.

While Skylar was painfully placing the new tire in position, Scott disappeared into the reception area of the shop. He came back a moment later with a second mug of coffee. He set it beside Skylar while he sipped pensively on his own.

Skylar nodded in appreciation. He secured the last lug nut in place before getting back to his feet, coffee in hand. He stood beside Scott, both quietly drinking as they stared down at the new tire on the blue Monte Carlo before them.

After a while, Scott walked over to the small box TV on the rolling tool cart in the middle of the garage. He began flipping through channels before throwing a glance over his shoulder at Skylar.

"You staying?" Scott asked.

"Probably not," Skylar said.

Scott nodded and turned back toward the TV. He stopped on some daytime talk-show channel.

"I wish you would," Scott said. "Especially considering that you look like you just got the tar beat out of you, but I suppose a man's gotta do what he's gotta do."

Skylar focused on the dark grounds in the bottom of his coffee mug. He could hear one of those TV "doctors" talking faintly. He looked over at the small, snowy screen. The doctor was sitting with a woman who had been the sole survivor of some aviation accident. She still had the neck brace and leg cast. Skylar couldn't help but notice that she had the same color eyes as Jackie. They were glossy. When it was her turn to speak, she took a shaky breath.

"You never really know how close you are to death until you realize the burden of continuing to live afterwards..."

Scott scoffed and turned the TV off.

"We get the worst channels out here," he said.

Skylar felt oddly heavier than he had the whole day, and it didn't help when he heard the door to the reception area creak open behind him.

"Dad," Scout's voice rang through the garage. "Mrs. Fisher is on the phone. She said she has a question about the new radio you put in her car last week."

Skylar stood as stiff as a board. A part of him hoped Scout wouldn't notice him standing off to the side of the garage, but anything he ever hoped for anyways fell through.

"Thanks, love," Scott said, striding passed Scout and disappearing into the reception area.

Scout went to turn around, to go back to her quiet perch at the front desk where she had been laying her aching head for the better part of the day, but all of the color dropped from her face when she saw that familiar silhouette out of the corner of her eye.

Skylar wasn't entirely sure what it was, but she was different. She was still the same girl with the kind of face Skylar could picture on a billboard, but she was less colorful. Before, she reminded him of the shades of lemon and cherry in the sun. Now, she was alabaster and cold. She reminded him of something that would come back to haunt him.

"Hey," Skylar said lowly.

"Hi."

Scout was curt and impassive. If Skylar hadn't known otherwise, he would've thought she was dead.

"Are you o-"

Before Skylar could finish, Scout raised a hand to silence him.

"Don't," she said. "Don't ask me if I'm okay, and I won't ask you why you look like you got the shit beat out of you."

"Fair enough."

Skylar stared into his coffee mug once more. Scout bit her lip, focused on a spot on the floor. This was the most uncomfortable they had ever felt in the presence of each other, and they both hated it.

Scout finally cleared her throat.

"Are you staying?" she asked.

Skylar shrugged.

Scout rolled her eyes.

"Then why are you here, Skylar?"

"To apologize," he said.

Scout's chuckle was bitter.

"The only way I'd ever even consider forgiving you," she paused, staring straight into Skylar's eyes, "is if you got me the fuck outta this town, but that's not gonna happen."

Skylar set his coffee mug on the hood of the Monte Carlo. He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back against the car. He stared back at Scout with just as much resolve. If the only way he could apologize was to get her out of that town, then he had to pay his dues, so he said,

"I'll be waiting here while you pack your shit."

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