She haunted the highway that night like so many nights before.  Her vague apparition absorbed the light around her creating an indent in the air like a night vision mirage.  She reached out; feeling for her husband’s pulse, but none of the cars contained it as they swooped by, often swerving and tumbling to a deathly halt in one of the ditches on either side of the highway.  Mariah thought she could feel tears escaping her eyelids, but she couldn’t be sure.

     In her search to find her husband she often spurred unintentional chaos.  She would watch the cars flip and tumble in bewilderment yet with a surprising lack of remorse.  It was as if her agony was restrained to respond only to the pulse of her missing love.

     “Yeah ok but what about him?”  Mariah asked pointing at a man through the passenger side window.

     “Flannel shirt, slacks, I’d go with NSA,” Mike responded and Mariah’s smile grew wider.

     “And him?”  Mariah asked pointing to an old man with bones protruding at unusual spots through his matching brown checkered outfit.

     “Brown checkers… that’s standard secret service stuff right there,” Mike answered as he pointed at the old man.  The old man looked up with drooping yellow eyes and squinted in confusion at the pointing finger.  Mike stepped down on the gas as the old man’s head followed their speeding car and Mike continued pointing at him.  Mariah howled, like she always did when she found something truly hilarious.

     Mike looked Mariah up and down as she howled, her soft neck tightening and releasing to create the laugh.  The top of her black hair was given a circle of brown by the sunlight aiming through the window.  Mike looked down to the gold band with that glimmering stone on her ring finger.  He was still in disbelief that Mariah, the woman of his dreams, the woman of any man’s dreams, had stuck with him as many years as she had. 

     “Alright Shewolf, we should be there in about ten,” Mike managed to say, his lips quivered as he held back his own, much less flattering laugh.

     “You all of it ri?”  Mariah struggled to say through her fading laughter.

     “Huh?”

     “You ‘membered all of it ri?” 

     “Yeah,” Mike said glancing into his rearview mirror for confirmation.

     “They’re gonna lose it babe!”  Mariah said bouncing in her seat.

     She didn’t remember exactly what had happened.  She remembered Mike yelling.  She remembered flashes and bangs and the sounds of scraping metal.  Then she woke up, after a brief blackout, standing amidst an empty highway.  The world had a subtle tint of blue.  Her sense of smell was gone.  Mariah was lost, and no one would take her home.

     Mike stood there, with the rest of the family, pouring grief onto the lowering coffin of his beloved.  His entire body flexed and surged with his sobbing.  It had all happened on the eve of their third year anniversary, on the way to tell Mariah’s parents the news.  Now, instead of celebrating with her by his side, he was weeping over her grave.  But his grief was too powerful to allow any thoughts to linger or any memories to prosper.  At that moment, all he and spirit could do was weep.

     “Have you ever wondered about the stars?”  Mariah asked.  Mike looked at her dreamy upward gaze through the passenger side window, knowing she was about to embark on one of her bizarre and thoughtful tangents.  These tangents he did more than indulge, he basked in the deepness of her thoughts.

      “Whatd’ya mean?”

      She pointed upwards, “The ones up there.  You know, they died a long time ago, and their light is only now reaching us.”

      “Uhuh…” 

      “Well I just think it’s interesting.  The stars die but the light they create escapes and travels across the universe to reach us.  It’s almost like they’re trying to send us a message,” Mariah said, eyes now glittering with contemplation.  Mike smiled, and rather than interrupt her cosmic train of thought, he sat there in admiration trying to read the reflections in her eyes.

     Inevitably, after Mariah’s eyes were done scattering over the stars, she stared forward in realization of the finite and miniscule impact of human life.  It was her usual cycle when she was deep in thought.  She contemplated the world, then came to questioning her own existence, before Mike had to bring her back.

      “Hey hon’, remember the time Richard got in a fight with that bag boy?”  Mike asked.  He watched Mariah’s face transform from long and contemplative to shrinking with eyes squinting in preparation before she threw her head back and laughed.  As much as Mike tried to resist, he let loose and laughed, snorting and all, right along with her.

