One month before I died, I almost lost my hearing. Not in some heroic, awesome fight. Not fending off some supernatural banshee with a thirst for blood. Not in a terrible accident that would scar me for life while also giving me a new sense of appreciation for life.
No, I was at work. Washing cars and listening to an eardrum-shattering buzzer several damn times a day.
“ERRRRRR!”
I flinched against the noise and my shoulders hunched in with the painful feeling of my joints popping. Even after months of it, I still reacted to the cursed thing every time. Shaking off the infliction, I prepped the Ford truck with mud caked running boards and hay straw stuck in the windshield wipers.
I took them out one by one in a hazy state. Despite being surrounded by loud machines, blowers, and chemicals that were surely degrading my life expectancy, my eyes were begging for a rest.
After the truck was gone and hopefully clean, I trudged across the tunnel to the open garage door. The early afternoon air was warm and I could stand just in the right spot to feel the sun beaming down through the clouds, but still in the shade to escape getting burned to the 5th degree. Whatever kept me awake.
The other two on shift with me seemed just as tired. Kory, a short feminine college student, leaned against the wall just out of view of the cameras and pulled out his phone. Carson, a tall lanky 17 year old, draped herself over the console and groaned.
“What’s with you?” I asked. Carson briefly glanced down to check her phone. I could see a conversation filled with hearts on her screen.
“I’m tired.” Carson lifted her head to rub her eyes and turned around to use the console as the only means of supporting her towering body. “I was up all night working on an assignment for MacroEcon.”
I folded my arms on the other side and smiled. “Did you finish it?”
She snorted. “Not even a little bit. I got like three hours and almost got here late finishing up other homework. Man, I hate Biology.”
She looked at me expectantly and I couldn’t help the sleepy grin on my face. “Two hours. I had to win a round of Counter Strike before I went to bed.”
“Stop betting your raises on FPS games.”
Before I could retort, a car pulled up and Kory snapped to attention. “Car’s here,” he announced like a depreciating amusement park attendant. Walked away from us like we weren’t there just like one, too.
Carson and I groaned, but she shoved me off the console. Parting ways the short distance to our posts, I grabbed the soapy brush and used it as a cane in the chilly sunlight beaming through the tunnel.
We washed cars for hours until finally our shift ended. As soon as the closers came in, we darted out the door and off company property to our cars across the street; playfully pushing each other towards the cars slowly pulling onto the road and leaping over the painted lines.
The tailgate of her truck was inches from my car’s bumper. I was pretty sure the scratches along it were from the hitch she didn’t use, but had no concrete proof besides strong feelings and our friends rating her out.
Carson took off her uniform hat and tossed it into her truck’s tool box. “Do you work tomorrow?” she asked after a stifled yawn and banging her forehead against my back window.
“Yesss, first thing in the morning too.” I yanked my door open and sat slumped over in the front seat. It was a small hunk of metal that just barely got me from one end of Haven to the other, but it was my hunk of metal and I was willingly to defend it to the grave.
Carson watched Kory rummage through his pockets for his keys and dramatically fall against the side of his own truck. “What about you, Kory?”
He paused and gently tilted his head to stare at her through his curtain of light brown hair. “Ditto.” With that resounding piece of conversation, he got into his small red truck and peeled out of the parking lot.
We watched him go and Carson clicked her tongue. “Damn, he’s weird.”
“Seriously.”
As I cranked my car, I couldn’t help but wonder how our workplace managed to function being run by sleep deprived young adults no older than 25. Our manager himself was only 22 and got just as much sleep between trying to live somewhat of a life outside of work and having to be called in every other day when something inevitably broke.
I graduated high school back in the Fall and was now taking a semester (or two…or ten) off. It wasn’t uncommon at the car wash; most people were either college students or college-aged but working full time. It wasn’t a bad job and we got paid well enough so none of us felt the need to leave it. Especially the people who lived in Haven their whole lives, like me.
I shook my head and mentally slapped my face. I didn’t regret my decision back then and I still didn’t. No need to keep dwelling on it. By then, both Carson and Kory were long gone so I drove out of the lot and down the main road.
My house took multiple dirt roads to get to, twisting and turning over scattered pebbles and broken down trees from years of hurricanes that no one bothered to clean up. Every hurricane season came with a fun game of ‘will we be able to leave via our driveway or are we stuck off-roading it?’
