On a late June day Eric Paxton found himself a sense of self-preservation and an inexplicable love of life away from drinking himself to death, or perhaps in the spirit of saving money to feed to his car and apartment, even while dead, find a more cost-effective means of suicide.
The image allowed him a bitter smile and a laugh. His friends said he was melodramatic. He admitted to himself that they were right even though they were enthusiastic optimists, able to agree with their jobs, their cars, their love lives. Then there were the acquaintances on the other side of the coin whom either called him a disgrace to pessimists and depressives everywhere or said he was in denial about the true sum of his life, be it good or bad. They too somehow managed to agree with more in their lives than he did.
Eric's smile faltered as he reconsidered his reasons for staying alive and wondered if he really did love life. No, he reminded himself, he didn't necessarily love his life. That was right. He loved the life he wanted, not the one he had. As he walked to the bus stop he went through the mental list once again. Get the car fixed. Pay off the student loans. Get a better job.
And find a new girlfriend. The latest girl he had been dating had said he didn't have enough passion for life and he had not been able to argue. But he was stuck, bound by a need to make money for the things that made it easier for him to be in situations that allowed him to make money. That the irony was not lost on him did not make the breakup any easier.
His phone rang, interrupting dark reverie. No, not his phone, the company's phone; a leash and collar for others, both below and above him, to hold from time to time. Just five minutes before it was his mechanic's turn to give it a yank and pull him back to Earth.
Finally out of work for a day, and on time too, he had been looking forward to a nice quiet walk to the bus stop and a relaxing evening at home knowing he'd not have to pick up his car until Friday when there was time to spare in the late afternoon. But then the mechanic had called and said it'd take a week longer while they ordered a more expensive part, which would, of course, involve more expensive labor. It was fitting news for the middle of the week.
And now, with this new call, more. Someone at work had typed in an order wrong and a mistake had propagated. Only now that the thirty computers were packaged, wrapped, and sitting in the truck did someone discover that they had fitted each with double the hard drive space but half the RAM. The delivery driver was getting impatient (he too just wanted to go home) and hands were short as the majority of the assemblers in the warehouse were on their way home. That left the few the company had shackled with cell phones to come back. Right now that amounted to one assistant manager, Eric, to come in and tell the driver to go home. He had thought assembling computers would be fun.
He turned around, squinting anew as the sun went from reflecting off of the white industrial buildings and windshields to shining in his eyes. A drop of sweat broke from his hairline and rolled into his eye, stinging. To top it off, he remembered that it wasn't quite the end of the week.
"Shit. Tuesday!"
Then another thing, something greater, and more painful than the realization that there were three, not two, days between now and the weekend.
If only...
He shook his head once, hard. These were just a fiction: heavenly beings that could make even a call back to work five minutes after leaving it on a Tuesday afternoon in low 90-degree weather with the sun in one's face seem much less... bothersome, a mere quirk of life. An angelic face looking up at him asking if there was anything she could do to help, or telling him his devotion to his chosen line of work was admirable, or...
Again he shook himself. How had he gotten these damned romantic ideas? One minute he had been slogging along, without much purpose, yet not wanting for anything necessary for his survival, and then the next moment, dreams or fantasies of something more, something unreal. Beyond his reach. Worse was that he could almost pinpoint the moment when it started, but not why.
Just after his car had broken down he had made his way to the nearest bus stop of the route that would take him home. On the way a bookstore, a chance to get out of the heat and maybe find something entertaining or relaxing to read. He had followed a routine path through the store, first browsing through the computer magazines for updates on hardware and empty promises to himself to upgrade his own computer after the next paycheck not decimated by his car. Then a halfhearted stroll through the self-help section, turned off by the yellow and black-jacketed books, to 'For Dummies', popular in their condescension. Then science-fiction and fantasy, and finally comics, a joy from his childhood.
With the American comics were manga, which in these days he found more enjoyable than the comics. In the character's exaggerated facial features he could see emotions he could identify with more easily than the visages contorted with rage or sadness he might find in western styles. It was, he thought, a safer indulgence than vivid prose or artwork, and just too fantastic to be pulled into.
