We were in the car, the three of us, driving down a back road we didn’t know the name of.  Behind us the lights from the small town of Majoris were quickly fading; ahead, all we could see were stars.  They were absurdly bright that night.

Jilly was driving because she was the only one of us that was comfortable driving the winding road in the dark.  Which meant that that D’ante was sitting in the passengers seat, because I was behind Jilly, complaining loudly about his long legs making him push the seat all the way back.  Without warning.  Straight into my knees.

There was a fence beside the road, a long one, made of pale wood.  It shone white with a few whorls of darkness when the headlights of the car hit it.  The posts were drifting past us oddly slow, it seemed, but I just chalked it up to the fact that Jilly must not have been driving at her normal speeds.  Suddenly she started to go even slower, exclaiming over a stop sign ahead.  Evidently some moron had decided to put a side road here.  D’ante was laughing loudly, I can remember the sound carrying on top of the death metal being played softly, over the fact that she was even bothering to stop.  She went aloof, explaining about our duties as citizens to uphold the law, and I began to tune her out right about then.

Bored, I looked out the window as we stopped, then screamed.  At least, I’d like to be able to call it a scream.  Honestly, it was more of a bubbling gaspy squeak.  Right outside the window was a horse.  It was white, the eyes glinting a subtle red from a light I couldn’t see.  And I could swear it hadn’t been there before.  Jilly and D’ante looked out the window to see what frightened me, only to crack up.  After all, how scary is a horse?

After snapping at them to shut up, I looked at it again.  The most frightening thing I found about it, as it snorted soft streams of breath and pawed restlessly at the sod, was the fact that it was the same shade of white as the wooden fence it leaned over.  A long-dead white of cured and weathered wood.  

With a jerk, we took off again, conversation broken as Jilly turned Megadeth up, piping her reedy voice along with the the lyrics to her favorite song; D’ante and I, as always, began belting out “Sgt. Pepper.”  The sounds didn’t mix well.


Then I woke up.


We were in the beat-up green Volvo, Jilly was driving, D’ante was arguing with her about the music, Majoris was behind us, we were on a one-lane farmer’s road, and the stars were out.  I shivered slightly, wincing as my folded legs woke up with the needles-and-pins sensations.  I remembered the dream, in all it’s mundane simplicity easily, at the same time I was remembering my days (few as they were) in college.  I had been studying languages and foreign cultures, with a dash of religions for flavor, and was therefore taking a class on world mythology.  There was one day, a gray morning with snow smirking on the edges of the wind, when our professor had decided to lecture about various death omens.  He’d said that the weather, and our moods (winter break had been a few days away) were fitting for the lesson content.  In the two years since then, many beliefs had drifted out of my head, but a few had stayed, including the one that had me properly freaked out - an old English one that said dreaming of a white horse meant death.

Laughing, D’ante brushed a hand against my knee, asking me to join him in the fight against Jilly’s screaming long-haired ‘80’s boys.  Shaking my head to clear it of the swirling portents, I voiced my opinions.  We had been engaging in lighthearted debate for about twenty more minutes, when she slammed on the breaks, swearing loudly.  When my head had cleared from the seat-belt asphyxiation, I leaned over to peer out the windshield.

Out in front of the car was the bloated corpse of a large animal.  It took up the entirety of the road, and it seemed to glow faintly from the light of the heavens.  Cursing in annoyance and surprise respectively, Jilly and D’ante stepped out of the car, him pushing his seat up so I could squeeze my way through.  With legs unsteady from sitting on them in the car for a good two hours, I walked ahead of them, almost eager to see the animal.

I wasn’t surprised to find a white horse, eyes clouded, joints swelled and stiff.  The flies were creating an buzzing that I found irresistibly pleasant in its normalcy and expectedness.  There were, however, two things that bothered me hugely.  The first I easily blamed on the sharp cold deadening my senses.  I didn’t even notice the discrepancy until the other two stepped beside me, Jilly commenting that there was no smell.  It was true, the scent of rotted meat should have coated the area and us by then, making  the rest of the night in the car unbearable, was absent.

