Lady Jane By Pamela Hill

Lady Jane runs where reddish leaves sway on branches over the road, her heart pounding, blood dripping from her knees. A silver car screeches to a halt. She runs to the thing purring up ahead, opens the door, slides in, and glances over at the driver. “Go, go go,” she says as she stretches the hem of her dress down below her knees while looking over her shoulder out the rear window. “Locusts are coming.”

The driver revs the engine and accelerates 0-150 mph. He negotiates tree-lined corners, skims the road, then guides the machine high above the trees. Slammed back against the seat, she thinks, no, this isn’t a combustion engine. This is the engine her grandmother warned her about.

“Stop,” Lady Jane yells. “Let me out.”

“Let me out.”

He slams onto a forest roadway, a gritty path of potholes and bumps. He holds the steering wheel with one hand while loosening his black tie with the other. Turns his head to stare at her. His eyes yellow.

Eyes of a flesh-eater.

Lady Jane kicks the door open and jumps, rolls in gravel, then runs through a sugar-cane field to hide beneath the stalks near a rotting woodshed. She hides until she can no longer hear grit under tires or the whooshing sound the machine makes when skimming the earth. She waits until the sun goes down, trembling and plagued by the breeze and the crescendos of screeching insects.

She waits until morning comes.

When the sun rises, she finds a stream and splashes cool water on her face. She walks in tall, swaying grass, just off the road, and wonders what system this is. Unable to find access to the system from which she came, she hobbles back to the old shed and pushes on the door as rain begins sprinkling the field. The door moans and creaks open. She steps inside and scans the dirt floor for a place to rest. She hears the door creak behind her, turns and sees yellow eyes.

“I knew you’d be here,” he says. “You’ve nowhere to go.” His skin sags, rolls down the contours of his face. Teeth as yellow as his eyes.

He slams the shed door, moves toward Lady Jane as dust particles fill the air so thick they sparkle like stars in a stream of light shining through the window. Lady Jane closes her eyes and remembers the stars over gentle currents of the sea.

© 2014 Pamela Hill

Pamela Hill attended private college in Northeast Florida where she graduated summa cum laude. She currently lives in Florida where two statuesque beauties in the form of highly intelligent felines illuminate humor with sudden ninja attacks on her computer mouse while she works on her first novel. Pamela’s poetry and prose can be found in or is forthcoming in Ping Pong, Thrush Poetry Journal, Copperfield Review, Apeiron Review, Write Place at the Write Time, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, and other journals.

 

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