Down Highway 74
By Jason Mott

On the way back from Charlotte there is a dead girl draped across the grass beside the highway. She swarms with policemen and one or two paramedics who, for some reason, still have not covered her or taken her away. The highway is quiet. The truck ahead of me barely chugging. A needy line of traffic crawls past.

Mothers cover their children’s eyes. Take in all of the dead girl for themselves. They check and recheck their seat belts when they see, not far from the dead girl, awkward, like a giant, poisoned insect, a small, blue overturned Honda. The bottom of the car is a collection of smooth, gray boxes and long, metallic shafts that are only a darker gray. “It’s electric,” my friend says. “You can tell ‘cause its got no exhaust pipe.”

In my head, I tell my friend that seeing an overturned car is like seeing a nightclub by day: foreign for some unknown reason. Offensive, as if we have just caught the world in a malicious lie. A lie about everything.

Outside of my head, there is only the radio speaking for me. The soundtrack of the anecdote which, when I tell it to anyone that will listen, I will refer to as "The Time I Saw the Dead Girl," is driven by the drummer of Metallica. He is angry. His drums are angry. The guitars are angry. The vocals are angry. It feels wrong.

The soundtrack of the anecdote which, when I tell it to anyone that will listen, I will refer to as "The Time I Saw the Dead Girl" is driven by..." 

As opposed to what?

When it is our turn to pass, we are close enough to see that the girl is blonde. Not yet pale. Wrapped in a bloodless, yellow sun dress. A silver bracelet hangs like a necklace on one thin, sleeping hand. She has long, brightly painted lips. Thin, Hollywood lips that make me wonder, “Where do I know her from?”

Nowhere. Naturally. She is a dead girl.

A dead, blonde girl. A young, dead, blonde girl. A young, dead, blonde girl lying along a highway at the boot heels of investigators (or whoever the men are). She says nothing. She goes nowhere. She simply performs being a young dead girl with dreadful accuracy.

And a moment later, the road opens, dark and broad and waiting.

The girl is gone.

“I want a tattoo,” I tell my friend.

“What?”

“I want my name tattooed over every inch of me.”