It was a one-story home in a field with various small gardens surrounding it. Instead of just one garden with multiple crops, my mom had them all separated into their own plots, creating a sort of maze with the house in the center. It used to be a trailer, or really still was, but a couple years back my uncle had turned the back porch into two additional rooms with a short hallway, giving the illusion it was bigger than it actually was.
I parked my car next to Mom’s that she now shared with Mama after they gave hers to me. Weaving through the mini gardens, I ran my hand lightly over the barbed wire protecting the vegetables from wild animals. The rusty intertwined metal pricked my palm, but hurt no more than scratching it with my own nail.
The plot closest to the house was my favorite, watermelons. I paused to check on the progress but froze completely. One side of the fence was severely bent, the wire stretching further down than it should’ve been. A basket of dirty carrots had fallen on its side on the outside of the plot and spilled its contents on the freshly cut grass.
Glancing at the woods ahead of me, I kneeled down next to the basket and picked it up to start gathering the carrots back up. As I did, a deep stickling feeling started bearing down on my back while something much more light ran up my back. I froze in place, my hand reaching out to grab yet another carrot.
My head slowly turned on its own towards the woods. Trees teetering high above, threatening to block out any sign of the sky. Trunks so close together with branches high-fiving each other caused darkness to erupt among them. I normally couldn’t see a thing.
Until now. Until a dog emerged at the edge of the wall of wood. A big, shaggy dog with black fur and narrowing dark eyes. It took one step forward and I willed myself to move but nothing happened.
The feeling bore into my spine and just as my limbs began to shake, the front door flew open and my neck practically broke as I snapped behind me. My mom stepped out, hands on her hips and staring at me. “I was wondering what I did with those darn carrots. Dillon, honey, could you please bring them inside for me?”
I spun back around to the woods to call out the threat of a hungry dog that definitely wasn’t salivating over the carrots, but it was gone. The darkness was empty once again. Allegedly.
I gapped like a dry-drowning fish and quickly picked up the last carrot. “S-Sure Mom!” I tossed it into the basket and pushed myself to my feet. With one last look into the empty woods, I followed her inside. “What happened to the fence?”
“What do you mean?” She looked behind me and her face twisted with confusion. “I must have stepped on it and didn’t notice. I’ll fix it after dinner, no worries!”
I didn’t bring up the fact that my dangerously thin and physically weak mom definitely couldn’t have bent that wire fence.
Dinner was already done and I collapsed into my chair at the table, not even bothering to shower off the mud and soap before flopping my head onto the wood and stretching my dirty sleeves to take a plate.
Mama sat down across from me and wrinkled her nose. “Yikes, you smell worse and worse every day you come home, dew drop.”
I smiled and flicked some of the dust off my arm in her direction. The particles narrowly missed flying right into her drink. “Sorry, Mama,” I said, not sorry at all.
She squinted and scooped up a bit of green beans, moving to take a bite before flicking her wrist and sending it right into my mashed potatoes. “Sorry, dew drop.”
Before I could command up my own utensils and retaliate, Mom came in carrying the sweet tea jug and huffed. “Children, the both of you.” She set the jug on the table and shook her head as both me and Mama grappled for the handle. “Take turns! Maggie, let Dillon pour first, he just got home.”
Mama dramatically relinquished the jug and I grinned triumphantly. After pouring more sweet tea than anyone would ever need and then some, my phone buzzed so I poured some for my Mama like the good son I was and slipped it out of my pocket.
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Scrolling through Bluesky, a post made my thumb stop. A picture of one of my old classmates, Taylor, standing in front of a college dorm building. A large blue tub with wheels, filled with pillows, duffle bags, and a floor lamp was next to him. She gave the camera a thumbs up and a toothy grin, the caption reading: Operation Move-In was a success! Can’t wait to spend my next year in a cinder block room, but at least I’ll have my trusty Blueberry!
I chuckled despite the pang in my chest. Blueberry was the nickname for the patched up blue bean bag chair Taylor had that I remembered from the times I stayed over at her house for study groups-turned-sleepovers. Events his parents were always for some reason upset over but also didn’t stop.
“No phones at the table, honey.” Mom scolded me, gently tapping the edge of my plate with the wooden spoon. I smiled and nodded then went back to mindlessly swiping through my phone. Mom sighed and looked at Mama. “He gets this from you.”
Mama simply bit back a grin and stared at her own phone, not messing with it just pointedly pretending to not acknowledge her. Mom tutted and playfully whacked her in the shoulder with the spoon. “Phones down and let’s talk about our days, please!”
