DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
The two men drove long into the night because the dawn was their destination.
“Almost there,” Holden said, who drove.
“Where?” Tom said, who rode beside him.
“Where we need to be.”
“We don’t have to be anywhere. I like driving at night.”
“Night’s almost gone. See that?” Holden pointed at the windshield.
Tom looked at it but just saw Holden’s finger with his long sleeve pulled to his knuckles. He stretched it all the time to hide the scales on his skin. Like he was stretching his other sleeve now. Holden thought he was hiding it between his seat and the door, but Tom saw.
“All I see is a window you forgot to wash,” Tom said. The glass was smudged with circular marks that looked like the radial metal pattern Holden had been working on at the shop when Tom had first met him. The light had struck the metal in a way Tom had never seen light strike before. Holden struck him that day.
“It was your turn,” Holden said.
“It was my turn to fill up the tank,” Tom said.
“Doesn’t change the fact that dawn’s coming.”
“I still don’t see it. Look at the time. It’s only 2:30.”
The clock was analog and did read 2:30 with a minute hand that wobbled from the road. It couldn’t make up its mind if it wanted to go to the past or the future by a minute.
“It always says 2:30,” Holden said.
Maybe the clock was broken, but Tom didn’t feel like arguing.
“Can I roll down the window at least?” Tom said.
“I’m cold already,” Holden said. He wore a puffy vest that glimmered when the headlights reflected off the reflectors on the side of the road. Beneath that he wore a hooded sweatshirt. The hood was pulled over his head.
Tom moved closer to him. “Feels all right to me,” he said.
“There’s a draft in the door.”
“I can’t feel anything.”
“I told you. It’s here at the door.”
“You can have my jacket.”
“I don’t want your jacket.”
“Okay.”
Holden turned on the high beams and it hit the fog and painted it bright and gray and solid.
Tom found he wasn’t wearing his seat belt, so he moved back on his side against the door and clasped it on. “You’re going to get us killed,” he said. “I can’t see anything out there.”
“You don’t have to,” Holden said.
“I’m serious. You know what I mean. It will be all for nothing.”
Holden hit the brakes and the car skidded to a stop. A french fry cardboard slid off the dash and fell on the gear shift and swung there. They’d bought it and shared what used to be inside at a burger joint ten miles or so back at a town of fifty people called Two Shores where they’d killed the girl.
“You don’t know what it was for,” Holden said. He hit the french fry cardboard off the gearshift and smashed it with his heel.
“The hell I do. I was the one who did it.”
Holden thought about that squeezing the steering wheel like he was wringing clothes dry. He didn’t notice his sleeves fall back to show his scaly skin.
Tom touched his hand where the scales were.
Holden threw Tom’s hand off the wheel and grabbed him by the collar of his denim jacket. “Don’t you ever touch me.”
Tom looked at Holden and his eyes that were like gems, and he wished he knew something about gems so he could give them a name. He put both of his hands over Holden’s.
Holden’s gem eyes closed and he fell into Tom with his forehead pressed to his chest and he wept. Tom went to put his hand on the back of Holden’s head to pull him closer, but Holden moved back into his seat and then opened his door and got out.
Tom sat in the car until the dome light went off and then he sat there longer. Holden was a shadow outside that was darker than the night, which had become blue. It reminded Tom of the color of Holden’s eyes and he wanted to see them so he got out too.
One of the two shores that had left the town of Two Shores behind crashed and roared beneath a solid sky. Holden paced on the beach pulling at his sleeves. Tom followed Holden’s footprints like he’d seen done in a movie before so it looked like there was only one man. Tom passed Holden to get a better look at the water and there was evidence of two men.
“What are we doing here?” Tom said.
Holden still looked like a shadow ghost. Something that wasn’t his hand extended from his sleeve.
“Stopping for good.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I think you do.” Holden held the gun so Tom could see it.
“All we been through and you want it to go down this way?”
“I do.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Holden pointed the gun at Tom. “Do you believe this?”
“I believe that killed a woman who would have ruined our lives.”
“That’s not all it’s done. Or about to do.”
Tom looked at the ocean and then looked at Holden again. He saw his eyes now and suddenly knew what a blue gem was called.
“I’m sorry I did what I did that got us into this.”
Holden saw gems in Tom’s eyes then. “It was both of us.”
“It was.”
“But it can’t go on.”
“Why not?”
“It just can’t. I’m sorry.”
Holden aimed the gun at Tom and pulled the trigger. It clicked. It clicked again.
“I thought you were different, but I suppose I always knew.” Tom reached in his pocket and pulled out the rounds he had removed from the gun after killing the girl and threw them into the ocean.
Holden watched Tom in the half-light of dawn and Tom watched Holden.
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