Fluttershy and the trucker

by waste

The girl on the road

The road was dark. Shreds of light fell from the trucks headlights. The driver hurls out the butt of a cigarette. A leaking echo of reddened ash tumbling on the tarmac. Some people would describe the night as lonely, maybe a frail kind of solitude. But the driver considered it a good night.

Nothing but heavy hands on a heavy vehicle. His arms are the shape of tree trunks then relaxed on the steering wheel. An unknown song filtered out of the radio, it creased itself into the calm air. A tarnished smile is scraped on to his face. A shy, secluded smile that can fade into his beard.

As mentioned before he has tree trunk arms, but he also has a thick set head filled with watery blue eyes. Blackened strands of brown occupy his head, a riot of it trails down either side of his face, tapers into a beard on his jaw. The smell of cut out ash with withered air freshener forms dense edges on him.

You may have seen him in the pokey diner among the highway. You may have caught him in those monstrously large truck stops among the interstate. Might have seen him in the trucks that ride the tarmac from state to state. He travels through this land in puffed out jackets, worn down boots and scrunched up apathy. Like him all his possessions have been exposed to the long night rides or lands of premature morning light.

Right now the only light comes from the truck’s high beam. The light curls itself around the thickly cut darkness. He drives through a forest of night, rain and trees. A sliver of road on the left of him, then the fence, then the forest. A mist of water and leaves falling from the tree’s hands.

He would chew another handful of jerky. Smokey meaty things taken from the glove box. A logo is cut out of purple and burnt blue on the side of his truck. The same logo is seen in a multitude of ball point pens he keeps in the cabin.

He works for a well-paying shipping company that handles domestic trading between the many northern states in America. His measured stare and calm commitment also won him a few contracts with a commonwealth company that shipped in Australia, Canada and England. But the roads there were alien tracts of narrow stone compared to the open empty highways of home.

So he stays mostly in America. Mostly alone. Everything seems different on these unrevealed worlds. Dusty clinical truck stops with their strange pay showers and clumped food. The most he ever gave fellow truckers he recognised was a stale nod or a colourless hello. Most would’ve of called him boring if it wasn’t for something in his watery eyes. A deep undercurrent of intensity and patience. Maybe kindness.

The dreary dreamy creation dressed in tired clothes and enigma.

He walked in front facing confident lopes and his shoulders swinging. He watched queues and other unavoidable human obstacles with disdain. He talks little. To the few people he meets regularly he seemed to be a speculation, a kind of wispy stolidly formed man. A seldom seen figure stalking along the all night diners.

Why was he thought of? Well for starters there was the open mystery of his age. The way he stood erect and straightened out in his corroded clothes two decades too old. His solid figure and filled muscles make some think of a young man, but his tethered beard and his dragging silence tell of a much older creature, maybe something in its early thirties.

Another reason he’s thought of is, well, in a severe and silent kind of way he can appear handsome. Sometimes the light can catch his eyes differently and instead of a watered down blue it can appear the pure kind. Sometimes he would smile and sometimes he would shave and he could seem to be a tall stranger with pink shaved flesh and eager eyes. All his worry lines could be laugh lines in these strange short moments. Sometimes his rarely seen grin would be pasted to his mouth as more of a question then anything else.

Then there is the intrigue of his origins. Where did he come from? Some windy abandoned trailer in the north? A squealing child from the fields of the south? A child raised on sharp sunlight and full American food? More likely he just appeared on the road a full man.

Maybe people like him simply come into being on the blurry roads.

Well it’s a lot easier for him to believe this now because out of that choking night a girl stepped on to the road.

She walks as if conjured from that darkness we all know. Pink haired and tented in a yellow dress her legs would leak into frail steps. Her paper limbs fold flimsily into the torrent of night and fallen leaves. Her legs collapsed into weakness as if she’s never used legs.

Well she’s never used human legs.

He body is a cough of flesh and bone, more slender then full. If you could see her you’d know you could run hands down her featureless flesh and feel pokey bones through them. Her hair billows around her like a weightless idea. Her muscles sleep on her bones. She’s so skinny you could weep.

Her hopelessly wiry arms are clenched tightly into her body. A tightly held stick body releasing a pinched lungful of hot air. The whole of her is shuddering and shaking. In the truck’s headlight she’s too delicate, too innocent and too confusing.

He pulls up beside her, the massive engine hewing out blocks of smoke and noise. He has to turn left a little because she’s paralysed in the spilling light. She still doesn’t move when he opens the cab door and his feet hit the ground. The angry crunch of boots striking tarmac. Then the dripping silence.

They both share in the stillness. Occasionally, all of it would be perforated by the wind and the smell of burning gasoline. Her pink hair drifting.

