The Long Ride

by Emily Devenport

Elayne woke up on the driver’s side of her old Honda to see a man who looked just like Tor Johnson in Plan Nine From Outer Space reaching for the handle on the passenger’s side. She screamed and quickly pushed the lock in before he could get to it.

“Don’t touch that!” someone shouted from her side of the car, and she saw her dad through the window, yelling at the Tor look-alike.

“Dad!” She unlocked her own door so her dad could get in and away from the monster. But a tall young man in a suit shoved him aside and yanked her door open, then grabbed her and pulled her out of the car, ignoring her kicks and scratches.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she screamed into his cold, hard face. “Dad!”

Her dad plucked at the young man’s sleeve, ineffectually, until the Tor monster rushed around the car and grabbed him too. Elayne and her dad were dragged across the parking lot toward a ’62 Chevy with a white top and a sky-blue body.

“Stop!” Elayne told the young man. “That monster’s got something in his head! Can’t you see it?” But he didn’t listen; he just continued to drag her through a parking lot full of sixties cars that were in surprisingly good condition (except for some big, chunky models from the fifties that looked kind of dusty and used) toward the sky-blue Chevy that was like something out of George Jetson’s wet dreams. He pulled the back door open and tossed her in.

The monster pushed her dad into the front seat; but it was funny, her dad got behind the steering wheel and started the car up. She gaped at him in horror, realizing that he had something inside his head too, something that was forcing him to drive where he didn’t want to go.

Elayne sat very still and tried to figure things out. They were leaving the parking lot now, and it occurred to her she didn’t know where she was. She had gone to Target for something; it should have been the Target parking lot. But the street was too narrow and the buildings were big and chunky, like in the old part of Phoenix when she was growing up. “Dad,” she said, “what’s happening?”

“Don’t fight them,” he said, his voice hardly sounding like his own. “They’ll hurt you.”

The monster laughed, a strangled sound.

“Knock it off,” said the young man. “No one has to get hurt.”

Elayne tore her eyes away from the monster long enough to study the young man. She decided that he didn’t have something inside his head, and wondered why he was helping the monster, if that was the case. He was studying her, too.

“My name’s Terry Cole,” he said. “What’s yours?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No, I don’t know. Why would I know?”

“You’re the ones who kidnapped us. You ought to know.”

He glanced at her dad, then back at her. “You sure don’t look much like your dad—what was your name again?”

“Elayne West.”

“Elayne.” He looked her over. “How come you dress like a man, Elayne?”

“What?” She was wearing her Lee’s Easy Fit jeans that were supposed to look feminine. And she had on her favorite flannel shirt, all soft and broken-in. Her blond hair was French-braided; it was her attractive-but-casual look. She decided to ignore him for the moment and look at the monster. She shivered as she wondered if the thing in his head could get out and come after her.

He turned around and grinned at her, as if he had read her mind. “We’ll stop for something to eat,” he said.

“Ross—” said her dad, warningly.

“Kal!” snapped the monster. “Now! My cravings!”

Her dad sighed and pulled the car into the parking lot of a liquor store with signs that read “CIGARETTES! CANDY! MAGAZINES!” in the window.

“Watch her,” Elayne’s dad, who was now Kal, told Terry. The young man nodded, lazily. Kal and Ross got out of the car, sparing Elayne one glance over their shoulders, and went into the store.

Now’s my chance, Elayne thought to herself. If I’m going to get away, it has to be now. She sneaked a look at Terry out of the corner of her eyes, then turned to look at him openly when she noticed that he was staring at her. She had seen the look plenty of times in her life. She knew that she was beautiful.

Terry was rather handsome himself with slicked-back brown hair and dark brown eyes. His mouth was cynical, hard in a way that made her think gangster. Only he wasn’t old enough to be totally corrupted. He was maybe twenty-five.

He smiled at her with white teeth. She thought she saw the tip of his tongue slide over the sharp edges. “You’re thinking of running,” he said. “Don’t try it. Don’t make me deck you.”

He turned to a woman who was suddenly sitting between them, an attractive brunette in a sleeveless dress. “You too,” he said. “Just sit tight.”

Elayne blinked at the woman. Had she been in the car all along? She looked out of place in an odd sort of way. Her hair was short and curled around her face, sort of a Marilyn Monroe style. Well, that look was coming back, wasn’t it?

The woman looked at Elayne, her eyes full of terror. She felt the same way Elayne did, that was obvious. Elayne looked back, trying to judge whether the woman would be tough enough to make a break with her. The two of them might be able to overcome Terry, if they could just work together.

Another car pulled in next to theirs on Terry’s side. Elayne glanced at it just as the boys inside looked back at her. She caught the eye of a big young man with long, greased-back hair and a white T-shirt, and a better idea occurred to her.

