free 1st chapter: rest stop

Rest Stop is my 3rd novel, set in a fictionalized version of my hometown of PoHo, just as Red/Nerd Girls Go 2 Hell was. What follows is the unedited Intro and 1st chapter. I hope that you like it.

ALWAYS OPEN WITH A JOKE

A drunk gets up from the bar and staggers to the men’s room. A few minutes later, a loud, blood-curdling scream is heard. A few minutes after that, another horrific shriek. The bartender runs to the men’s room door.

"Cut that shit out!” he shouts. "You're scarin’ my customers!"

From inside the bathroom: "I'm just sittin’ here on the crapper! Every time I try to flush, somethin’ comes up and squeezes the hell out of my balls!"

The bartender opens the door.

"You moron! You're shittin’ in the mop bucket!”

PROLOGUE

It was a summer afternoon in Michigan, on the stretch of I-94 that runs between PoHo and Marysville. Eighty-six degrees and raining. It has rained for eleven days in a row - enough rain to guarantee flooded basements, overflowing storm drains, and cabin-fevered kids.

Big semis and countless cars hiss by. In good times and bad, I-94 saw a lot of traffic. Like all highways, it also saw its share of roadkill. In order of frequency: raccoons, cats, dogs, socks, the occasional possum or deer and, every once in a great while, a squirrel.

Squirrels were rare among I-94's dead. It was difficult to say if this was because there was nothing of interest on the other side (surely one acorn was as good as another), or possibly some variety of rodent race memory was at work, a fleeting notion that any flat hard surface led to a flattened future.

Which was why the sight of a lone grey squirrel running along the side of it was so odd.

It ran along the top of the curb, above the ankle-deep runoff that swept the gutters and poured into the black drains.

If you examined it more closely, you might notice that all of the blood vessels in the squirrel’s eyes have burst. It looks like the morning after, and moves like it, too. You might also notice its bloody front paws. It has chewed on them for most of the night. In the case of some digits, down to the bone.

Every ten yards or so it stops and stares down at the water rushing by. Dry flecks of foam decorate its bloody teeth. It is almost mad with thirst, but something in its brain forbids it to drink. It needs to find a large, still body of water. A pond will do, but a marsh would be better.

As it runs, pelted by the rain, it slows like a wind-up toy running down, down, down.

Slower. Slower. Slower still.

Stop.

The squirrel stands perfectly still, eyes dull, staring at the rain-slicked highway. The road is shiny and, to the squirrel, it suddenly resembles a large, dark pond. Surely it can drink now, with water - big water, as instructed - so maddeningly close.

It listens, tuned in to a voice that only it can hear.

The squirrel begins to shudder. First mildly, then wildly, like Wile E. Coyote after swallowing earthquake pills. Then it slumps forward, stops breathing, and dies, a partially deflated balloon made of fur.

Cars hiss by. Rain falls. Thunder walks and talks. Then:

Dozens of black, toothpick-sized stalks burst from every surface of the corpse. They bloom into tiny pink and black flowers that wave stiffly in the rain, each no more than an inch long.

There is a sudden, violent movement under the skin. The squirrel’s body rolls to the side, into the rain-flooded gutter, where it is carried along by the current and down the drain.

Three years go by.