Mama laughed and held up her hands in surrender. “Alright, alright! Whatever my love wishes.” She leaned up to kiss Mom on the cheek and I gagged like a sack of poisonous mushrooms was shoved down my throat.. “How was work, dew drop?”
We all ate while I went into exhaustingly detail about each and every customer that annoyed me that day. Which was about…99% of them. Hey, after the nth person complains about signing up for something they weren’t aware they were signing up for, despite agreeing to the terms and conditions of what they were signing up for, and paying months for something they signed up for, it got a bit tedious to listen to.
Mama barked out a laugh, nearly choking on her spaghetti. “Oh I really don’t miss retail. Every day was a new grand adventure, complete with nonsensical customers who wanted to return items not even from our store.” She shook her head and mimicked one of such people. “‘I need to return this shirt that looks like it was dragged through the runner and was bought 3 years ago. Cash please, no store credit necessary’”.
I was suddenly very grateful for my regulars, mostly wholesome and, more importantly, reasonable. Mom smiled and daintingly took a bite of garlic bread, wincing as she always did. Why she continued to eat it when she hated garlic, I had no idea. “I do hope you don’t regret that job,” she remarked lightly.
Mama gave her a wide grin. “Never in a million years. It was awful, but worth it in the end.”
I groaned through my bread. “Do I have to hear this every week now?”
“Oh, calm down. We won’t get into our love story tonight,” Mama waved her fork around and jabbed a singular noodle. “That’s for tomorrow.”
“Speaking of,” Mom started, setting her fork to the side, “Dillon, are you available tomorrow to come uptown with me? Mrs. Darcy needs some special candles that are only sold in a store around there.”
“What do you need me for?”
“She needs ‘lavender but not too lavender with a hint of rose but a lot of it, if at all possible’. I couldn’t even begin to find lavender, much less all that.”
“Your mom’s saying you have the nose of a bloodhound.”
“Like the one in the woods?” I said jokingly, expecting laughing agreements in return but the look that crossed my Mom’s face told a different story. “What?”
“You saw a…bloodhound in the woods? Our woods?” Her voice was chillingly steady and teeming with nerves. I quickly switched around the story to try and calm her.
I simply shrugged and pointed in a general direction. “It was just a dog. Probably a neighbor’s that got loose.”
Mom slowly nodded. “Right, right, of course. Well!” She sat up straight and her face perked back up into its normal overly-motherly look. “About taking a small drive with me tomorrow. Maybe you’ll see one of your high school friends! I heard from their parents that some are visiting for the weekend.”
I slightly curled in on myself. “Sorry, Mom, I have work first thing in the morning.”
She pressed her lips into a thin line, concern replacing the joy in her eyes and my chest took a stabbing. “Have you seen any of your old classmates since you graduated? You’ve been working so much lately.”
I stared down at my food. I had no idea how to break it to her that no, I haven’t seen a single classmate or even an old school friend since May. Not out of intent, I was simply too busy with work whenever they visited and the rest of the time they were too far. All miles away at college.
“I think I’m done.” I stood up abruptly. There was plenty of food still on my plate but I knew it would end up as leftovers in the fridge. I kissed my mom’s sympathetic cheek and my mama’s neutral head.
Closing my bedroom door, I collapsed on my bed, the tiredness and effort from work finally settling in. My game console called to me from the floor but I couldn’t make myself move. I couldn’t even tell if I wanted to play games or just lay there and stare at the ceiling.
I could hear my moms talking in the living room and wondered how much of it was about me. Their overworked, out of school, and already legally an adult son. Not like I could move out if I wanted to, my mama had made it clear I was staying home until my class graduated college.
I tried not to think of the condition as a hint.
My moms didn’t voice it, but I had a feeling they already knew what I was thinking. Not going back to school, rising up the ranks at the car wash, make that my career. For other parents, that was unspeakable; it was throwing my life and potential future away all for a job meant for students to pay for eating out food while in school then quit.
I thanked God every day that my moms weren’t like most parents. It wasn’t even what I wanted to do, that sentiment was reserved for something I didn’t even know. But I had no other ideas.
At some point, my eyes drooped close and when I opened them next, my spine and all my bones were sticking needles in me as punishment for sleeping sideways on my bed. I moved one arm and every joint popped multiple times.
I rolled over and blinked through the darkness at my phone. 2:49am. How long had I been lamenting? Sighing, I shoved myself up and started grabbing my shoes and keys. No reason staying in my room contemplating my life choices in the dark when I could do that while at least getting some fresh air.