As she stared at the kid, she let her face go soft and dreamy, then wet her lips, giving the gesture an erotic little flick at the end. His mouth dropped open.

“Stop that, you little maniac!” said Terry. She looked at him and let all of the terror she felt for him creep into her face. Then she looked back at the kid, imploringly.

“I said, knock it off.” Terry’s voice was threatening but almost amused.

Keeping her eyes on the kid’s, Elayne yanked open her door and grabbed the brunette’s arm, hauling the woman out of the car with all of her strength. Terry reached for the woman, but she kicked at him with tiny, sharp heels and skittered out onto the pavement after Elayne.

“Leave us alone!” Elayne shouted at Terry. “You can’t tell us what to do!”

“Yeah, go to hell!” said the brunette, catching on. The two of them edged around the front of the car, where the boys would be able to see them.

Terry climbed out of his side, deliberately ignoring the five boys who were climbing out of the other car behind him. “Get back inside,” he told the women.

“No,” said Elayne.

He shook his head. “They can find you anywhere, you know. You can’t get away for long.”

“That’s what you say,” said Elayne.

“You in trouble, baby?” asked the kid, who was as big as Terry but a little less certain of himself.

“Yes!” screamed Elayne. “For God’s sake, help us!” And she made a dash across the parking lot, pulling the brunette behind her. She could see Terry starting to follow out of the corner of her eye, and the kid just behind him. Then she lost sight of them as she and the brunette started across the street toward some fields and some neat little houses.

“Hey, you—!” she could hear the kid yelling, and then “Goddammit!” from Terry and the sound of men punching each other. She didn’t look back. She and the brunette ran as hard and fast as they could, into the fields and out of sight.

“What are they?” asked the brunette as she and Elayne rushed through tidy little gardens. “What do they want with us?”

“They’re monsters,” panted Elayne. “And I don’t know what they want. Maybe they want to put things inside our heads like they’ve got.”

They stopped for a moment to rest behind some rose bushes. They were out of sight of the road, now. Elayne looked out across cultivated fields, toward freedom.

“We’ve got to keep moving,” she said. “We’ve got to stay as far away from them as possible. We’ll rest for a moment more, then we have to cross those fields. Can you run in those shoes?”

“I can do anything in these shoes,” said the brunette, almost laughing as she looked at her four-inch heels.

“Good. Just one more minute to catch our breath, and then run like hell.”

“You sure are good at giving orders,” Terry said, just behind her, and Elayne jumped a foot. He was standing there with Ross and Kal on either side, a few steps behind him, their faces expressionless. Elayne shook her head in horror and backed away toward the fields.

“Stop running,” said Terry. “You’re really starting to piss me off.”

“No!” said Elayne. “They’ve got things inside their heads! They’re monsters!”

She turned and ran into the fields, Terry following close behind, but the brunette just stood there with tears running down her face. She didn’t even look at Ross and Kal, and they didn’t look at her. She watched Terry catch up to Elayne and pull her down. Then, her head cocked slightly to one side, the brunette faded away into nothingness.

“Goddammit!” Terry was laughing as he pulled Elayne off her feet and spun her to the ground. “You’re gonna make me wreck my good suit.”

Elayne immediately tried to scramble away, but he swept her right up off the ground and carried her away like a groom with his new bride.

“You can’t do this,” screamed Elayne. “I’m too heavy!”

“My granddad bent iron bars with his bare hands in the circus,” Terry said. “My dad was a boxer. I would be too, if I didn’t like my pretty mug so much.”

He marched back across the field with her, back to where Kal and Ross were standing without the brunette.

“Where is she?” demanded Elayne. “What did you do to her?”

“She was a glitch,” said Kal. “From nineteen fifty-seven.”

“She wasn’t a glitch,” said Elayne, crying now. “You did something.”

Terry grinned at her as he stuffed her back into the Chevy.

“Let’s see if you’ve got anything valuable,” said Terry, still grinning and now sitting much closer to Elayne. Kal was driving again, and Ross was sitting in front of her, so that she had to look at the back of his head while he gobbled candy bar after candy bar. She was vaguely embarrassed to be pawed with her dad in the car; yet at the same time it wasn’t her dad, she knew that, too.

Terry was searching her for jewelry. He found her Mickey Mouse watch on her right wrist and laughed. “Aren’t you a little old for this?” He skillfully slipped it off.

“Hey!” Elayne lit up like a Christmas tree. “You give that back!” She lunged across the car after him, glaring into his laughing face, her hand locked around his wrist. He seemed astonished that she would fight back, and delighted.

“There you go, giving orders again,” he said.

