A Brute Force
by Sharon K. McClain
Trigger warning: Injury and death of animals
A valley morning whose heat already stings as she travels down the freeway to her job at the ad agency. Through the smeared windshield some spot or spill or mound at the side of the hot blackish asphalt catches her eye. An acidic pulse snares her stomach as acceleration draws the thing closer, like a telescopic lens. Is it? Alive? Pleading with herself to look away, she never can, spellbound by the entire scene while navigating the rush hour mayhem. Trepidation a rusty lock around her throat, eyes lock onto the mass and if she’s lucky, it’s a false alarm—an inanimate object.
If only her mother’s first date with him had been a one-off. The darkish blue of his eyes had frightened the 5-year-old girl, that shade too intense, a hint of the bestial seething beneath. That night he shoved the girl out of her mother’s bed, taking possession of their world as he snarled and gnashed. He never left.
As she continues the morning commute, that flapping patch of ochre hijacks her focus. Cars pass her, honking, as she grips the steering wheel, dreading this sighting but is relieved to find only a discarded chamois cloth, dead leaves whipping about it. She remembers the relief when the splayed black cat on the drive home one night turned out to be a jagged rubbery tire remnant. Or when she was sure the shape was human. Tarped in shredded dark green, the whooshing cars made waves in the plastic as it bogged around the mass. No place to pull over; she always wondered about that one.
He gave the girl candy. Maybe he wouldn’t be as bad as she thought. Sometimes he could make her laugh, but he would escalate into manic rage and by the second month, his strange acts of discipline stunned her. A deadening thud to the corporeal. A slam to the soul.
These scalding days seem to incite the sloughing of junk, as she eyes the glut of roadside debris. As her car shoots west on the freeway, she spies a brownish dresser drawer a quarter mile ahead. Or is it a slim torso? As the thing comes into view, she sees a mid-sized hound cadaver. It’s a fresh kill since the limb stiffening of rigor mortis has not yet set in. The corpse scene streams past, but her periphery blurs dark as her head goes weightless, vertigoed. Decelerating, she manages to pull over, car lurching to the hard shoulder as her forehead hits the thick seam on the steering wheel. Gagging on sobs as the forgotten memories of beloved lost animals flood her consciousness. The family pets he abandoned, abused, eliminated. The sound of her own screams jolts her, throat abraded, inflamed. Sweat heavy and damp weights the back of her neck. She rocks her body in the bucket seat, chasing breaths—primal solace. How could she have known that the arrival of this man would smash the trajectory of her entire life? A random strike, wrecking her neural network, a tailspin into oblivion that would take years to salvage. And even then, upon closer inspection, the dents would always be visible.