Black Black

by Scott McClelland

Last thing I remember was her arm being out the window. We was racing down the 101, outside Ventura, sun disappearing over her shoulder. She handed me the bottle, and give me that bourbon smile a hers. A smile like that, breath a whiskey, barefoot ankles crisscrossed on the dash, it’ll grip you. So she smiled and stuck her arm out the window. She was using her hand to play a game with the wind. When she put her hand straight, her fingers fluttered like slats in a window shade. If she turned her hand open, away from the window, the wind would blow in and make her hair fly up like a carnival thrill ride. If she give it the back of her hand, her hair would go back down––but different from the way it was before. I was looking at her arm, I remember that, and she was giving the wind the back of her hand. Then she put it straight. Then she opened her hand and the wind made her hair fly up again. I was watching her hair, and I was looking at her arm, then everything went black. Not black like having your eyes shut, but black, black, like no black you ever seen before––sunk into a pit a roofing tar. And it goes on forever. I keep trying to find her. I keep searching for her in all this blackness. Searching for that arm to reach down and pull me out. But I can’t find her. Can’t even find myself, cause I don’t know where I am.

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Scott McClelland is a writer from Erie, Pennsylvania. His short story, “My Yellow Cup with the Tiger On,” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Bartleby Snopes Literary Journal. Another, “Liminality,” will appear in the forthcoming 40th Anniversary edition of Gargoyle Magazine. Scott is not comfortable in any home that has no pickles.