This is the 18th installment of a 100-day challenge to write a new vignette every morning.
Weather is not trivial—it’s especially important when you’re standing in it. Brian learned this while standing on the interstate shoulder that night.
He’d lost the sun about an hour before he’d lost his car. Now he could only see his hand and the gas can in it when the lightning menaced ever closer. The steady stream of rain soaked his clothes all the way through, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to use his cell phone even if it had service in these mountains.
As he stumbled on, he wondered whether he even had a car anymore. Had the darkness swallowed it as the price for his folly? His feet ached, and he wished he’d called a tow truck at that gas station instead of just grabbing a can of gas. He remembered now that the station attendant had tried to stop him from going back out into the storm. He should’ve listened.
No one knew to look for him here—not his mother, not his brother, not his wife. Ex-wife. Maybe that’s why the darkness had chosen to prey on him. What beast didn’t like an easy meal?
He felt the headlights on his back before he really saw them. As the pickup truck eased to a stop beside him, he drew closer to the mountainside. A head more baseball cap and beard than anything else emerged through the half-open window.
“Need a ride?” the attendant asked.
Miles Away 