“Give it to me! Goddammit, I’ll give you my wedding ring if—” she felt for the ring and stopped dead. It wasn’t there. In fact, she wasn’t even quite sure what it had looked like. Worse than that, she couldn’t remember what her husband looked like, or his name, or where they lived. She fell back into her seat and was confronted again with the back of Ross’s head. What if she had something inside her own head now, something making her forget?

Terry put his arm around her, allowing his hand to rest on her breast, casually. “Lose your ring?” he asked. “Well, it wasn’t me. But I’ll keep this watch.”

“No, you won’t,” she said, and wrenched it away, surprising him. Since he would have to take his hand off her breast to get it back, he let her have it.

“How old are you, sweetheart?” he asked. His fingertips touched her nipple.

“Thirty-three.” She kept her eyes fastened on Ross’s head. The longer she had to be near him, the more convinced she was that the thing inside his head would crawl out and jump on her, the moment she wasn’t looking.

“You’re quite an armful,” Terry was saying. “How much do you weigh?”

“One hundred forty-five.”

“Hmmm. Most women would lie about their weight.”

“Why should I lie?” She thought the skin on Ross’s skull was starting to wrinkle in a weird way. She blinked to make sure.

“What are your measurements?” Terry asked.

“37-25-37.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right. I sure would like to see you in a dress. And stockings. Hey, sweetheart, look here.” He took her chin in his hand and forced her to look at him. “Look inside my coat,” he whispered. She did, just so he would let her go back to her vigil sooner. His coat was parted enough to let her see a gun in a shoulder holster under his left arm.

“No one’s going to touch you, baby,” he said. “Not while I’m here.”

“You promise?” she said.

“I promise.”

It was night before they stopped at a motel. Elayne had dozed against Terry’s shoulder. “Separate rooms, Kal,” she heard him say.

“Of course,” said Kal, his voice diminishing as he walked away toward the office.

Ross was still eating candy bars, only now he was making little, contented cooing noises while he did it. Elayne shivered. Kal came back out of the office and tossed a key to Terry, who caught it deftly.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he said, and pulled Elayne out of the car.

She looked back at Ross and Kal while Terry unlocked the door and pushed her into the room. Once inside, she went to the window and peeked out through the curtains. Kal and Ross were still sitting in the front seat, fussing with something on the seat between them. She thought her dad—Kal—was starting to look an awful lot like Ross. Both of them bald, and huge, with bruises under their eyes and mouths like gashes in their faces. Maybe the thing in his head was changing him physically, too.

“Lock the door!” she told Terry.

“I already have,” he said, from somewhere behind her.

“They’re just sitting there. What are they doing?”

“I don’t know.”

Elayne turned and found him standing by the double bed. His jacket was off and he was inspecting his gun. A money belt was fastened around his waist.

“You don’t know,” she snapped. “And yet here you are!”

He showed her his teeth again. “They paid me ten grand. That’s why I’m here. That’s why you’re here, too.”

Elayne looked out the curtains again. Ross and Kal were gone. She backed away from the window and sat down on the bed. He pulled his jacket out from under her, frowning, and tossed it onto a chair.

“What if they come in here while we’re asleep?” she asked. “What if they try to put something in our heads?”

He reholstered his gun, then took the whole affair off and set it on the bedside table, setting his money belt right behind it. “I don’t know where you get that stuff,” he said, and put his arms around her. “They want you to find something for them. And they’re not coming in here. I’ll shoot them if they do, and they damn well know it.”

“Find something?” she said, as he put his mouth on her neck. “Find what?”

“You’ll find out,” he murmured. “You’re beautiful. Come here.”

Elayne let him unbutton her shirt, wondering why she didn’t feel like resisting. He exposed her black bra and seemed pleased with it. “Sexy,” he said, and unbuttoned her pants. “Black underwear, too. I like your taste in lingerie, anyway.”

Elayne remembered that her husband had always liked her underwear, too, though she still couldn’t remember who he was. It was significant, because she didn’t wear bikinis or hipsters. She always wore the underwear that went up to her waist and down to her thighs, the kind men usually said they hated because it was like their mother’s. But Elayne wore that kind because she hated visible panty line.

Terry loved it. He left her in her bra and panties, taking his own clothes off piece by piece. She noticed that he was wearing one of those old-fashioned undershirts without the sleeves, like Mafia men wore in the movies. While they were relaxing and playing cards.

When he was naked, he stood before her for a moment, proudly, showing off his lean, muscled body. “You like the way I’m hung, baby?” he asked softly.

“Yes,” she said, and wondered if it was time to feel guilty yet. She was married; she ought to be thinking of her husband and feeling bad. But her mind couldn’t grasp his image at all, it just wasn’t there.

Terry took her in his arms and pressed her down on the bed. His body felt warm and smooth, good against hers. He worked one of her bra straps off her shoulder and nudged it down over her nipple, taking his time.