      Mike was driving through the town, the route he always took with Mariah.  Somehow when they worked together they could make old and familiar sights fresh and interesting every time.  He watched the people walking by, imagining Mariah next to him asking for his interpretation of each one.  He passed by the ice cream shop, the one Mike took Mariah on their first date, where he dropped a scoop of cookie dough ice cream on his shoe and a bulldog quickly lapped at it and bit at his toes, only pausing to look in confusion at Mariah as she howled.

     Mike drove down Spalding Avenue, the street with every porch pre-prepared with a cranky old couple to shake their canes at him as he drove by pointing at each of them.  He turned the corner with the infamous rope swing lingering much too close to the open road and then the old theater came into full view.  It looked empty as it always did.

      Mike didn’t feel as if he was turning the car himself with each street he traveled.  It was as if his vehicle was guiding him on some kind of theme park tour down multiple memory lanes.

     Her hair was continually blown back by the wind that never seemed to go away.  She traversed down the blue highway which she inexplicably felt she belonged to.  The authorities had closed off the highway, detouring drivers to take back roads.  She was getting closer to the roadblock, or so it seemed.  Yet the wind was growing stronger with each step she took.  Her hair, now painted the mysterious blue, was trying to pull her backwards.

      Mike grew frustrated, so frustrated at the traffic jam that he actually honked his horn, which he almost never did intentionally.  He was anxious to reach the lake before dark hit, and yet he was stuck in a dwindling twilight.  The other drivers around him looked no less frustrated as the line of cars seemed permanently stuck in single-file line down the highway.  It was the only way to get to the lake, and for that reason he had never gone to the lake until then.  It was the highway that took his beloved.  But that night felt like the night to visit the lake, to visit where he and Mariah had first met. 

      Mariah pushed with all her strength against the wind.  The roadblock was near, and beyond it was a line of cars.  She pushed towards them, hoping to see a familiar set of blue eyes amongst the drivers.  They all had blue eyes, painted that way by the strange and windy world, but her love’s eyes had a blue deeper in tone and richer in depth. 

     The wind blew against her like a hurricane, pushing her backwards with determined force.  But after a few more agonizing steps she saw them: a pair of deep blue eyes, drowning in a personal sea of sorrow, looking down at the black underneath his feet.  It was Mike, her love, lost in the drive a thousand others were attempting to make, the drive she interrupted with her unintentionally caused chaos.  Mariah felt what she thought to be tears gathering in her eyes, and they seemed to turn the world a lighter blue.

      Within a few more steps she would reach her missing love.

      Mike sat there, staring into the car floor beneath his feet, trying to prevent the emotional energy of that highway from seeping fully into his heart.  He gripped the steering wheel, each finger counting a different memory in an attempt to drag his thoughts to a different era: but it didn’t work.  The sorrow was rising; it was nearly at his knees.  Soon it would be to his chest, then his throat, until it finally drowned him, like he planned on letting it do so many days soon after the accident. 

      He looked into the rearview mirror and saw it: the corner of the baby calendar peaking above the back seat.  The sorrow was at his neck now, and four of his fingers were no longer gripping the steering wheel.  He looked at the drop off to the left of his car, a ditch he never acknowledged to be deep enough until then. 

      Mike thought of baby Shannon, and how he was sure her eyes would have glimmered with the same stars her mother carried. 

      It was up to his chin now, and two more of his fingers were done counting memories as they drifted off the steering wheel.  His remaining left hand fingers started to pull the steering wheel down, pointing the car towards the drop off to the left.  He felt moisture building in his eyes.

      It was at his lower lip as his foot hovered over the gas pedal.  But at that moment he felt something—a warmth—overcome him and pull him free.  He looked over to the passenger seat that suddenly glowed with a mysterious blue.  His remaining fingers released the last of his lingering memories as he stared into the blue and felt an impossible wind caress his face. 

     “Mariah?”  Mike asked.  The blue in the passenger seat seemed to swirl in some kind of response.  It glittered like crystalline energy.  The wind caressed his face again and Mike let the tears roll freely.

     “I’ll be with you soon baby,” Mike said between sobbing as he caressed the blue energy beside him.

     He pressed down on the gas pedal with the wind encouraging him forward. 

     The night sky was there, wide open and waiting.

Copyright © 2009 by Chris Morey