Thunder made the floor of the town vibrate, and small bits of lightning shot across the sky. Jim had just gotten out of work, his hands somehow dirty despite wearing gloves and his boots were covered in mud and splashes of cement. Being a construction worker meant that he worked long hours, following blueprints and vocal orders throughout the day.
When he was young, he wanted to be an architect. He wanted to draw and design. He wanted to build a new world house by house, city by city. But as he got older, he, and every adult around him, realized he had no skill in drawing, designing, or mathematics. Though he thought to himself that skill can be learned, the opinions of others, mostly his mother’s, overcame any hope he had in reaching his full potential.
“Potential is useless if you can’t do anything with it,” she would tell him, “You need to stop drawin’ in those notebooks, you’re not any good. Go find a normal job, stop chasin’ unrealistic dreams.”
So, he listened to her.
At eighteen, he put away his notebooks, locked away any dreams in the back of his mind and got a job at a nearby construction company. He worked long hours, overtime and underpaid. When his boss needed something, he ran to get it. If there was a dangerous job and no one else wanted to do it, Jim would volunteer. He had plenty of scars to prove it, and even more from jokes his coworkers played on him.
He walked with a limp due to a time Denison “accidentally” dropped concrete on his foot and crushed it. He thought about suing him but decided against it because no one ever believed his stories. Even if they knew it was true, the townies would side against him. It was a crooked town, and an even more crooked system; and he was the town joke .
Now, seventeen years later he was still in the same town, being pushed around by the same people, and continuously ridiculed by his mother in which he still lived with. No woman except his own mother ever looked his way. No woman would give him a chance. Perhaps they could see that he was stuck, and they wouldn’t be caught getting stuck with the town joke with the underpaid job and the nagging mother.
“Hey Jim, tell your mom I said hi!” Denison shouted, breaking Jim out of thought. Denison laughed, wide-mouthed, showing off his left golden incisor that matched the reflective yellow on his HVSA vest that Jim and the rest of his coworkers wore.
“Yeah,” Jim replied, “Will do.” Jim shook his head and walked away as the rest of his coworkers laughed.
He hated his coworkers, he couldn’t stand them. Especially Denison with his golden tooth and his mom jokes. There had been countless times in which he wished Denison would disappear, many times he wished everyone would disappear. He would do just fine without them. He didn’t need them. He didn’t use everyone the way everyone used him. He could do without them all, even his mother. Just then, a flash of lightning hit, and a bout of thunder trembled the floor beneath him, bringing him to his senses.
“I really gotta stop thinkin’ like that,” he said to himself, glancing up at the sky, “It’s not right.”
Though most people were wary of the first storm in years, Jim was grateful. If it weren’t for the storm he wouldn’t be getting out of work this early.
His coworkers ran towards their cars as rain began to pour, Jim limped to his own. By the time he climbed in, he was soaked. He looked down at his feet and saw he had trudged mud in and onto the carpet. He sighed, knowing his mother would complain about this, then switched the ignition, hearing the familiar unsteady hum of his beat up pickup truck and his cheap radio, then started through the fog and towards the town diner to pick her up.
The stations came in static waves, bits of news broke free within folk stations. He almost ran a red light when his boot slipped as he tried to press the brake. He stopped just in time, with a few curse words from other drivers directed towards him. He ignored them and continued to the diner.
~
“Jimmy, why’d you take so long?” his mother said. “I’ve waited nearly an hour! Martha’s boy picked her up on time! Why can’t you ever be on time?”
“I am on time, mom. I told you I’d be off ‘round 6. There’s a lot of traffic ‘cause of the rain, I almost crashed,” he said.
“Always an excuse with you,” she said. “Of course you almost crashed, look at your boots! Why are they so muddy? You couldn’t rinse ‘em off before you got in the car? It’s raining out, all you had to do is stick your damn boots out and let the rain wash ‘em, but no. Now the floor’s all dirty, damn it Jimmy! You can’t do one thing right.”
Jim sighed. He was used to her complaints. He knew it was little use in trying to argue with her. She would never let up and he would never win. Best he could do was shut up. Sometimes he would even agree with her, just so he wouldn’t have to hear the rest of it.
“Let’s just get home, mom,” he said, noticing how dark the sky had gotten, “Think the storm’s gettin’ worse.”
“What, you think I wanna sit in this car all night? Of course let’s get home. I told you, I’ve been waitin’ almost an hour! If you were on time like Martha’s boy, I’d be home in my nice warm bed by now.”
Suddenly, there was a flash of lightning followed by a thundering so loud it seemed as if the sky was angrily bellowing down at them. Both Jim and his mother jumped in their seats and took a look around. The rain began its heaviest fall and hammered itself onto the windshield, Jim thought it sounded like hands trying to break in.
“Get goin’, Jimmy,” his mother broke her own silence, “lightning’s a bad omen.”