“Yeah,” he murmured into her skin, “I really like your underwear.”

“It’s a Bali bra,” she said inanely, and wondered why she thought he would care that Bali made the perfect bra for big girls like her, sturdy underwire things that supported her in comfort without gouging deep grooves in her shoulders. Meanwhile, he bit and sucked on her nipple.

“Sweetheart,” he said. He unhooked the bra and pulled it off slowly, enjoying himself. She enjoyed it too. “God,” he said, “You look just like one of those Playboy models.” He pulled her panties off, then arranged her on the bed and sat back to enjoy the view.

“How old did you say you were?” he asked.

“Thirty-three.”

“You ever been all the way with a boy?”

“With a boy?”

He laughed. “If you want to stick to that thirty-three story, that’s your business. Are you a virgin?”

“Of course not!”

“Okay. Have it your way.”

He crouched over her and gently pushed his penis against the opening of her vagina. It was odd, but her body seemed to resist the entry, just like when she was—

“Ready?” he asked. “Here goes.”

He thrust all the way inside her and she screamed, clawing handfuls of the bedspread as the pain ripped through her. She lay gasping in astonishment while he kissed her face and made comforting noises.

“You asked for it, sweetheart. You had to act like you knew what you were doing.”

“I did know!” she gasped. “I did know!”

“All right, all right. Don’t cry. We’ll go slow.” He started to move inside her again, obviously trying to be gentle, but still hurting her. She gritted her teeth and held onto the bedspread. After a few minutes, the pain started to diminish and it felt more like it was supposed to.

“That’s right, baby,” he said. “Here we go now.”

The pain was gone. Now it was all pleasure. She let go of the bedspread and put her arms around him, thinking that nature had a way of making these things work out.

But if nature was so goddammed smart, how come it invented the hymen?

“Elayne!” he said, and they climaxed together.

Elayne didn’t remember falling asleep. She woke up with a terrible headache in a bright motel room, alone.

“Terry?” she said, and winced at the sound of her own voice. He didn’t answer. She looked at the bedside table. His gun was gone too.

And so were her clothes. The only thing she had left was the Mickey Mouse watch, which was still around her wrist. Mickey’s hands said ten o’clock.

Elayne crept to the window and peeked out. The Chevy was gone, but she thought she saw someone standing just beyond the window. Someone dressed just like Kal or Ross in the weird jumpsuit they both wore. That was funny, she hadn’t noticed how they were dressed yesterday, but now she remembered.

The motel room was funny, too. Old-fashioned. She remembered staying in motels like this one when she was a kid, the ones with the prints of cowboys and Indians on the walls. This place was obviously a cheap one; it didn’t even have a TV set. But it was very neat and clean, and the sixties-style furniture looked brand new, as if it had been in a warehouse somewhere for thirty years.

Elayne sat down on the bed, and the door burst open. Terry came in with some packages and shut the door behind him, grinning at her.

“You even look good in bright light,” he said. “I’ve got something nice for you.”

“What happened to my clothes?” she demanded.

“I didn’t like them. I got you something new.”

He set the packages down on the bed and opened them one by one. Out came a long-sleeved, knee-length dress, black undergarments, a garter belt, stockings, and pumps.

“I got some toiletries for you too,” he said. “Come on, get dressed. I want to see how you look.”

Elayne looked at the bra. It was like the kind her mother used to wear, the kind she had loved to play dress-up in when she was a girl. She had stuffed scarves into the cups and pretended to have breasts. It was sturdy, covered with black lace, and was boned on the side. Unfortunately, it had seamed cups, but they were lined with a soft material that would keep the seams from putting welts in Elayne’s skin.

The underwear was part of the set, really very much like the pair she had worn the day before, only made out of heavier material. She pulled the lingerie on while he watched, avidly.

“Perfect fit,” she said as she adjusted a bra strap. “How did you know what size to get?”

“You told me your measurements yesterday,” he said. Now try on the garter belt.”

“Why didn’t you get pantyhose?”

“What?”

“You know, hose with panties attached. You’ve seen them on TV, right?”

“Never heard of them.”

“Well, let’s see if I can figure this out.” She fastened the garter belt and struggled to fasten the hose. They only went halfway up her thighs, which felt weird. “Is this how they’re supposed to look?” she asked him.

“Yes,” he said, his voice thick. “You’d better put on that dress before I jump you.”

She did. It was almost a perfect fit, though a little snug for her tastes. The scooped neckline almost touched her cleavage.

“Green is your color,” he said. He sat in the chair and leaned his elbows on his knees, giving her a close inspection. His coat fell open and she saw the gun.

“Did you get toothpaste?” she asked him.

“Yeah. In the bag.” He pointed at a small paper bag on the bed.

