About Shades:
Excerpt:
John felt the rumble of his engine and the slow drift of his car, almost hypnotic, as he sped across the desert. Multicolored light rushed past the edges of his windshield, splashing like colored raindrops and sparks. A mountain rose on the horizon. It left him behind as fast as it had appeared. Every inch his steering wheel turned was a sharp turn. He tracked the road following the lines lit by his headlights, cars passing over the deserted highway every few seconds, though they were miles apart. When he had first driven the car years ago, he had gripped the wheel tightly with the realization that an impact with anyone on the highway at this speed would be fatal—not for him but for anyone he collided with. Now, seasoned and worn, having wandered for years, he passed cars as if they were hills and valleys.
He pressed harder on the gas. The hills and horizon bent before his eyes. At this speed, every mile was a turn. This fast, the car itself aided him in impossible turns beyond his senses. He’d be invisible to the human eye now, visible only to, perhaps, spirits and specters of the dead stuck in this cesspool of a world, like him.
He felt desolation. Blessed loneliness. So he headed for his sanctuary.
Less than ten minutes from Arizona, he found himself in another desert. In Denver the temperature had been in the eighties during the day. Here in the Mojave Desert in the middle of the night, it was a nice seventy outside.
He slowed down as he approached his favorite spot. The drops of light stopped bouncing off the glass. The colors faded. Then he was in darkness in a canyon. But even if the sun were out, it’d be completely barren.
He turned on a dirt road only he knew about. In another moment, he was there.
Before him was a vast field of sand and salt. He shut off his headlights, and it was pitch black except the bright stars above. He got out of the car, and his black boots crackled along dry, caked dirt. Then he put his hands in his pockets and walked away from his car.
That’s when the images came. Usually he turned from them. Not after seeing Amanda. The images always came to him more clearly when he was in the dark. He never slept because of them. Now he longed for them while awake. Now he could sift through them to try to make sense of the new mark. Amanda. To see if she really was who he thought she was. Perhaps he had only imagined the resemblance?
In a short time, a picture came to his mind as vivid as the stars.
He was on the beach in Southern California. It was afternoon. But just as now, he had his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans, was wearing shades, and was staring out at the sea.
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About A.L. Hawke:
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