Beneath a Smiling Sun Read online

light. It was thundering and lightning pretty bad that night, guess I needed that shock to wake me up. I decided to turn the radio on, but I couldn't pick up a single station. Must've been the weather, I thought, but that didn't really make any sense. Things sometimes come in clearer during a storm, unless all you had was an AM radio like my old car had. . .

  I. . .

  Well, I turned the static off, and drove and on an' on.. After a while I began to wonder why I hadn't seen another set of headlights in so long. I mean, after about an hour and a half or so on that stretch of road, I would've been bound to see something, right? And while I was thinking about it, shouldn't I have been through a least one dinky little town by then?

  I slapped my forehead with a loud whacking smack when it finally occurred to me what had most likely happened. My sleep-driving ass must've turned off on some side road while I was in and out of dozing and crying and raging. I remember my heart hammering with pain, trying to choke me to death. Wasn't like it was the first time I'd ever took a wrong turn for lack of attention. But this was a familiar road!

  I told myself, as I had before, to just keep on driving. I'd eventually find my way to my destination, as I'd always done before. Just had to keep driving and driving till I found something familiar.

  The road was an awfully straight one, with an unending line of trees and power lines...was that another set of headlights ahead of me? Finally. I was beginning to think that maybe I'd crossed over into the Twilight Zone or some shit. I was always imagining things like that, especially on a dark road at night on a lonely drive. Nothing else to do but let the old imagination soar, anywhere, everywhere, anything. Took my mind off of my reality at the time.

  The approaching lights grew closer, but there was something not quite right about it all. My imagination, right? Well, this other car was going a lot slower than I was. When I got close enough to see why, a knot of dread balled up its fist tight around my heart, then let go and spread its fingers into every inch and crevice of me.

  The smashed car was a black charred smoking ruin. The wheels were ragged melted peelings, and the driver was a crispy fried skeleton, with bits of roasted flesh still clinging to its bones. And I swear that son-of-a-bitch smiled at me, if that were possible anymore, and the lousy motherfucker glared at me from burnt-out sockets as he flipped me off.

  I dug my heel into my brakes, laying a thick layer of tread on the road behind me with an ear splitting screech. I turned around to look again, but that damned car was gone. Just -- gone. Just like that. I sucked in a big lung full of air, let it out real slow, and slowly eased my foot back down on the gas pedal.

  I kept on driving, for hours it seemed, on that mostly straight road of endless pine and telephone pole. By the time the rain eased up in the predawn hour, I hadn't yet passed one single other vehicle other than skeletal boy, but it really didn't bother me. I didn't really care. My shoulders ached. My blood ran cold. My grief consumed me.

  When the ole clunker began to spit and sputter, and rattle the tire jack and tools around in the trunk, I wasn't surprised, or really even concerned. I mean, how many hours had it been since I'd stopped to fuel up? Did I see one single gas station on that lonely road? One single solitary building?

  My car was dead save for the power of its battery. The smell of the air as I sat on the hood for awhile was of rain and fresh earth, of blooming flowers, and of gasoline and burnt oil. A crack of the sun had just begun to spread its light from a horizon of distant gray hills, to bathe the trees in pale luminescent light, and to touch the bottoms of the breaking storm clouds with a hint of shimmery gold.

  Agony tore in my chest, and I saw again the smiling face of my dear departed wife. I fell to the asphalt and cried. That's when I heard the voices.

  "Poor guy," said a sympathetic voice.

  "I know," said another. "I'm glad his poor mother can't see him now."

  "Me too," said a third voice. "It would break her heart."

  Hearing this, a dark feeling of dread crept its way into my heart, and I slowly rose to my feet. Every nerve was alive and flooded with adrenaline, and I felt like screaming. It was the kind of feeling you get when you're in one of those dreams where you can't move, and you can hear a terrible something getting closer and closer. I don't think I even breathed for a moment, and once I was standing, I'm sure I didn't move a muscle, except for my tightly-clenched, twitching jaws.

  "We're scarin' the poor boy," said the first voice with concern.

  "Aw hell, he just doesn't know who it is yet. I'd be on my guard too if I were stranded in the middle of nowhere with strange voices talkin' about my mother," said the second voice.

  "Well, lets quit hidin' here in the bushes starin' at 'im and go and introduce ourselves. Won't he be surprised," said the third. That's when they stepped out into the road in front of me.