Elayne carried the toiletries into the bathroom. There was a toothbrush, a small tube of Crest, complexion soap with a girl who looked like Grace Kelly on the package, some Ban roll-on deodorant, and a hair brush.

She confronted her bleary face in the mirror and began to wash up. The cold water and soap felt good on her skin. She took off the dress and gave herself a more thorough washing before applying the deodorant and brushing her teeth. It wasn’t until after she had rinsed her mouth and started to get dressed again that she noticed what was different.

Her face and neck were too smooth. She had nice skin, sure, but like most women, she knew where every single character line was. And they weren’t there. She looked maybe—twenty? It was hard to say. That was why Terry had thought she was a virgin.

Elayne zipped up her dress and brushed her hair out. She found a little tube of Brylcream next to Terry’s stuff, and worked a little bit of it into her hair to give the front and sides some height. She fastened her hair with the rubber band at the base of her neck and worked a little more Brylcream through her ponytail to make it look neater.

“There,” she told her reflection. “Now the hair matches the dress.”

Elayne went to the bathroom window and looked out. The back of the motel looked out on desolate fields, untended stretches of land that weren’t even used for grazing. She wondered if she could get out the small window and disappear into those fields.

Terry opened the bathroom door. “Come on, sweetheart. Time to go.”

Terry drove Elayne to a drugstore for breakfast without Ross and Kal. In fact, the monsters were nowhere in sight, and she didn’t ask about them. If he had decided to leave them behind, she didn’t want to say anything that might change his mind.

The drugstore counter was a wonderful place, with shiny chrome trim and big, fat stools. It looked like something you would find in a small town, a place untouched by the onslaught of fast food and franchise coffee shops. Elayne managed to eat some sweet rolls and drink orange juice. Terry put away a breakfast of pancakes, bacon, scrambled eggs, and coffee. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and lit one.

“You smoke?” asked Elayne.

“Sure. From time to time. Bother you?”

“Don’t they make you sick?” she said, frowning.

“Do I look sick?”

“Not now. But some day you’ll have lung cancer or emphysema—”

“Says who?”

“The surgeon general.”

He looked at her through narrowed eyes, but he wasn’t defensive the way most smokers were. He seemed to enjoy the argument.

“Didn’t you ever learn to smoke?” he asked, and blew a ring in her general direction.

“No.”

“What was the matter? Were you afraid it might stunt your growth?” He let his eyes travel up and down her body.

“Very funny. They make you sick, that’s all. Hardly anyone smokes anymore.”

But just about everyone in the drugstore seemed to be doing it, so she felt silly for saying that. “I only smoke a few a week,” Terry was saying. “I don’t have a habit.”

“Okay.” She didn’t want to argue about it anymore.

Afterward, they got into the car and just drove. Elayne was relieved when Terry didn’t drive back to the motel, but her good feelings were short-lived. Before long, a feeling began to creep up the back of her neck. She kept turning to look in the back seat. It was always empty.

Terry drove on without speaking, and Elayne was afraid to break the silence. She was afraid she might slip and ask about Kal and Ross. Her headache had come back, and her anxiety seemed to grow with every mile they traveled, as if they were going to their doom, driving to the end of the world. She wanted to fasten her seat belt, but the car had apparently never been fitted with one. If they had a crash, she would probably go right through the windshield.

Elayne couldn’t stand it. She looked behind her again, at the empty seat. She tried to sit with her back to the passenger’s door, but that was no good either. She slipped down on the seat until her head was against the cushion, and thought she heard a scratching on the other side.

It was the thing from Ross’s head! She knew it! It was crawling on the floor in the back, waiting to claw its way up and seize the base of her skull. She listened intently, and was sure she heard scratching. She had to look again. She sat up, took a deep breath, and turned around.

Kal and Ross were sitting in the back seat, looking right at her with their bruised eyes.

Elayne screamed and pushed away from the seat, hurting her back on the dashboard as she tried to scramble as far away from them as possible. The car was swerving and Terry was yelling, then jamming on his brakes as Elayne clawed at her door handle, crying, “I can’t stand it anymore!”

He managed to bring the car to a stop just as she tumbled out into the barren fields. She scrambled onto her feet and ran, stumbling on the high-heeled pumps and falling several times. Terry stopped the engine and ran after her, catching up to her within a hundred feet. But she broke away from him twice and stumbled on.

“Don’t!” he shouted. “Stop fighting! Calm down!”

“They were back there,” she sobbed. “They were invisible.”

“They’ve been there the whole time.” Terry grabbed her by the shoulders and held her tight. “They were in the diner with us, for Chrissakes! Calm down!”

“No. I’m not getting in the car with them!” She looked over his shoulder and saw Kal and Ross approaching. Ross had swollen horribly since the day before, and Kal was carrying a small black box in his hands. “It’s in the box!” She tried to wrench away from him again. “The thing for my head!”

