This is a fanfiction crossover, based off two short stories I read during a creative writing course. The short stories are entitled "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates, and "Girl", by Jamaica Kincaid. I liked exploring what might happen to the named characters in the former, Arnold and Connie, and the unnamed character in the latter, whom I christened Anne.
Connie looked out the window of the car. It wasn't the jalopy. It was a new one, one Arnold had bought very recently. She didn't know what kind it was. She didn't care. It had nice leather seats and that 'new-car' smell. Arnold kept it pretty clean. She continued to look out the window. She wasn't looking out the window, though. She was looking outside and into herself. Her reflection loomed up beside her, asking her questions she didn't want to answer.
She loved Arnold, she supposed. It wasn't love like you read in the romance novels, or like how you expect love would be like. She loved him through hating him. She hurt him with every word, but only hurt herself. They were so much a part of each other that there was no distinguishing between the two. She didn't know if he loved her, or even if he loved himself. She didn't know if he was capable of it.
She took a slow drag of her cigarette. At first, Arnold hadn't allowed her to smoke--couldn't stand the smell, he said--but after she'd threatened to call her family and let them know where she was, he relented. He'd never wanted her to contact her family--and she'd had no desire herself. The very fact that the possibility scared him so gave her power over him--power she drank up and power that made her sick to her stomach. She despised it.
Arnold coughed and rolled down the window. The smoke from Connie's cigarette was sucked outside and flew along the side of the car, dissipating as it reached the end. She flung it out the window. She didn't care about the waste of a good cigarette. It was Arnold's money. She spent it liberally.
"Where are we going?" she asked, her voice sullen and scratchy. There were deep shadows under her eyes. She didn't sleep much. Didn't eat much, either. She was even thinner than she had been when she'd met Arnold.
Arnold glanced in her direction. "You'll see," he said in a reassuring tone, though it didn't reassure anybody about anything. Everything he said was forced. She wondered when he'd ever say anything that wasn't.
She sighed, annoyed. He didn't know any more than she did.
She reached down into her bag and grabbed her cigarette box. There was one left. Even more irritated, she flung it down into the space between her seat and Arnold's. "I need more cigarettes," she said, crossing her arms and looking out the window.
Arnold didn't reply.
***
"Your total is five dollars and eighty-five cents, ma'am. Would you like a bag?"
"No, thanks, I'll carry it out."
Anne took the woman's money and doled out the change. She'd been working in a rural gas stop off route 86 for a few years now. She liked it. She got to see many different types of people all day long...truckers with big mustaches and heavy tattooed biceps, harried mothers shoving lollipops into their childrens' mouths to shut them up, angry teenagers with their pushy parents. It was great material for her writing. Her manuscript was finished, actually. She was going to drop it off after work. It was a story about love and intrigue set in--
"Miss? Miss?" An annoyed voice broke into her thoughts. There was tall, emaciated-looking girl with sunken eyes and stringy hair in front of her. She couldn't have been more than twenty. The hard angles of her hand were doing drum rolls on the countertop. Anne realized she'd been daydreaming again. She murmured her apologies quickly, ducking her head to hide her blush.
"May I help you, ma'am?"
The girl coughed. "A pack of Kools." Her voice was scratchy, as if she hadn't used it in a long time, or was a chain-smoker. Anne turned to get her a pack and noticed the carton was empty.
"I have to apologize again, ma'am, I seem to be out of Kools. Would you mind waiting a moment while I got some from the storeroom?"
The girl shrugged non-committally and Anne hurried off to get the cigarettes.
***
The lights had been turned out, the floors were swept, and everything was put away, clean and ready for the next day. Just one thing left to do, Anne thought happily to herself. It had been a good day, despite the daydreaming incident. She'd seen lots of human suffering...human suffering just begging to be written about. If this one gets published, I may think of doing another, she thought as she went to gather her belongings from behind the counter. I've got tons of material.... She reached to get her manuscript...and her hand found nothing but empty shelf space. She patted around for it, forcing herself to stay calm. Maybe it had just gotten shoved back further than she thought. No. Maybe it was in her bag. No. Maybe it was in the storeroom. No, no, no! Anne turned the place upside down, tearing trough the cheap plastic and fluorescent looking for her life on paper. It was nowhere to be found. Looking at the destruction surrounding her, Anne sank to the ground and started sobbing. A voice tore through her despair, worsening it with its passage.
"No!" she yelled. "I told you to go away! You went away!" Her yelling was lost in her sobs as her mother's voice permeated her skull, invading her mind and chasing her thoughts away until there was nothing but the voice, the scolding voice, telling her she was nothing. She was nothing. She couldn't even hold onto her own manuscript, for godssakes.