There had been a girl there that day. She had stopped him as he had turned to leave, making an observation about Japansese comics that mirrored his own thoughts. More interested in going home than socializing, Eric had lingered anyway. Whether it was because she was attractive or had seemingly read his mind, he could not remember. She had offered to by him an iced coffee, he had agreed, and if the memory wasn't hazy enough, they had talked about something for an hour or two.
Then he had gone home, to a dinner of reheated pizza, a shower, and then bed. He rose the next morning with the same feeling as waking from a very good dream, disappointment. Remembering where he had been the night before he had vowed to himself never to browse the comic section again.
"Maybe I need the Self-Help for Idiots after all," he had said to the mirror. Both confirming and denying his assertion, the sudden mental image of a beautiful face emerging from the mirror with a voice of hope and faith started him on a long day of half-remembered pieces of a fiction he could not be sure he ever read.
The dreams came again.
Now, days later, he was convinced it had been one of the manga, perhaps one the girl had introduced during their apparently forgettable conversation. He resolved to find it on his way home, when he finally got to go home. The delay would mean little in an already shot day.
The phone rang again. The people at work wanted to know where he was. Eric looked up and saw that he had passed the company building and was heading toward another half a block away as though it were the one he needed to be at.
"I'll be there in a few minutes," he said into the phone before disconnecting. Still he went toward the other building, walking in the street now, almost oblivious to the sound of a car behind him as it approached at, from the sound, an appreciable speed. It pulled up beside him and stopped.
"Get in," a female voice said.
"Huh?" Eric was growing more interested in the other building the closer he got. It seemed to have a heat mirage in front of part of it, on the north corner, near the roofline.
"Eric Paxton, get in the car."
"No. I have to get back to work."
"No. You have to get in the car."
He glanced at the speaker. She seemed to be leaning partway over the passenger seat of the dented sedan, its paint job faded, scratched, and rusted in spots. He took in the unusual color of her hair, blue, the marks on her face, her plain dress: a tank top and khakis, but nothing else before the building took his attention back. As he watched this new fascination the mirage seemed to move down the face of the building, pausing above the ground.
"Get in the car. Now."
Her voice was different now in ways he could not understand. What grabbed his attention was that it now seemed like a good idea to get in the car whereas before he had been anything but interested. He took a sideways step toward it, his eyes still on the mirage, which now seemed to be on the ground, sliding low on the parking lot before the building, slipping around cars. He wanted to see what it was.
"Eric Paxton. Get in this car. Immediately." That indefinable quality was stronger.
Eric found that he wanted to get in the car as much as he wanted to get to the parking lot, no now the street. The mirage was on the road now, coming fast.
He lost all interest in both the car and mirage when something clamped down on his arm and pulled him hard into the car, rapping his head against the frame. Recovering, he had the presence of mind to pull his right leg into the car as it lurched backward. As soon as his foot was in, the woman tapped the breaks and the door's inertia slammed it shut. Then they were racing backward again.
"Put on your seatbelt."
There was no compelling quality this time. There didn't need to be. Eric had no reason to trust the driving skill of a person that went around yanking people off the streets and speeding around in reverse as though it were the only way she knew how to drive. He was buckled in within a second.
"Hold on."
"What?"
The car lurched as the woman put it in a hard right turn. Eric's restraints kept him from being thrown into his abductor's lap. As he reached to his right for something to grab onto to steady himself, he chanced a look out his window, back the way they had come. By the time he spotted the mirage again, they were out of the turn.
The visual distortion was cutting across the corner they had just rounded, where a vacant lot, covered in dead weeds, stood in place of another warehouse. The weeds rustled and parted in the thing's path.
"Um..." he said.
"I know."
He glanced at the woman and saw her concentrating on the road behind them. The glance turned into a stare. Before he had only seen the dots on her forehead. Now he noticed one high on each cheek, below the outside corners of her eyes. As he finally looked away to see if the mirage-thing was any closer he realized that he had seen the woman before.
It was closer. His interest in it fled.
"Turn around," he said "You can't go any faster than this."
"Not here. The road is too rough. We'll abrade the tires and lose too much speed. The surface is smoother on the bridge."
Eric looked behind them. The bridge over the dry wash was half a block away. It was indeed smoother; he had driven over it hundreds of times and always the grinding scratch of tires and gritty asphalt gave way to a low hiss. He swore softly when he saw the opposing traffic.