“Elayne, stop, don’t make me—”

He punched her hard, in the jaw, and the lights instantly went out.

Elayne woke up in the front seat, her head pillowed on Terry’s jacket, against his thigh. He was still driving. From the back seat she could hear grinding noises, and realized, with horror, that Ross was eating again.

“Terry,” she whispered. “Did they put something in my head?”

He put his hand on her forehead and smoothed her hair away, either to warn her or comfort her, she didn’t know which.

“No,” he said. “There was nothing but wires in that box, sweetheart. I made them show me.”

She sighed, and hoped that he was telling the truth. Her jaw hurt. It was probably bruised.

“Dad?” she called.

There was no answer from the back seat.

“I know you’re there, Kal. Answer me.”

“Yes, child?” came his voice. Her dad had never called her child.

“Why am I younger now?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Another glitch, I suppose.”

“Like the brunette?”

“Yes.”

“She was from nineteen fifty-seven,” Ross put in, between bites.

Elayne turned onto her back, so she could see the top of the seat. Terry continued to stroke her brow.

“What year is it?” she asked.

They didn’t answer.

“Terry—”

“Nineteen sixty-two.”

“Nineteen sixty-two,” she called to the back seat. “I should be three, not twenty!”

“Don’t try to figure the physics out,” advised Kal. “They have nothing to do with logic, I assure you. At least, not any logic you would understand.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Not that you’re not intelligent,” he added, as if suddenly remembering his role as her dad.

Ross continued to grind his food, grunting happily.

“So now what?” she asked.

“Now you’ll take us someplace we need to go.”

“Where?”

“Frankly,” he sighed, “we don’t know. You’ll have to be our compass, child.”

“How?”

“We’ll keep track of your misery,” he said, then hushed Ross as he began to giggle.

They stopped for the night at another motel. Terry took Elayne’s clothes and then went off to get her some aspirin and ice for her jaw. He came back with a nightgown, too.

“I thought you shouldn’t have to sit around naked,” he said. “Much as I would like you to.”

“Thank you.” She slipped the thin, cotton gown over her head. His eyes told her that it revealed more than it hid, but it made her feel better.

“Terry,” she said. “If you shot them, do you think they would die?”

“Sure,” he said. He was taking off his jacket, his money belt, and his gun. When he got down to his shirt, he said. “Maybe.”

“You know there’s something wrong with them.”

“Yeah, so? What am I supposed to do about it?” He tossed his shirt onto a chair and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Kill them.” She sat facing him, cross-legged, her nipples pressing against the cotton. She knew that he knew she was trying to manipulate him, but she also knew that he liked it.

“I beat up that greaser and his friends for you,” he said. “What have you ever done for me?”

“Aren’t you scared of them?”

“Not the way you are. They just make me a little sick.” He pulled his undershirt off and kicked off his shoes. “They paid me fair and square. Why should I kill them?”

“They have something in their heads!” she insisted.

He shook his head. “You keep saying that. What are you talking about? You think that the Creepers from that Vincent Price movie crawled up their spines and sank into their spinal cords?”

The mental image made Elayne shiver.

“They’re going to do something bad—to the world,” she said.

He laughed at her. “I was only kidding about monsters from space. What makes you think I’m one of those movie heroes? I’ve done a few bank jobs in my time, and lately I find it pretty easy to sell grass for a living. How do you think I met Kal and Ross?”

“You wouldn’t be able to pull off bank jobs in nineteen ninety-two,” she said. “They have video cameras.”

Terry lay back on the bed with his arms behind his head and smiled at her. “Nineteen ninety-two,” he said. “When women dress like men and wear Mickey Mouse watches.”

“You believe me, then?”

“Sure,” he said. “And thanks for reminding me about the watch. Hand it over.”

Elayne put her hand over the watch, leaning away from him. “Why? Why do you have to have it?”

He made a grab for her hand, but she pulled away and seized the hem of her gown first, pulling it up over her head. She was kneeling on the bed with her legs apart, her breasts practically in his face, the gown tangled around her wrists. “Please, Terry, don’t take the watch. My dad gave it to me when I was sixteen, please don’t take it.”

He put his hands on her breasts and cupped them, sliding his thumbs over her nipples. “Say please again,” he said.

“Please!”

His hands slid down her waist and over her hips. “I like the way you argue, Elayne,” he said, and slipped two fingers between her legs, up inside her. There was no pain this time. She tossed the gown away and leaned over him, put her mouth on his nipples and began to suck. He groaned. “Put your hand there—yeah. Oh yeah, baby, that’s right. Say please again.”

“Please, Terry, please—”

“All right, sweetheart. All right.”