"This is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming; don't speak to wharf-rat boys; don't talk like a slut; don't look like a slut; don't be the slut you are; slut, slut, slut; you're a failure because you don't listen to your mama; you slut!"
Her mother's voice rose to a crescendo inside her head. Anne curled up into the fetal position, clamping her hands over her ears and writhing to and fro, trying to block out the words that didn't stop. Her head hit a nearby shelf once, twice, three times, and she hit it again and again until blackness took her.
***
Connie sat in the car, reading. She'd never read for pleasure before. She wasn't even getting much pleasure out of it, aside from the power trip of reading a stolen manuscript. She hadn't shown Arnold. She wouldn't until she was done with it, because he'd take it away or burn it when she slept. She didn't care enough about it to threaten him into letting her have it, and she couldn't carry out that threat besides. So she read it in secret.
It wasn't good writing, not that she had much basis for comparison. The plot was confusing and loosely tied together, and she couldn't see much connection between the characters. Still, she read--because she wasn't allowed to and because she'd stolen it. It wasn't pleasure from the book itself. She felt pleasure knowing that it wasn't hers, that it belonged to that stupid clerk in the stupid gas station, who didn't even have the cigarettes Connie had wanted. She deserved to have her stupid book stolen from her.
Sensing Arnold's proximity, a skill she'd cultivated in the past few years, she looked up and saw him coming back to the car. He wasn't looking at her--he'd gotten rid of the sunglasses a while ago and she could see his eyes now--so she quickly put the book back in her bag.
He'd reached the car. He got in, saying, "They have a room. We can sleep tonight."
"We never sleep," she answered, as he drove the car into a parking space. They got out in unison and headed to their room, not even bothering to lock the car.
***
Connie lay awake. It was another week, another roadside motel, another day of endless highway. She'd finished the book and dumped it in a trashcan somewhere. She wasn't thinking about the book, though. She was thinking about Ellie, the guy Arnold had traveled with when she first went with him. Ellie was dead now. She and Arnold had killed him. It had been an accident, she guessed. They'd been driving, late at night, and they'd hit something, bump in the road or something. Ellie'd gotten out to check the front wheel--it had a habit of coming off--and Arnold had been stretching. He'd stretched his arms back and his legs forward and his foot had been on the accelerator--by accident, he said, in his forced voice.
They'd thrown Ellie into the woods by the road and gone on their way. After that he'd ditched the jalopy and gotten a new car, and they'd been traveling ever since---ditching cars when they ran them into the ground and getting a new one. She didn't even know what car they were on.
Connie blinked once, twice. Why was she thinking about Ellie anyway? He was gone, he didn't matter. Because he's dead, the voice that was and wasn't hers answered in her head. He's dead. And she wanted Arnold dead.
Her thoughts swung 'round to the book. She hadn't really followed the plot or how the characters had fit together, but there had been one character who had hated her husband...so she killed him and herself together. Connie wanted that. She couldn't commit suicide. Arnold didn't let her get a hold of knives. She couldn't do it even if she had the tools. She wanted him dead. And she wanted herself dead. And for that to happen, she had to kill either one. There was a way.
Connie sighed soundlessly--Arnold was still awake--and turned over onto her side. She slept for the hour before dawn.
***
Another gas station. Connie went in to buy cigarettes. When she got back out, Arnold said, "Fill up the car. I need to piss." He stalked off to the bathroom.
She smiled strangely. A new plan was forming in her mind. She'd thought of killing him at night when he was off his guard, or sleeping. She'd even formed a plan. But she'd scratched it out. It wouldn't work--she'd still be living, and he'd be dead. And she couldn't kill herself. She just couldn't.
This...this was different, yet similar. She'd read something like it in the book, and dismissed the idea as impossible. Arnold wouldn't let her near the tank. Till now. And now...well, the plan worked. Two birds with one stone. Or drop.
She shoved the nozzle into the tank and propped up the handle. Then she stepped back and leaned against the pump, waiting.
The tank filled. Connie waited. It backed up, overflowing. Connie stood stock-still. Finally, Arnold came around the corner from the bathroom. She got out her cigarette pack and her lighter. He was a few yards from the car. She put her cigarette in her mouth and lit it, sucking in and savoring the flavor. Connie saw Arnold quicken his stride. She did nothing, taking long, lazy drags on her cigarette. It was her last.
He was only a few feet away now. She took the cigarette out of her mouth. "You're not supposed to smoke at a gas station," he said.
She smiled and laughed, pointing downwards. There was gas sloshing around their feet, staining his boots. It dripped from the gas nozzle, building the steadily growing lake on the ground. He took a horrified step back.
"Too late," she said, triumph on her face as she dropped her cigarette.
Funny... she thought as her flesh burned, my own plans fail...and yet the ones written by some bored gas station attendant in her spare time...succeed.
She thought nothing else.
