|
|
|
|
|
|
|
had been afraid and Cyrus had come away with the feeling that he was what she had been afraid of. In his dream state he had been able to hear her thoughts and she was pleading with someone not to hurt her. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In another dream Cyrus had been trapped between a giant anaconda and something that walked upright like a man but looked like a giant rat with long yellow teeth. Every time he struck one of them, a small piece of himself had torn away until there was nothing left but his head and one arm. When he woke, Cyrus discovered that his body had tried to change and that his claws had ripped the sheets on his side of the bed to shreds. After that, he had been too paranoid to sleep next to Kyna and he had spent the remainder of the night curled up on the chair next to the air conditioner. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
As the Lincoln rolled down the back side of the coastal mountain range, the terrain underwent another drastic change. Dried grasses and stubby trees gave way to flesh-colored boulders and clumps of sagebrush that resembled giant brown cotton balls and sandlots of sand. Between the boulders, the green-striped leaves of Spanish bayonets thrust their needlelike points into the soft underbelly of the blue-white desert sky. And the air really started to cook. The previous day had seemed hot, but now the heat came off the highway in waves of distorted light that made Cyrus ill if he stared at the road too long. If they ran the air conditioner for more than forty-five minutes, the Lincoln's engine would start to overheat and they had to ride with the windows down until the engine cooled. As soon as they cut the air, the inside of the car became a convection oven and sweat collected under their arms and behind their knees and ran in prickly rivers down their bodies. Three hours of this and they were ready to scream. When he couldn't take it anymore, Cyrus stopped for gas and cold drinks at a Shell station in Gila Bend. Kyna took a sponge and a roll of paper towels from the trunk and headed for the ladies' room while he strolled around the front of the station to kick the kinds out of his legs and to make certain that the human pimple in greasy coveralls who worked at the station |
|
|
|
|
|