In the morning, he had a new suit for himself and a new dress for her, a blue one this time with a vee neckline, but otherwise the same as the other dress. “It’s your style,” he said, and grinned as she put it on.

But she could hardly talk. Her throat felt dry, and she couldn’t eat breakfast, though he tried to tempt her, and Kal and Ross had disappeared again.

This time, when they appeared in the back seat of the Chevy, she wasn’t surprised. Ross was now nearly twice as big as Kal; his jumpsuit was strained to its limit. Elayne put her mouth next to Terry’s ear and said, “You’ve got to kill them.”

He shook his head. “I thought about it, but—it’s that little black box. It does things—”

“What’s that?” shrilled Ross.

“Love talk,” said Terry.

Elayne tried once again to get comfortable with her back to the monsters, but she couldn’t. Finally she sank down on the seat with her head in Terry’s lap again. She couldn’t get it out of her mind that the things in their heads wanted into her skull, too.

For a long time, the drive passed in silence.

“You know what’s really sad about your delusion, Elayne?” Kal’s voice finally came from the back seat. “It’s that, in a way, your fears are true. There is something inside our heads, and that something is our brains. Our alien brains. You can’t accept that we’re not Human, and yet you know precisely where we are the most in-Human. Inside our heads.”

“So you admit that you’re not human,” she said wearily. She glanced up at Terry to see what he thought about that, but he had on his poker face.

“Yes, I admit it. Our little black box has been able to fool most people, even our good friend Mr. Cole. But not you, not enough, because you’re a glitch. You’re not in synch with nineteen sixty-two; at least not yet. How are you feeling?”

Elayne tried to answer, but couldn’t.

“Good. We’re getting close.”

“Close to what?” asked Terry.

“You’ll see!” sang Ross.

They drove for another hour or so. Terry stopped for a red light and looked down at Elayne. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever been with,” he told her. She started to smile at him, but Ross’s titter from the back seat made her wince.

“How sweet!” said Ross, his tone perching hideously between malice and genuine sentimentality. Elayne turned her face toward Terry’s leg and began to cry. She cried until her entire body shook with distress.

“We’re close!” Kal told Ross, delightedly, and the wet sound of huge bodies colliding warned Elayne that something was going on in the back seat that she didn’t want to know about.

Finally she just lay there, too exhausted even to shake anymore, her eyes dry and red. She felt the way the rat does when it’s trapped in the cage with the snake, and knows it can’t get out.

“Oh! Oh, Kal!” Ross was squeaking, and the car bumped and slowed as it pulled off the road and onto dirt. Terry put a hand on her head to keep it from hitting the wheel. The car came to a stop, and she heard the back door opening; the sound of heavy feet on rocks, crunching away from the car, and more, “Oh, oh!s” from Ross.

“You better look at this, sweetheart,” said Terry. “Come on. Take a look.”

Elayne sat up and looked. After a moment she said, “Let’s get out. I have to talk to them.”

“If you say so.” Terry opened his door and went around to her side, opening hers too. He helped her out, and the two of them walked over to Kal and Ross, who turned to look at them, triumph burning in the black pits of their eyes.

“Look at it!” gloated Ross. “Your doom.”

Elayne ignored him, addressing Kal instead. “It’s a ship, isn’t it?”

“Our ship,” said Kal, a little more sympathetically than Ross. “There are all sorts of wonderful, useful things inside.”

“How did you lose it?”

“Well,” he scratched his chin and glanced at Ross, his eyes sparkling, “It’s like this. We’re an invasion, as you may have guessed. We’ve traveled a long way and—perhaps you’ve heard about this in science class— we couldn’t exceed the speed of light, or even approach it, so we had to warp space instead.”

“A long, long way!” said Ross, emphatically.

“Yes, and it’s all very tricky,” said Kal. “It’s easy to make, you know, mistakes when you’re trying to get back into normal space and orbit a planet; because, you see, when you warp space, you warp time too.”

“I’m following you so far,” said Elayne, glancing at the deadly, monstrous ship behind them, which was so full of useful things. Like more of the black boxes?

“We meant to arrive in nineteen sixty-two,” said Kal. “And we did. But we also arrived in nineteen ninety-four.”

“Oops!” said Ross.

Terry nudged Elayne. “I thought you said nineteen ninety-two.”

“I’ve lost two years,” she whispered back, then said, “Does that mean there are two just like you running around in my time?”

“Yes!” beamed Kal.

“And how did I get here?”

“Everything got all jumbled up,” said Ross, in an excited rush. “People got knocked out of their regular time lines and we had to recalibrate everything. But we must have missed you and your stupid little car. You were the anomaly, and when we tried to re-phase ourselves, your presence in this time knocked us away from our ship! We could find you, but not the damned ship!”