"It is not in their interests to stay in my way," the woman said.
The constant scratching of gritty asphalt and rubber softened, vanished. Even with a smoother surface he wondered how they could turn without losing speed. Then images from movies came to mind, crazy maneuvers using the emergency brake to turn the vehicle 180 degrees. People had to train for that sort of thing.
"Wait! You've done this before?" His voice came fast, almost panicked. Looking at her again he saw her a smirk play on her lips.
"I have not operated a car before today."
Before Eric could so much as open his mouth in terror, her hand dropped out of sight and something clanked. The car lurched, and he felt himself crushed against his door. Tires squealed and smoked, horns blared, and the world spun in what seemed like hundreds of revolutions. Despite the dangers of being in an out-of-control two-ton mass of metal, what Eric feared the most was not that they'd roll, or that they'd slam into another car, but that he would see that shimmering, that mirage that could part grass before it, lurch out of the dizzying void and onto the hood. Then there was another lurch and they were moving straight, forward now in the direction they'd been heading.
Heart racing from confused terror, he asked, "What is it?" He looked over his shoulder but could not find the shimmer. "Where is it?"
"To the left. It means to attack when we turn to head into the city."
They were nearing the intersection of the road and the highway. A left turn led into Santa Clarita. A right led to Ventura, some forty miles away. The woman pulled into the left lane and started signaling.
"What are you...?"
A glance silenced him. On the verge of condescension it spoke volumes of impatience and something else, something he saw flicker across her deep blue eyes. He had to look away.
She made another sharp turn, though with far less g's than the last. It was to the right, not the left. More horns complained.
"Okay," he said, understanding. "It was watching us."
"Correct." The woman accelerated. Eric watched the needle of the speedometer climb, reach its zenith and fall again as they moved even faster.
"We're going to get pulled over."
"We require a lead of approximately ten miles before it will begin to lose the trail."
"Great... tell that to the cops."
"Law enforcement does not concern me."
"Yeah... maybe if you're just speeding," Eric said. "They take kidnapping a bit more seriously." He looked at her again, tried to glare. He was angry enough. He had enough problems without making them worse by this unscheduled side trip that would last for God knew how long. It wouldn't be a quick trip to the beach; not with the lengths this stranger had gone to get him and take him away.
The phone rang. He fumbled with it getting it out of the clip at his belt. The woman surprised him by taking it from his hand and crushing it as though its casing were cardboard. The feat of strength was lost on him.
"What the hell? That's my phone! Now I can't even begin to—pull over, I have to make a call and see if I still have a job."
"No."
He stared.
"Don't tell me no," he said, low, trying to sound as angry as he felt. "I have responsibility to be there when they call."
"Your responsibility to stay alive supercedes that."
"Yeah, fine. Can't feed myself without a job."
"Starvation is the least of your concerns if you go back." The woman looked as though she too was angry, her impatience transformed.
"What's that supposed to mean?" He looked at the speedometer. His persistence was working, he thought. Their speed was falling.
The woman evidently picked up on his thought and the needle climbed again.
"It would seem it has lost your trail already. Or has left it to feed."
Nonsense. First a kidnapping, then gibberish. Eric raised his voice.
"What? What stopped to feed, huh?"
"Something unfriendly. Something you forget so easily though you saw it with your own eyes."
"A mirage. I saw a mirage!"
The woman glanced at him. "Definitely lost the trail. That was too easy." She said the last with no suspicion in her tone. She said it like it angered her.
Eric shook his head. Nothing about the past ten minutes seemed any more worrisome than two facts. One, he was being kidnapped. Two, he was going to lose his job despite the circumstances. He was sure of it.
"I've had enough. Pull over now."
"I can't do that."
"Fine." Eric reached for the door latch. He was halted by a hand on his arm. One experimental tug was enough to tell him that he might as well be trying to pull his hand free from a chain thick enough to restrain an elephant.
"You are difficult," the woman said. Then she said something else. It made his mind slip away to somewhere dark and quiet. As he descended, he barely had time to realize that what the woman uttered was more of a screech than words, vaguely electronic sounding, a rapid static of tones that he might have found unbearable were it not for the sleep.