Jim nodded and started the car. It was hard to merge back onto the street. Most streets were jammed, and people were speeding on the ones that weren’t. Some sped through red lights, and others had trouble stopping. There were no accidents yet, but there was a lot of yelling, especially at Jim. He was upset and overwhelmed and his mother made it no easier by nagging at his driving skills everytime he abruptly stepped on the break, or drove too slow or too fast for her liking.
The radio spiked with breaking news, something was being said about the storm rapidly increasing and numerous reports of accidents and record-breaking bolts of lightning across the states. That’s when Jim had noticed that the lightning seemed to have sped up, lighting up the sky every thirty seconds, then every twenty seconds, ten...
Thunder seemed to be building up all around them, creeping up behind them yet somehow ahead of them and beside them all the same. As thunder surrounded them he imagined that if one was stuck inside a monster’s stomach and were about to be digested, it would sound just like this before it happened.
Stop thinkin’ crazy things, Jim thought, but his nerves got the best of him. He tried to speed at the end of a yellow light but was too late. The light flashed red just as he entered the intersection, and the cars from the cross street sped as soon as their light turned green. It all happened within seconds. A car collided with the right side of Jim’s own, shoving the truck with full force into an oncoming car coming from the opposite direction.
Just as the collision happened, a massive bolt of lightning struck down. Jim shut his eyes, both from the panic of the crash and the brightness of lightning. He gripped the steering wheel and slammed on the breaks. Last thing he heard was his mother scream and a grinding of metal before he blacked out.
~
Jim began to open his eyes. For a while, all he could see was a white light. He felt like time moved in slow motion. All that could be heard were car horns in the distance, static from the radio and a ringing in his ears. He shook his head to rid them of the ringing and realized the noise was actually something sizzling. There was a smell in the air. Something was burning, some sort of meat. He tried to blink away the light.
“Mom?” he coughed, inhaling some smoke. “You okay?”
He turned in her direction. When his eyes made contact with what should have been his mother, all that was left in her place was a charred skeleton. Pieces of burnt flesh stuck to random parts of her bones and tattered pieces of leftover cotton from her clothes lay about, some still floating down from the momentum. Almost all of her hair was gone, except for random thin strands hanging loosely from barbequed scalp. They would pull right off if Jim tugged on them. One of his mother’s eyes survived, hanging out of her skull, bloody and roasted a tinged black. Majority of what used to make up his mother was gone, burnt up in the lightning.
Jim gasped when he realized the smell of burning meat had been his mother’s flesh and gagged. He fumbled with the door handle but it wouldn’t budge. His stomach was impatient, the vomit pushed its way up his throat and out his mouth, coating his pant legs in liquids and chunks from his lunch earlier that day. The smell of his own vomit mixed with the smell of his mother’s flesh only made him vomit more. By the time he finished he felt weak. He reached for the crank handle to his left and rolled down his window.
“Help!” he cried, “Someone help, please.”
He didn’t know why he was asking for help. There was nothing that could save his mom now. She was gone, and there was nothing anyone could do to change that. He sat there for a few moments waiting for someone, anyone, to come and tell him this was all a dream. But as time passed by, no one came. Only then did Jim realize how strange it was that he didn’t hear anyone else screaming for help. He didn’t hear any other voices, no arguments or screaming. No voices on the radio. Jim gulped, and looked out the window.
Car headlights were still blazing through the fog and the traffic lights kept changing from red to yellow to green, even though every car remained still. Jim readied himself, brushed off the vomit from his lap onto the floor of the truck where it met with the mud from earlier. He placed one hand on the window sill and the other on the headrest of the driver's seat and hoisted himself through the window and out the truck. He landed on broken glass in the small space between his truck and the car he crashed into.
He readied himself and looked into the driver’s seat of the second car and his breath was caught once again, in it laid a skeletal corpse just like his mother’s, except this one was still wearing its work vest and in its mouth still laid one golden tooth.
Jim didn’t puke this time, instead he leaned back against the side of his truck. He panned the town from left to right, noting every skeletal remain within distance yet silently hoping someone would come running up the sidewalk or step out of their vehicle and ask if he's okay, but he knew that wouldn’t happen. He knew that wherever he looked, he would just come across more skeletal remains, and no matter how loud he screamed, there would be no answer.
Jim began what first started as a sob but what shortly became an uncontrollable laugh. He was alone, like he always wanted to be. No one to give him orders, no one to complain about his muddy boots. No one to tell him what he can or can’t do.
The white noise from the radio hummed in the background as the clouds began to part, revealing a blue sky. He looked up, released his shoulders and sighed a final breath of relief.
About the Author
Kathleen Zamora lives in the San Fernando Valley. She recently graduated with an M.A in English Creative Writing from CalState Northridge. Her favorite authors include Ray Bradbury and Stephen King. Instagram: @kathleeniswriting
About the Artist
Viggo Krejberg is a 22 Year Old Chicago based Artist and Animator. He attributes his work to being heavily inspired by artists such as Junji Ito, Bryan Lee O'Malley, and Ian Worthington. Updates on his art & current projects can be found on his Twitter @VKrejberg.
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