“But that’s okay,” said Kal. “Because you helped us find it again. Now you and Terry can go off and have a few days of fun together before the end. Before we make everything over the way we want it.”

Elayne took a step toward him. “You idiots! What do you think is going to happen when you catch up with yourselves in nineteen ninety-four?”

He took a step back, his face stubborn. “We won’t. We’re going to change things so drastically, the time line will simply split. You know, like the branch of a tree.”

“I’m going to have babies,” gushed Ross, “thousands of them!”

“You’re female?” asked Elayne.

Ross gave her a dimpled smile.

“We’re populators,” said Kal, gazing at Ross with adoration.

“And you’re has-beens!” snapped Ross.

“And you’re going to get a punch in the nose!” Elayne advanced on Ross, who skipped back screaming, “No! No, you’ll kill us both!”

“Don’t touch her!” Kal wrung his hands. “It’s true, you’ll both die! Horribly!”

Elayne stopped, wondering if it might be worth her life to save nineteen sixty-two. “Just by touching her?” she asked.

“This planet hates us,” said Kal. “That’s why we have to change it. And ourselves! We’re synched into this time and place very precariously, we can only touch nineteen sixty-two things!”

“That’s why we had Terry get rid of your clothes,” said Ross, gloating again. “So you couldn’t throw something at us and kill us. You’ll die horribly if you touch us! All inside out! And that ain’t hay!”

“Now buzz off,” said Kal. “We’ve got work to do.”

Terry put an arm around her and started to steer her away. “We’ve got a few days together, Elayne. Let’s make the best of them.”

“Wait.” She looked into his cynical face, hoping to draw strength from it. “I have to say one last thing.”

“Oh, now what?” said Ross, who had already started up the ramp.

“Kal, I thought you were my father.”

Kal gave her another one of those horrid, sympathetic looks. “Yes, child,” he said. “It was the one thing the box did right.”

“My dad gave me something when I was a little girl, and now I want to give it back.”

“What?” he said, and took a step back when he saw her tugging up the sleeve of her dress and unfastening the Mickey Mouse watch from around her wrist. “I thought you got rid of everything!” he screamed at Terry.

Terry shrugged. “She was stubborn. You said so yourself.”

“Stop!” Kal threw his hands up, but Elayne would not be stopped. She tossed the watch at him, almost casually. He tried to dodge out of the way, and the tip of the wristband brushed his arm.

The effect was immediate and awful. The space that Kal and the watch had shared became distorted, twisting like a whirlpool with Kal inside it.

Ross made a sickening sound, then began to scream like a siren. She started to run up the ramp, but the whirlpool reached out and snagged her too, twisting her into the vortex, snapping bone and tearing flesh as it went. The ship followed, making its own metallic shrieks while Elayne and Terry just stood there and gaped.

The vortex ground up ship and flesh and Mickey Mouse watch like a cosmic garbage disposal, then ate itself as well, disappearing in a flash of light and wind that sent the two humans tumbling to the ground.

Elayne blinked grit out of her eyes when the wind died. No trace remained of the ship or the monsters who had warped time in it. The smell of flowers drifted past her on a breeze, and damned if the birds didn’t start singing!

“Well, sweetheart, you got what you wanted.” Terry put his arms around her and kissed her ear. “You got away from the monsters. But you’re not about to get away from me.”

Elayne looked at him and almost smiled, but then cocked her ear at the sound of voices. “Do you hear that?” she asked.

“What? You mean the birds?” He nibbled her neck.

“No. Voices. Music, traffic—everything.”

“No.” He leaned back and looked at her. She seemed very fragile, now. Almost insubstantial.

“My own time is calling,” she said. “Maybe Ross and Kal died in nineteen ninety-four, too!”

“And maybe not.” He reached out and put a hand right through her.

“Goodbye, Terry,” she said. “And remember, keep watching the skies!”

“You too,” he said, and watched her fade away.

Terry Cole got up and dusted the dirt from his good trousers. He looked around him, and was happy to see the sky-blue Chevy still parked there. The cash was still solid in his money belt, too. That made him smile. He put his hands in his pockets and strolled over to the car, half-hoping that he would hear Elayne’s voice calling him back. But she was really gone.

He would miss her bossiness. He would miss her fantastic body even more. Maybe he wouldn’t get himself killed in the next twenty years, and he could track her down. Beat her future husband to the punch.

He got into the car and reached for his cigarettes. He took one out of the package and hesitated, almost seeming to hear her voice again, warning him about lung cancer.

Thirty years was a long time. Twenty didn’t sound much better. But Elayne would be a full-grown woman in about fifteen…

Terry Cole threw the cigarettes out the window and drove his new Chevy off into the sunny morning, whistling happily as he went.

Content

The Long Ride
by Emily Devenport