Threnody (009).

(This is a 300-word-a-day novel project.)

She was overjoyed when she found the road – although it was riddled with cracks from disuse, a road came from somewhere and went to somewhere else, so eventually there would be answers. She wrapped her arms around her exposed torso, trying to keep the last tatters of her blouse, soaked with the remains of the trucker, from blowing free…and she did her best to refuse the memory of her bashing his skull in with a rock, or that of his weak twitches as she left him here headless. But it would come to her in her dreams for many of the days in her future.

Although the temperature had mercifully climbed to a point where she no longer thought she would freeze to death, it was not what she could call pleasant, and her breath fogged mightily. She noticed that parallel to the road were columns of stones, and parting the dead weeds found that there were dozens of these stacks, with the largest at their base and ending with the smallest, brightest stones four feet at their apex – and there were names crudely carved into many of them, she saw: John Michael Towne, Benjamin Grady Larson, Nicole Lynn Dillon) and endearments that accompanied them (Best Friend I Ever Had; A Hell of a Guy; With Jesus); there were over thirty she counted, and after Marie Silvia Cedarhaus and the declaration NOT LOST ANYMORE Jesse let the stones fall from her hands with flat clacking noises as they struck one another. There were terrible monsters and impossible monsters and now she knew that she was not the only one this was happening to: and it seemed as if they didn’t survive.

I will, she thought. Somehow I’m going to get back to my own bed. You can bet on that.