Another Girl

By J.S. McInroy

Mr. McInroy claims to be familiar with various addictions, Norse goddesses on motorcycles, and the allure of each. He adamantly asserts that the divine is always with us, whether riding a chariot across the sky, hanging from a cross, or driving the back roads of America in a Dodge Charger Hellcat. His title is stolen from a Stones lyric, his desert land from his novel Army Girl as well as a forthcoming and as yet untitled book which continues with some of the same themes and characters.

This short story includes an exceprt from J.S. McInroy's forth coming book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Slate Run Publishing
• Release date: May 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513061603

Book preview

****

Another Girl

The mileage turns one eleven. The diamondblack Hellcat RT slips around the tight righthand curve as efficiently as ever it might have were Junior Johnson or Number 3 at the wheel. For an old man Dad still has his mojo. Half a second ahead stands a forlorn hiker in the dew damp morning. No higher than his right hip his thumb juts out.

Father eases the gas a bit. Ever the hopeful child, the Son asks, We gonna stop fer ‘im?

No, Father replies. He’s not waiting for us. And please, if it’s not too much trouble, can the NASCAR accent. We’re not from South Carolina. This is way north of there.

Jes feels raaght, Son drawls. Anaways, wha not? We’ve picked up wos’n thisun on jes a whim, and this guy looks ‘bout as miserablez y’all kin git.

Want to find yourself out there beside him? Your last little adventure of the kind didn’t end so well. At least as I remember. This one’s not in any kind of good place. But he’s exactly where he needs to be. Just like you were.

By this time the Dodge is a mile down the road, and only the memory of the hiker remains between them.

He looks unhappy, sighs the Son.

And so he is, asserts Father. But so what? Jeremy Bentham was an idiot. Happiness is for fools, and unless old Jer was a cynic of my own magnitude, his advocacy of such brands him as the greatest fool of all. Without pain, pleasure is impossible and vice versa. Thus it may be asserted that, for some at least, the sole purpose of pleasure is to make possible the experience of pain, while the pain then becomes the source of that human being’s awareness of pleasure, which, in turn....

Enough, groans the Son. What’s this heap got fer music?

*****

She’s beautiful, Dean exclaims, his left leg beginning to stiffen, his shorter limb to ache just a bit. The object of his wounded enchantment could only be the Norse Sjofn arriving on a Japanese motorcycle. The ride is black as are her jacket and full-face helmet. Her legs are Levi blue. The bike purrs into a uey. The goddess nods.

Dean’s companion, Kenny Babbs, lifts a casual hand. Siri, he exclaims and with one word claims the vision as his own.

It must be the oxy. Dean is fully aware of himself. Of his obvious physical and social defects. But something calls. From within? From without? Her. The glacier shudders. A calf is born. The black occlusion of her helmet slips away. From it falls the golden sunshine of endless summers in the park. No park particular. No time. Golden Gate happened too many lives ago.

Dean’s leg really aches. His broken wrist too. His butt.

The woman, the supernatural being of time before memory’s inception, is beside him. Between him and Babbs. Her essence slips and curls itself somniferus within them.

Hey, Kenny, she breathes through ivory teeth. Red lips bloody as the northern sun. Good to see ya. Turning to Dean, looking straight into him with eyes of polar blaze. White they are as only the bluest of blue eyes can be. Unwavering, she asks behind her, Who’s yer friend?

Babbs, Dean.

Dean’s own eyes are brown, this day wound about with crimson vines, rimmed in circles of cartoon red. His teeth, crooked as her gaze is straight, are also brown. Darker even than his eyes.

Crack.

No more.

Straight as time’s arrow he is. Doesn’t even drink. His mother is suggesting implants. She said to wait three years. It’s been two and a half. Maybe....

"Seem to be banged up