random title three hundred and forty two

Backwards-clouds wrinkle over the highway.  She watches chunks of road disappear beneath nervous unlightning, picks at minute-fleas on Reece's ankles.  Misses one, feels the sticky soda fizz of seconds dissolving, tries to grab it before it hops a decade.  Between her fingers it struggles to get free, tiny legs flapping.  Little anomaly, scrambling to get back to where it began, stealing bits of life whenever it lands.  It reminds her of him.  

She pops it.  Half-digested time-juice dribbles over her thumb.    

His nails are receding.  She's trying to remember the sharp pressure of them digging into her hand -necks twisted, blistered eyes staring at missiles suspended motionless mid air- but the memory is gone and she can't think around clammy fingerpads gumming at her arm.  

Reece asks if she's worried.  --Not as much now, she says, rubbing away a week.  He scratches off a scar on his chin.  She can smell the direction of time and it tastes like south east into 1987, Sicily and jet fuel and Joshua, mustard gas and head-on collisions and Nina; exhaling too fast and collapsing.  

These temporal burps.  --They see straight through us like we're made out of plastic, he says.  --Like we're artificial.  

Years leak through new holes on the highway.  She watches a century fold in on itself, reduced to absurd scribbles.  Nothing-thunder swallows its echoes, leaves behind sonic haven't-happens like the thump of hiccups just before they punch up into your lungs.

The number on her shoulder hurts.  



--Maybe we are.