Roadkill

No moon. A sky flecked like mica with stars. I had my Harley redlined, the V-Twin burning between my legs. It’s always dangerous riding fast at night. But since the change I had nothing to lose, no one to care if I lost it. Then I saw her, lying across the blacktop.

Dead, I thought.

But she moved when I swerved to avoid her. I got the bike stopped, u-turned, winced as I saw… Her back was broken. I hung the bike on its kickstand, the headlight painting her, refracting jewels from her liquid eyes. I rushed to her, knelt.

She opened her mouth but made no sound. How could she be alive? How could she breathe with a chest half crushed? What was she doing so far from town? What sick fate had sent a vehicle to rendezvous with her at this lonely spot? There were no signs of burnt rubber. Whoever hit her hadn’t even slowed down.

I tried to force, “It’s OK,” through my lips. The meaningless words wouldn’t come.

Then she looked past me toward highway’s edge. I turned, saw some shadowy movement. When I turned back she looked like she was sleeping but her chest no longer rose and fell. My feet followed where her gaze had led, and I saw why she’d been crossing the road. Saw what she was returning to. Or running from.

Her puppies had been born dead. But in this new world they hadn’t stayed that way. They smelled me, and squirmed toward me through their mother’s afterbirth, their baby teeth stark and white and gnashing.

I backed away, then screamed as a sudden flashing agony lanced through my legs. I fell, rolled instinctively away from the pain. The mother hound’s mouth was flecked with foam and blood. My blood. Her eyes had been reborn as scarlet hells.

I tried to get up, found she’d torn out my Achilles tendons. Still screaming, I scrabbled away along the highway. The hound growled and hitched herself toward me, her paws slapping at the asphalt. Intestines unraveled behind her. I laughed hysterically as I realized the mother’s broken spine would keep her from catching me.

Then I saw the puppies. On the road. They couldn’t walk either. But they were crawling faster than I was.

∼ Charles Gramlich