  I screamed like a horde of the Hounds of Hell were about to jump me after threatening to rip out my ball sack and stuff it up my ass, and bolted for the car door. In my panicked state I tried again and again to start the car. Being obviously unsuccessful, I locked all the doors and checked to make sure all the windows were rolled up. About a minute or so passed, and I'd already started feeling stupid and called myself a dumbass when the first red hat peeked over the rim of the hood. It was followed by little hands and other red hats, and grunts and curses against climbin' and big people freakin' out like little bitches.

  The first little creature that made it to the hood fished inside the inner pocket of his brown wool coat for his long stemmed wooden pipe, and his shiny silver gnome-sized Zippo. I assumed the pipe was already full, as he lit it with a few strong puffs, the smoke billowing blue. He returned the lighter to his pocket, stepped to the windshield directly in front of me to look me in the eye, and tapped his curly pipe against the glass. He had a white beard without a mustache, which he scratched in with his other hand. The others stood back aways, staring. He waited until I became annoyed at his tapping -- he saw it in my snarl of contempt, maybe -- before he spoke. He smiled.

  "So what kind of greeting is this for old friends, Daron? You run from us and lock yourself away in that blue metal dragon of yours?" His was the first voice I'd heard, baritone. "This is what you once wished for, isn't it? For the three of us to get up and walk around and amaze you with the unreality of it all, back when you was still single and livin' with yer folks, lonely, always afraid that one day you were gonna wake up mad as a loon, with no hope of yer sanity ever returnin'? Well?"

  "Yeah, here we are," said the second voice, the jolly high pitched one belonging to the plumpest of the three little men. "Are you sue-prized? Are you Ah-stoun-ded?" He laughed a merry little laugh, and pulled at his curly mustache. "I'm Billy. That's Bobby," he pointed to the gnome to his left, "and that's Dunderhead." He pointed to the gnome in my face.

  "Blunderboy," said the third gnome in his deep grumbly voice.

  "Kiss my blubber!" the gnome in front of me said, kissing his hand and slapping his backside with it. "I'm Jerome. Jerome the gnome, of the land of loam I call home. Pleased to meet ya. Now are you commin' out of that thing or are we gonna hafta come in there and beat yer ass and drag you out of it?"

  I laughed a quiet little mad cackle, bashed my head into the door window next me, cracking it, and began to bash and flail and beat myself around on everything within reach. I kicked at the windshield, and the gnome Billy said, "Looks like he's gonna beat his own ass for us."

  "Ouch!" clipped Bobby. "That looks like it had to really-ow-ouchie, oh jeeze, maybe the boy really has lost his sheep, and I don't think he'll ever. . . Well, now he seems to 'ave run out of steam. You alright in there young man?"

  I opened the door and fell shoulder-first to the road, and lay there bleeding and stinking of unbathed sweat. The gnomes jumped from the hood to come stand around me, and after a bit of struggling, managed to turn me onto my back, so they could glare down at me, and me at them.

  "We couldn't 'ave beat yer ass better, Daron," growled
Bobby, who pulled out and lit his own pipe.

  "Looks like he's gonna need some medical attention," said Billy to Jerome with concern, then he turned back to look down on me. "Can ya walk?"

  "Ask 'im if he's finished whippin' up on hisself," said Jerome with contempt.

  "You ask 'im," said Billy.

  "Yeah," said Bobby.

  "Well are ya?" Jerome asked, smoke floating up around his head in a thick cloud.

  "I guess so," I said. "I think I got it all out of my system. That's been comin' for awhile, I think."

  "Well that's good to hear," said Jerome, replacing his contempt with a happy smile.

  "At least he speaks," said Bobby with a delighted smirk. "Was beginnin' to wonder if you still knew how."

  "Yeah, maybe you'd went too mad to speak or somethin' like that," said Billy, following with a jolly chuckle.

  "Oh, I'm mad. Don't doubt that in the least," I said, rising to a sitting position. "You guys bein' here and me conversin' with ya pretty much confirms that."

  "Oh, don't say things like that," said Jerome. "We're as real as you are!"

  "That helps," I said with clipped sarcasm.

  "Do we not bleed?" asked Bobby.

  "Do we not die?" asked Billy.

  "Do we not bathe with soap on a rope?" asked Jerome.

  "Do we bathe?" asked Billy, confused.

  "We bathe?" asked Bobby, sniffing his armpits,