Cement

August 15th, 2024

This Ted may or may not be a real Marshmot resident in this universe, but whatever, that's not the point. The point is this is a real piece that was fabricated in another universe that just so happens to mention the town. And he is real somewhere...

... Wouldn't want him in my town.

---

"Hey there, fella. You stranded?"

The gravel dust blew over my shoes as the voice came from behind me. The man must've parked whatever large vehicle he was driving down the road just to talk to me, sitting there. Sitting in the gravel off the side of the road. It was a pain in the ass.

I stood up with a grunt, turning to look at him while the sun beat down on the both of us. I patted the dust off my behind as I got my first look at the guy.

I had been walking for a while and was covered with a sticky sweat, but he looked clean and calm. Besides his slightly greasy-looking hair, at least. His blue skin stood out against the scenery; his camper was as warm as the short fields of grass and farmland nothingness that surrounded us. But he wouldn't look out of place against the clear, cloudless sky.

Something about him didn't click right with me, but I try not to be judgmental. "Yeah. Yeah, I am."

His face stayed unchanged, a smile already greeting me. He was turning back to his camper, but he kept his eyes on me as he motioned me to follow," You want a ride? C'mon."

I had been walking for a while. The only reason I sat there was because my feet were burning from the inside out. I imagined having to take my shoes off, and then having to scoop out the bloody mincemeat I had made of my soles. It wasn't a pleasant past few hours. I glanced beside myself and down the road; there was unease at the thought, but I don't think I had much of a choice.

I followed the man, without a word, into his RV. Here I go, hitchhiking with a strange man. Best decision of my life.

The interior was quite wooden. Everything had a golden tone; the sunlight that peeked in scattered across every surface after hitting the orange wood walls. A few cushioned seats, some at a small table, all yellow and patterned with small flowers. But, I decided to sit in the passenger seat.

The dash was littered with an assortment of items. A few puzzle books with examples of word searches, crosswords, and sudoku on their covers; two or three novels; and at least one old car magazine. The multiple covers weren't at all sun-bleached; the man must be more tidy than the mess makes him look. The dark-haired man sat with a readied huff into the driver's seat, getting everything running to roll back down the road.

The man. He must've had a name. I looked to the road ahead, my thoughts dodging between annoyance, anxiety, and curiosity, before I spoke," So... What's your name?"

"Well, where are my manners, let you in without an introduction... My name is Terrance. What's your name?"

"Mason."

His voice still had the molding of a smile in its tone," That's a swell name. I've met a Mason before. I've-... That probably sounds a bit funny, but I just mean I meet a lotta folks on the road." He held back a slight chuckle under his words.

"It's fine." At this point, I was waiting for him to ask where I was going. I wasn't too bothered to mention it myself. I wasn't too motivated to get home in the first place. I was riled up more than anything else still, bothered by everything. I didn't care that it would make me standoffish. My feet still ached, and my breathing was recovering from being so labored from all that walking.

I don't remember the last time I was in a camper. It was a bit louder than my car, but that should be expected. I could already tell this man must enjoy talking. No wonder he's picked up a lot of people. "Where you headed, then?"

"Uh... Kenosha." No need to be more specific than that.

"Alright, Kenosha." We were still around lots of empty fields, and every so often, there'd be a driveway or a house surrounded by a few trees. Sometimes, barns. He had paused but continued," What had you sittin' on the side of the road like that, no car? Were you walkin'?"

That damn car. I felt a wave of irritation as I remembered it. I let out a sigh," Yeah. My car shat out on me for no f-... for no reason." I couldn't help but prop an elbow on the door beside me, the side of my head in my hand," Absolutely no reason. It's used, but it's never given me trouble until now."

His voice was low and smooth; it dragged along, but it was friendly enough," That's a shame. Them things gotta pop eventually. Just his time." A few seconds of silence before he spoke again," Don't worry too much about it, now. Relax. I'll drive ya home, you can do your business there. Say, did you call anyone?"

Hah, call anyone... Yeah, that would've been nice, wouldn't it? "No. My phone bricked at work for no reason, too. So I have to fucking deal with that as well." My fingertips were melding into my temple at this point. I could only relax so much. I wouldn't say the man made it any easier.

"Ain't that just some bad luck." I couldn't help but glance to him now. He said it with a disapproving shake of his head," I'm sorry 'bout that. But really, don't let that wind you up, now. It'll come in time. Read somethin'," A hand of his left the wheel to gesture at the book-laden dashboard for a moment," Anything. Hell, you could get a snack, too." His head tipped back for a beat, gesturing into the rest of the RV. "Somethin' to take your edge off. Wouldn't want ya bein' antsy."

I held in a tense huff but replied," Thanks. I'll think about it."

