rearview mirrors

Steven asked for an example of how to handle flashbacks in a story, and since the Word doc I had in mind is saved on my dinosaur of a Dell that no longer boots up and I had to retype the thing anyway, I figured I might as well post it here.

So here goes:

Gray eyes slit through aviator glasses, staring down the sun. Top gun, fucking Maverick. Feeling the need, the need for speed. More so now than ever.

There had been a car, hadn't there? Twenty-five-hundred RPMs, downshifting to fourth to pass on the left of a two-lane highway, manicured nails tuning the radio dial, mariachis drifting through static

french-tip manicure. her favorite

Needle slanting, laying left. Coasting to the dusty shoulder, a chugging halt. Blood red bullseye as the needle buries itself below the E. Seems familiar, somehow... busted radiator hose

red. blood red lips or lipstick?

Could've been. Running on empty, moving, movies, the needle, volcanic steam, falling needles, the E, must be...

Reeling left, scanning the horizon for the cherry red Mustang he knows he'll find shimmering in the heat baking off the asphalt in the distance, not so distant, he can't have walked too far...

Nothing there but sand and a misfired synapse, blurred and fogged memory of a Sean Penn film.

He's been walking the desert so long he's forgotten anything else. He has his suspicions that there was something more once, the pins and needles of recollection, smell of rust and salt that's not quite carried by the breeze but is present nonetheless. A faint echo on the edges of perception, like the skipping track of an album whose notes and words you can't recall.

Fuck it. He's here now, has always been here. At least there's quiet. At least he's alone...

red rusted. iron.

Only he's not alone, not really. Like the eye of some prehistoric omen, the sun blazes overhead, an unceasing beacon. Muting the world, tinting reality, the aviator glasses aren't enough to block out his shadow. Its held his trail doggedly from the beginning...

Whenever the fuck that was.

rat in a cheeseless maze

Turning his back to his tracks and the shadow, he scans the horizon, searching for... what? Pavement, tire tread, signs of civilization, gas pump

mariachi music, tin warbling voice of the stereo

billboard, fucking something. There should be some goddamned thing, a sign...

Not that he honestly believes that. Small doses of comfort through larger tales of fiction, and the doses are getting smaller all the time. Not that that's any different from the way things were before.

Is it?

Distracted hand loosens the knot in his necktie as the eyes behind the shades drink in the expanse of sand, panoramic thirst.

A shadow passes over his face; he looks up to watch a bird circle past the sun. Hawk, maybe? Too soon to tell. Darkened wingspan flapping dustward...

Touchdown.

Not a hawk then. Not even a falcon

french manicure finger tips trailing down his thigh

Blood faced buzzard. No, something not quite right about that either. Frames from a Disney movie or National Geographic. Something about a prison

topped-off gas tank, flamenco guitar as petroleum splatters.
metronomic dripping keeping time

and keys... jangling keys on a metal ring. Doors slamming shut—

Turkey vulture.

well-thumbed pages of a Norton Anthology,
perfumed pout and Maybelline stains.
"quoth the raven"

Aww, fuck it.

The sun passes behind a pack of cumulo nimbi

they used to laugh together when she mispronounced "meteorology,"
but when had that been? and where (who?) the fuck is she now?

as he meets the stare of the vulture. His gray eyes burn inside its hollow black ones, staring at his own mirrored stare. Looking down, he notes that the vulture casts no shadow.

Neither does he.

Numbed fingers rub the crusted sand from swollen eyelids. Whether from sleep or the ground, he's unable to tell anymore. Not that it matters now.

Props himself up on an uncertain elbow, shifting his freight to rest on his ass he feels

her hand on his skin. groping, a caress, lingering...
skin meeting skin, his skin, not mine

a lump under the right cheek. Pulls from his pocket a weather-beaten wallet, the cracked brown of aging black leather. Windburn eyes watch as his fingers flip open the wrinkled flap, pull out a California driver's license, so there must have been a car. Or a road.

Or, at the very least, there must have been California.

Unless...

unbuttoned fly. 501s draped over the chair back.

male. 5'10". Hair: Brown. Eyes: Blue.

But his eyes are gray behind his Maverick shades. Mom and dad, their eyes were blue, but not mine. Some people called it hazel, but that's not right. It was the color of lack, it was no pigment, it was

she liked the fact that they changed to match her outfits

gray.

How much longer are you gonna leave me here? I've been out in the desert for... days? years? It's fucking hot, throw me a bone, man. Give me a gun, a knife, fucking something. A tool.

Help me end it.

god helps those who

Fuck you.

He's on his own.

Probably not exactly what he has in mind, but it's the best I could do on short notice.