He coughs several times expecting something. What was he expecting? He expected an attenuated hello or a squirming plea for help. He only received the weight of both her eyes on him. Her stare is crushing, a hastily made mess of surprise, fear and curiosity. Somewhere far away the soggy hands of rain stamp out dryness.

It took an absurd handful of seconds before either one spoke.

“It’s cold. It’s raining”

He hands her these words and yet she still stares. But soon she relents as well.

“Hi”

Her voice scraped into drifted shavings of sound. Hoarse. So Faded.

“Hello”

His hello dumped in a haggard stack. Deep. A little harsh.

The strange silent girl pieces together a scattered grimace, hidden behind falls of her pink hair. An intricate and nervous creature. A ridiculous and ethereal girl. Standing there with the cold, the light and fascination pasted to her alabaster skin. Pale and shuddering. Her two breasts hardened into blooms of dense red flesh. The cold obviously.

The wet reveals parts of her under the slightly transparent dress. He’s too embarrassed to feel lust.

“Wait a second. I’ll get you a coat”

In the end he quickly took a couple of brittle steps to his truck. He takes a spare coat from the cabin. Rusty coloured, with a forgotten logo stencilled on it. Warily he slowly gives her the coat. Shyly she takes it.

They back off from one another quickly and in the nature of all recluses they avoid looking at the other’s eyes.

The coat is held in her hands for a moment. Then clumsily she manages to mangle her arms into the coat. The coat is so large she’s drowning in it. She’s held the overflowing sleeves to her face and her eyes peep over them.

He looks at his feet. Fiddles with the corners in his pocket. After an effort he looks her in the eyes. Soon reticent words follow.

“I wonder what you’re doing here in the night. In the rain and the wind.”
“I think I’m lost”

The wind is rising now, in a drunken fist fight it lifts leaves and dust, heaves at the sleepy drops of rain. Her voice is lost in the midst of it. A lot like her.

“It’s too cold to be lost this time of year. You could get in trouble”
“Yes”
“Being lost is bad I guess”
“Yeah”
“I think you’re a little shocked”
“Yes”

Unknowingly, they have both taken concealed steps away from the other. If one or the other would move too quickly they would both recoil. Both started mumbling into their lips. He wouldn’t admit it, but an unknown fear of this girl overcame him. A thudding humming fear of the beautiful girl dressed in light. He can’t explain it but he’s a little scared of her. A little intimidated.

He would’ve run away too if she didn’t walk to the fence separating the road and the forest. Lift her scraggily body and sit on the fence. Her miniature arms to the side of her and her coat hanger legs below her. She might not be pleading but her body is, pleading for food. For warmth. For the kindness of strangers. Her face so fierce in its shyness. The deep humming green behind the piercing blue of her eyes. The diminished whisper of a person wrapped in his coat.

He also remembered his own desperate days moving with a starving grimace of a body, always cold and always hungry. She looked like a throwaway to those wasted days and violent nights.

Predictably, His heart softened a little for her.

“I remember running away from home. I remember just being in a daze for a while.”
“I’m really far from home”
“I’ve been there before”
“Have you?”
“Yeah I’m in the same situation”
“Oh”
“I’m really far from home”
“Like me then”
“Yeah”

But she didn’t run from home. Rather, she has been clothed in the bones and skin of a human female, and then lost for half a week in this anonymous forest. Starvation has taken gleeful bites out of her figure. She lacks both the conviction and the bravery to tell the alien this.

Yet despite his false assumption of her, when he sits next to her on the fence a timid understanding is formed between the two. In a roundabout way he understands those few days where she had to sleep where she could. Sleep in ditches in ashy dirt. Stare at her alien body in pools of water. Juggle with courage and despair. The homesickness.

They say nothing for the next three minutes. They don’t look at each other for all of it. Mostly they breathe in the view of the long road and the forest. Slowly the night pales into a colder dark. He shifts off the fence and lands on his boots.

“I’ll drop us off by a diner. Get something to eat. Then we’ll part ways”

What he said was a statement but there was a question wrapped inside of it. A tentative proposal. The offer for a little food and quiet company. It looks like she needs it.

“Come on”

She lands unsteadily. Weightlessly. She could pale into the night, she could be swallowed quickly and quietly and he wouldn’t even notice. She could be a late night hallucination. She looked like one.

She struggles with each step to the truck. The girl’s hunger is so massive she has a hard time hauling it with her. The unfairness of it stirs anger in him.

“My names Henry”
“Fluttershy”
“Strange name”

She smelt of strange flowers and wet fur. He had to help her into the cab. Their touch was as non-committal and brief as their conversation.