He parked once again by the grain elevator at the end of the lonely gravel road. The early morning fog hovered over the surrounding fields and reminded him of some dream place inside of a cloud. He’d dreamt of flying only once and in that dream he’d seen lost landscapes hidden inside the clouds as he swooped through them, shadows of places he only half remembered just beyond his grasp. He took a sip of his coffee and looked around. No one as far as the eye could see, as usual.
He turned off the clunky ignition and stepped out of the truck, letting nature’s steady buzz take over. Walking into the field along the ditch he paused again to take in the deceiving emptiness of the place. A crow flew against the wind above him and headed towards the sun. His boots crushed the sleepy dew covered grass beneath them sending tiny bugs scattering about. The dirt below smelled rich with life and looked to be moving by itself. They said anything could grow in these parts. He tried to imagine what the place looked like hundreds of years ago and feel the loneliness of discovering an uninhabited stretch of earth. Far beyond the horizon he heard the hum of the highway.
He walked steadily with his eyes closed for a while trying to stay in a straight line, opening them again when he heard the babble of water.
As he reached the canal he saw the ghostly figure floating in the murky water. Her throat had been slit and she was naked from the waist down, the remnants of her clothes hanging loosely from her frail limbs. He stood above her, paralyzed. She was still tragically beautiful. Her long dark hair flowed in the water like seaweed, so naturally it appeared to have grown there with the rhythms of the water.
“What are you doing back here?” she whispered.
He took a step backwards and almost tripped on himself. He hadn’t seen her mouth move, but had heard the words clearly. He tried to say something but what came out was a questioning grunt from somewhere deep inside his chest.
“You going to stand there and look at me all day?” the woman said, now an irritated moan rather than a whisper, a strangely familiar twinge in her tone.
He still didn’t know whether the woman’s mouth had moved or not when she spoke. He was staring at her pale legs lingering on the water’s surface, noticing the bruises that climbed their way up to her midsection. He suddenly felt very cold, as if he were the one drenched in water.
“Listen, it’s too late. There’s nothing you can do now. Might as well pretend you never met me,” the woman said in a tired voice.
He tried once more to respond but there were no words he could reach.
“Maybe you could tie a rock to my waist, push me underwater?” the woman asked plaintively. “That way no one else will find me…”
He still couldn’t move. His heart was beating in his head now, his entire body trembling with each beat. She wasn’t moving her lips but the words were loud and clear, like she was speaking right into his ears.
He stumbled backwards again and fell onto his back this time, continued to move away slowly dragging himself through the grass without ever looking up from the woman, as though she might leap out of the water and grab him by the foot at any moment if he were to turn around.
Every idyllic nook and cranny he had ever seen in his life, every isolated corner of his world, the places where he’d found himself truly alone, for better or for worse, came galloping through his mind, but now there was a dead woman in every one. He heard their voices crying out, recognized some of them, and before he realized it he was running as fast as he could through the field, away from the canal, barely able to breath, feeling as though he were moving in slow motion no matter how fast he ran.
