Roadkill
Ash Fanglore
Her calves ached and her chest burned, but the ocean mist made it bearable. The road belonged to her now. To her left, a forest of evergreen trees curved with the asphalt, a parallel highway of stoic druids. To her right, the blue-eyed grass waved cheerfully, reminding any travellers to stay where they were, lest they get too reckless and close to the cliff. A few feet beyond the flowers’ warning, and many more feet below, was the ocean. Even from above, she could feel the chill of the waves as they gurgled and roiled against the rocks. The only creatures allowed to trespass the boundary between land and sea were the seals. Every few miles, if the weather was good, she could see a group of them sunning, and she would think about climbing down to tan alongside them. Instead, she kept pedalling the borrowed bike over the next knoll and relishing the fear and speed she felt free-falling down the other side.
Unlike home, where the Blue Ridge Mountain roads could zigzag at any moment and the earth could cause the murder of a casual biker, Nova Scotia had soft hills even a girl who hadn’t biked in years could toil over. The houses were set apart from each other, which was wise since the neighbours didn’t seem keen on socializing. She didn’t mind, though. It was better to be alone with her thoughts and the spirits that lived on the island. They permeated into her head, her hair, and her hands.
As she coasted down the next slope, a pile of bones on the side of the road caught her eye. She meant to pass by–after all, roadkill is in every country and usually stinks the same. Only a few seconds passed before she relented to the impulse of the zephyr, stopped the bike, and walked it back to the deceased.
Why not? she thought. Here, she was free. Nova Scotia had pushed itself into her breast; the least she could do was let it direct her. It ached less that way, like a bandage she’d forgotten was compressing her ribs had finally been loosed. She’d escaped from her family. Her parents couldn’t harangue her, her siblings couldn’t shriek at or around her, she didn’t have to hide in bed with a book to run away anymore. She could just run. For the next two weeks, she was the doll of the island, a play thing to be manipulated at will. She felt totally secure in her decision to submit to the land—it felt like the safest place to be. If God was around, they were living in the tree house in the woods or in the forest of eccentric strangers who had all manners of oddities hanging from every branch: weathered buoys with grotesquely painted faces, sunlight shards of glass blinking in Morse code to one another, turquoise necklaces, voodoo dolls. She had left an offering as well, hung a wooden cross carved by a man she barely knew from church and prayed that Nova Scotia would clutch it and remember her when she’d left.
The bones were bleached clean, only a few ants still fighting for the last strips of skin still sloughing off. It could have been a possum, a raccoon, a fox, a porcupine, a skunk, or even an unknown goblin creature. She stared at the skull for several minutes, said a brief but heartfelt eulogy, then climbed on the bike and let the land lead her wherever it fancied. She was a puppet for foreign fey, and there were only two ways this play could end. They could put her back in a box and abandon her where she came from, or they could be merciful and sing that eerie breeze to lull her off the cliff she couldn’t quite shake from her mind.
Ash Fanglore
Hailing from the Appalachian Mountains and now residing in England, Ash Fanglore is a queer, autistic little freak who wants to write sapphic novels but mostly writes out of body experiences.