text: Jack’s eyes grew heavy. Clumsily, he fumbled around the passenger seat of his early 2000’s pickup in search of his sunglasses to try and block out the burning sensation caused by the setting sun. After 3 swerves and 5 car horns honking loudly at him, giving him a mild headache, his hand found them, and he put them on. They were large Ray-Ban aviators with mirrored lenses. He’d heard a few times that the eyes were the windows to the soul, so naturally, being who he was, he did everything he could to prevent people from looking directly at him. They gave him a small sense of security, and he felt they made it easier for him to lie. As the sky in front of him turned a burnt orange, he looked to the lands surrounding the nearly empty highway he found himself on. To his left, short grasses, with the occasional lonely tree, and to his right the same. His eyes grew heavier. Without much a thought he turned on his radio. Static. Jack was now too far from Fort Worth now to get the stations he was tuned to on his drive in earlier that morning. He flicked through the channels, more static. He was alone. He lived just far enough away from everything, that nothing could get to him. Not even radio frequency, and a part of him liked that. Growing bored as the sun dipped below the horizon, much faster than he thought it would, Jack’s foot left the gas pedal, so he could reach behind him and grab the bottle of bourbon he’d opened earlier in the week. He popped the cork off, and took a swig, hoping that the initial burn of the whiskey would wake him back up. And for a while it did. Then his eyes grew heavier still. With his head moving in a manner similar to that of a bobber on a fishing line, just robbed by a clever fish, Jack suddenly woke and for a split second he thought he saw a dog in the middle of the road. Swerving to avoid it, he quickly found himself suspended from the floor of his truck by his seatbelt. Shocked, he unbuckled himself and as he fell, he impaled his left leg on what remained of the glass from the driver’s side window. He let out a scream, and took another swig of bourbon. He tried the radio. Static. Carefully, and in a great deal of pain, he crawled out from the inverted truck, then found himself crawling back in to grab the whiskey. He clawed for support against the wreckage, and stood up. He was in a ditch. To his right, a barbed wire fence, guarding the land of what was likely in these parts to be a cattle rancher. To his left the highway, but more immediately, a hill he was going to need to climb if he was going to hitch a ride home. The lights on his truck flickered for a moment, then turned off. The sun had fallen below the horizon, and the moon was beginning to make its way across the evening sky. He began his climb up the side of the ditch, unable to get great footing, he slipped frequently, each slip digging the glass a little deeper into his calf. Each time, he let out another scream. Upon reaching the top, he sat on the precipice, looking down at the pile of metal that, had it been a little earlier, might still look that shade of red that he couldn’t say no to all those years ago. “I’m going to need to remove this if I’m going to get anywhere”, Jack thought to himself as he stared at the chunk of glass currently lodged in his left calf. He touched it lightly, and winced in pain. With that, he tore off a sleeve of his flannel shirt, and bit down. Even through the fabric, he felt as though he might break his teeth on themselves with how hard he was biting. And the glass was removed. “What a waste.” Jack thought, as he poured some bourbon over the wound. And he tied the sleeve of his shirt around his calf in an effort to stop the bleeding. But he knew, it would still continue to drip as he limped down the highway. Perhaps it was the pain, perhaps it was the whiskey, but roughly three hours into lurching along the deserted highway, Jack came to the realization that his sunglasses only had one lens in them now. Realizing this, he took them off, and stowed them in his shirt pocket. As he did this, he thought he heard the sound of a tree branch cracking. Jack assumed he was hearing things, after all, there wasn’t a tree around for what had to be miles. He carried on, taking the occasional swig from his bottle to dull the pain in his leg. Ahead, around a small curve in the road, he saw headlights, and as the car rounded the corner, he caught a silhouette of what seemed like that dog he had evidently succeeded in not hitting with his truck. Then it was gone. The small sedan gained on him, getting closer and closer, the high beams blinding to the eyes, and before Jack even had a chance to wave, it was gone. Far behind him now, and going the wrong way anyway. “Good riddance”. He kept limping. A sharp pain shot through Jack’s right arm, and a loud, vicious growl was all he could hear. At first he thought maybe he tripped on a rock and fell over scraping his arm against that gravel, but that wouldn’t have explained the growling, he suddenly had a suspicion that the dog he had deliberately not hit with his truck, was in fact, a coyote, and that it must be the very thing attempting to make a meal out of his arm. Feeling weak, he broke free of the animal’s jaws and backed away slowly, it followed towards him. Slowly, Jack bent down, and with his left hand, threw a rock at the animal. He missed. As he was about to try this again, the animal suddenly appeared distracted, and hurried away. “Yeah, that ought to teach ya”. He clutched his upper arm. “Damn. What a waste.” He poured a small amount of whiskey on the bite marks, hoping to disinfect them. He continued limping toward home. Stopping for a short rest, Jack sat. Astonished that the sun had yet to come up. It certainly felt like he’d been walking long enough since sunset to warrant a sunrise. He thought he heard footsteps. “HELLO?”, he shouted. No response. Instead a pain similar to that in his arm surrounded the wound from the glass of his truck, and he felt himself being moved. He was already downed, there was nothing for him to grab, onto. Panicking, and clawing around for anything, he smashed his bottle of whiskey on the ground, and violently slashed it around hoping to cut anything around him that might be responsible for his movement. The makeshift blade couldn’t find anything. He heard a yelp, immediately followed by a growl, a sharp pain on his neck. Then nothing. A dull ache filled Jack’s body. He was suspended from the seat of his car, which was, by what he assumed was the morning light, upside down in a ditch, somewhere in west Texas. He turned to the passenger seat, and on the ceiling above was his bottle of bourbon, completely smashed. It had not survived the crash. With a groan, Jack pulled through the pain of his bruises, and unbuckled himself from the driver's seat of the pickup. With a thud, he fell. This time, he didn’t get up.