A 40 year old truck drivin' woman playing spin the bottle is a ridiculous sight, make no mistake, and I know it better than anyone else. Maybe it was an accident of body shots, but his lips seemed saltier than others, sweeter than others...that's what made me notice him at first. Some tequila, some champagne from a screw top bottle, and I don't remember much besides spinning after that.

I wake up to a light tickling across my nose, a tight buzzing sound that whines above the low growl of the engine: there's a bee on my nose, it's daylight and I'm doing double nickles about 3 hours outside of Rock City. I'm startled to wake up driving, and I swerve. Then I open the window and the bee gets sucked out. Last night's fruits have left the taste of bitter rind in my mouth, waxy and stringy. I feel a pounding in my head, a dizziness that echoes the constant spinning of last night. I never got his name. The CB squawks out a hundred messages meant for nobody, meant for everybody. Then, breaking through the squelch, is his voice...he calls my name. My arm dives for the radio, but it's too late. I can't reach him. He's gone. I hear nothing. My headache's gone, replaced by a numbness. I feel nothing.

I've been boosting my signal. Charlie wants me for it, but that's his concern. Breaking the law to reach the him from last night is exciting, reminding me of grabbing him over an empty bottle of Diet Coke with Lemon. He had dark eyes, he had legs with muscles that looked like steaks covered by a taut canvas tent (says he used to be a bike courier before he got behind the wheel of his rig). My crotch reaches through the airwaves looking for something. Something?

Nothing.

I pull into Rock City, to get a beer and have a cigarette, thinking it would help my hangover and stave my, well, that. My Uncle David is here. He doesn't notice me, he's too busy entertaining some dead-eyed high school girl, her bitch rake hair poised on top of her forehead like a radar dish sucking in blips from 15 years past. She's wearing yellow and black, perfect for her pinched waspy face. Nothing's changed. That was me in this room with him (or someone like him) a long time ago, when he fancied himself a breakdancer. I left Rock City a hundred years ago, and I'm leaving now before he recognizes me.

I walk out the door. Him from last night is all I'm concerned about now. When I think of him, it's like he dropped from the sky, falling to Earth from a distant star. He has no past, he didn't exist until I met him. How do you hunt down a man who doesn't even have the common courtesy to exist when he's not with you? I climb up into the cab of my rig, and I notice a note stuck under the windshield wiper, its unpinned edges flapping in the breeze like a parody of a bird. It's unsigned. It's from him. It's printed in the same sort of handwriting that architects use, all handmade but somehow fake nonetheless.

"I don't mean to be so hard to pin down...you'll understand when I get a chance to talk to you. Meet me at the Pudding Rock by 5:18. Don't be late, or things will get bad for both of us." I'll make it to the Pudding Rock about 5 minutes late if I'm lucky. What else do I have to go on, though? I get back in the cab, and race out of the parking lot, or as near as race out can be in an 18 wheeler hauling 10 tons of mucilage bound for the Azores. It must be getting late: I'm racing to a standstill. It's only been since last night, but I feel like I've strained to see him for days.

I pull up next to the Pudding Rock, a field of congealed earth, lying in contoured lumps like the fattest person you've ever imagined. Frozen, a hill where time can't go on. It's 5:27. I see someone faced away from me in the distance, a man. I walk over. I'm shaking with the relief of not being too late.

I'm too late. Or it's a joke. Or something, because it's not him: it's David. He turns around, recognizing me before I can get away. He's not surprised to see me, which is a funny thing since I've been successfully avoiding him for 10 years. I breathe deeply and slowly, trying to relax. "Hey, Darlin'. It's been a while." He smiles that big smile that hasn't worked on me since I was 18. He swats a bee away from its orbit around his ugly face.

"What're you doing here?"

He laughs. "C'mon, now! Is that how you greet me? Give your Uncle a hug!" I don't know if the note was from David or from Him, but somehow I was misled. Now I'm caught in my uncle's hug like a bird in a foxhole.