The second problem I had with the dead animal, and the main, was that it was the exact animal I had seen in my dream.  It had the same dead color of white all over its body.  Which, looking back to my dream had been what bothered me most before.  Standing there, my mind went once again to the large classroom, where one girl, a blond named Beth, had scoffed outright at the white horse belief, commenting loudly that there was no such thing as a white horse, only gray ones.  Yet this one was white, no question.  

The other two were pacing around it, trying to find a way to move the massive body off the road.  They decided that we couldn’t, mostly because none of wanted to touch it, squeamishly fearing the writhing maggots that were no doubt inside.  So, we piled back into the car and Jilly started to back up to try to find a place where she could turn around.  I was sitting sideways, back against the door, looking out the back window too.  I glanced at her, right as her brown bangs fell from behind her ear, cloaking her eyes greedily.  She quickly tried to fix the problem, but as I looked back out the window, I could see that it would be a bit too late.  

When her vision was clear, she tried to turn the car to keep with the curve in the road, but couldn’t.  The car jolted, then dipped with a crunching squishing noise that any 5 year old would have found deeply satisfying into the shallow ditch beside the road.  With nothing but bruising, we all struggled out of the car.  D’ante popped the hood, only to close it gravely moments later and tell us that Lucy was gone, just like he’d said she’d be if we didn’t get those nice expensive parts when we had the money.

I remember being so relieved.  Here we were, in an accident and no one had died.  Some death omen!  I started laughing, shaking slightly.  The others joined in, the stress and shock making everything funnier.  We fell to the hard ground of the road in a giant heap, convulsing with shared mirth.  It was almost hysterical, but in those days of chronically empty wallets nearly everything we did was.  

And I remember just how ridiculous it ended it being.  We stood, still muffling our giggles, starting to talk about walking back to the nearest house, arguing about how far it was - we  always seemed to be arguing and laughing and talking and chasing the silence away back then - when we heard a creaking.  Cautiously, we froze, looking to the car, waiting for another sound.  I was half-expecting an explosion of some sorts - the prefect chaser for our long evening.  There was another, louder creak, then from above, a large tree branch fell.  It landed not even a foot away from me, directly on Jilly’s head.  It bounced off, then landed next to her.  She remained upright, despite the fact that the left side of her head had caved in and that blood was coming out of her remaining whole ear.  She opened her mouth, showing us red teeth - she’d bitten her tongue through - blinked, then fell across the branch.  I couldn’t move, but D’ante sprung over, fingers on her neck, trying to turn her over.  I could have saved him the trouble.  She’d been dead the second she’d been hit, it just took her brain a moment to realize it.

He got up, staggered to the ditch, vomiting.  I feel on my ass as my legs gave out, trying to focus on the sharp pain my spine, trying to assure myself that I was crying over that, and Jilly would come over, telling me to get up and be productive.


The rest of that night passed in a blur.  I just remember the two of us huddling together, neither of us wanting to leave the other alone, or to leave Jilly behind, in search of a farmhouse.  In the morning, someone must have found us, because my next memory is in a chilled morgue of sorts.  We were discussing what to do with the remains.  We agreed on cremation - cheapest - and to spread her out over the Pacific Ocean that had grazed her toes and hometown until she’d heard the call of tires on the open road.  

We don’t travel much anymore, D’ante and I.  We settled here in Edisworth, Jilly’s unfortunately named place of origin.  She doesn’t have any family left except for us.  I’m back in school, he’s working as a mechanic.  We live together in a small apartment, but aren’t together despite what every gossip says.  He’s too much my brother for me to even want to consider trying anything.  Not to mention my penchant for other girls over boys.  He’s found a nice girlfriend and so’ve I.  

I’m happy.  Sometimes, though, I really do miss the freedom offered by the open roads.  The ease in a life where you don’t have responsibilities, just a car and the people you’re with.  And your paychecks are your memories.  Mostly, though I miss the only motherly figure I had in my life, all plump, five and a half feet tall, death metal loving bits of her.  

I don’t remember my dreams anymore.  And when I do, I make sure to forget them by the time my feet hit my bedroom floor.