On the purple highway, streetlights flicker a warning in Morse: the girl in the car is not in her body.
Unbuckle your seatbelt, you’re immortal – no.
Shadows of hillsides blur on the side of the road where the fragile roadkill lies. It finds itself caught in the headlights, gets up and dies again. And even if the car swerves, death is predetermined. How many times can a deer die? The scene loops before the eyes of the girl floating above the car, her legs detached in the footwell. Behind the wheel, the wolf hums along to the radio, reveling in the power of his stare to catch and kill, over and over. His pupils narrow to slits; he can’t be real.
Open the car door and tumble out, you won’t feel it – no.
Tap, tap, arms still numb, still not hers.
Distract the wolf with a scream; the car won’t crash; it will keep gliding indefinitely – no.
The driver looks somehow like her father if he had grown canines, if he had become his wolfish glare. Her breath, her voice, is somewhere outside, her body – or the deer’s – covered in fuzzy brown fur, caught under the manmade glow. The wolf creeps into the backseat, but the car keeps going. Junction 20. She watches the pedals tremble beneath cloven hooves. Onto the eternal, unlit off-ramp, bodies in the car.