"I might ask you the same thing," he says with a grin. "Meetin' strange men at parties, following them all over God's creation."

I stare at him. "I don't know what the hell ideas you've got in that fool head of yours, nor what business of yours it is." Calm. Not hysterical.

"What business of mine?" He puts on anger like a gimme cap stained with sweat and STP.

I cut him off. "Get your hands off of me," I want to scream but coldly state. "Get your hands off of me, or I swear to God I'll..."

"You'll what? Sic your new boyfriend on me? He won't be troublin' nobody for a long time now." I can feel the panic now. The bee comes back, David uses one hand to swat at hit, which just angers it further. His attention diverted, I kick him between the legs. His grip on me loosens, he lets out a savage groan, he crumples towards the ground. He's no threat now, but I give him a kick to the stomach just for the thrill of it, and start to walk off. I get to the rig. There's a another note. It's clearly the handwriting of a teenaged girl, all open loops and circles over i's.

"Your Uncles not so bad. But he did kick your friend's ass and put him in a truck heading for the docks: the container ship that leaves at 8 tomorrow morning. Your friend was knocked out. - Angie"

Dumbass. Where does he think my load is going? I can get on that ship no problem. I drive over to the docks, about an hour away. I pull the truck up to where the container can be picked up, and climb in when no one's looking. Last night's drinking catches up with me, and I feel sleepy. The crane loading the container rocks me to sleep.

I wake up next morning as the ships engine's start up. I get out of the container, and wait until I can feel the ship moving to go up to the deck. As soon as I step out of my boxy cradle, I can tell that something's up. The hold for this ship is tiny: barely room for 10 containers. There's no way this ship is making it to the Azores. I'm practically on the S.S. Minn-fucking-ow. I head up to the deck. The ship's being pulled out of the harbor by a tug boat. Six men sit on their boxes, and follow the tug with their eyes for as long as they can see her, until the black column of smoke dissolves and vanishes over the horizon. A half hour passes, and I realize that no one's looking at me. No one is wondering who I am. What the fuck? I soon find out what the fuck: coming out of the helm is Angie, Dave's teenage prospect from back in Rock City. Seeing her on this boat that she led me to, that was not what I expected, made me feel like I was barely awake at all and her face is a big alarm clock.

"I'm surprised to see you," I say to her.

"Listen: I don't know how, but Dave figured out your plan. He killed your friend and fixed it so that you wound up on this boat instead."

My stomach hurts. Part of me freezes over, another better part of me slowly warms up to a slow burn. "Where is he?"

"What? I..." she stammers sheepishly.

I grab her by the shirt. "Tell...me...where...he...is."

She starts to cry. "He's asleep down in the bunks. What are you going to do?"

"Show me."

She takes me down there, to a windowless room. No lights, not much to see: just a dark form breathing unseen. He got his wish a long time ago, without a hitch. He had an itch a long time ago, and now it can be scratched.

It's dark in here...Angie can't see what I'm about to do. I figure she thinks I'm about to slap him around a little, to yell and cry like she would. She doesn't see me pull out my knife, and come up on him. He cast his spell a long time ago, without realizing the iron will it would give me, that I could drink his poison and then turn his magic. This jar I've carried my scars in is about to tip over, to bury him in scum and pus until he drowns in it. This accidental vampire doesn't know about my new trick, the one I'm about to gut him with. I come up to him, and plunge the knife neatly between his ribs. He screams, and there's a gurgling in it. I expect Angie to scream, but instead, she just turns on the lights and grins. He's not dead yet, he flips over in confusion and fear, and it's not Dave: it's Him, the golden boy from last night. "That asshole touched me one too many times in the wrong place," Angie sneers.

I collapse to the floor...he looks straight at me, in shock and slipping away, his heart grown suddenly and disastrously thin. "Victoria," he says, "I'm a sad, sad man."

My name's not Victoria, but I let out a sob before I faint anyway.