It had been a while since I'd been a passenger rather than a driver. It starts to get your mind running to places it hasn't gone to in a while. Places it doesn't even really want to be. An unoccupied mind starts to reorganize itself. Cobwebs become visible, and it's not a pretty sight.

I suppose things have to get cleaned up eventually. Maybe I needed this. But it brings up old memories and hidden feelings.

As I sat in the big, cushiony car seat, staring down the running road, the sun being felt on my arms, I stewed in the roving silence. Just my luck... That stupid fucking car. Stupid fucking phone. It was a beautiful day. I wish I didn't need to deal with this bullshit. I readjusted, sitting back in my seat with crossed arms, leaning away from the window and the sunlight. I haven't bothered relaxing in a while. How am I supposed to do that now? I closed my eyes. This is gonna take forever. How long has this been already? The RV had a pleasant smell, like an autumn candle. Like spice, cinnamon, and smoky wood. This commute is gonna take way longer than if I were driving. And I'm not even thinking about how this guy must be doing the speed limit. It wasn't a suitable seasonal smell, though. At the moment, you'd expect something you could call "ocean breeze." My chest felt heavy like every empty cavity in between the flesh was filled with cement.

I opened my left eye to peek over at him. He's focused on driving. I closed my eye. I don't want to get back home. I don't want to deal with my phone or my car. I just want it all to stop. But it's stupid to wish for something that can't happen. Not with a snap of the fingers, at least.

"So, you said work? Were you gettin' back home?" Terrance abruptly spoke up. It's like, with a snap of the fingers, I was back from my thoughts.

I opened my eyes back up just to see the same scenery I've been seeing all this time, and all before, midwestern plains," Yeah. I guess."

He let out a small chuckle,"... You guess? What, ain't much of a home?"

Briefly amused, I let out a small huff from my nose," Yeah. It isn't."

"I'm sorry 'bout that. Ain't no way to have to live." I could imagine him shaking his head disapprovingly again, certain I didn't need to turn my head and see it," Everyone needs a home."

"You got one?" It was tempting to close my eyes again. They were heavy, but even then, not heavy enough to keep them closed. My blinking was slow. I couldn't make up my mind about it. Tired, not sleepy.

He had this content feeling about him. He seemed very comfortable with himself," Yup. Course I do." I glanced over. He was sitting the same way he had been this entire time. He had long, thin arms, but they looked strong. His large hands gripped the steering wheel comfortably.

"Where do you live?" I hadn't given the man a good once over. He really was sky blue, if a bit darker. It wasn't helped by the great breadth of hair along his arms.

"Well, it ain't about where I live." I could see him smile lightly again as he talked, his posture gesturing. Where he usually held out his neck, he pulled back a bit before settling forward again, accentuating as he spoke. "But, I do live here, in my RV." He let his right hand go again, letting it rest on the dashboard with a gentle touch," He's my home. 'N, well, we go everywhere."

He pulled his hand back to the wheel, his eyes still on the road. So it's a he? "He?"

His smile stretched with slight amusement at my statement for a second before he responded," Yup. I call him Felix."

"Lovely." I turned my eyes back to the road. They felt heavy again. "Lovely name." I had a feeling this guy wasn't going to keep the ride silent. The loathsome, sprawling cement remained in my chest.

"Ain't it just..." His voice washed over with a loving fondness. His voice paused for a moment; he seemed to clear his throat," He's my home. 'N he ain't a place, least ain't my opinion." He had a point there, in a way. His RV isn't a mark on a map. "Now, do you really not got a home?"

I thought about it for a second. My apartment wasn't a home... My car definitely wasn't a home. What else could've possibly been home? "Nah. No home."

"Well... That ain't no good, fella." The sunlight kept glowing through my eyelids, my vision nothing but clouds of black and orangish red as I kept my mind barely concentrated on Terrance's voice. "That's somethin' you should ponder on."

I held back a sigh. I couldn't help but roll my eyes underneath my eyelids. "Why?"

He seemed to think for a second, too, a moment of silence building upon itself as the time passed. "... Homes are important. They make ya feel good. Keeps ya connected to somethin'. Keeps ya connected to everything else." He spoke with the same cadence across each sentence, the words flowing like a steady line of traffic. I opened my eyes to look at him again," Don't really gotta be a place. Just gotta be home." He wasn't smiling now, but he looked fine and focused. The lack of a smile didn't make him less sinister-looking. "Home bein' a thing or a place does help, though. You understandin' me?" He glanced over at me for what felt like the first time in this whole ride.

I didn't want to be looking at him then. I turned my eyes back to the road. "Yeah. I think so." Cement. It was like cement. Laid inside, thick and heavy, it gave my heart no room to beat. It gave my lungs no room to breathe.

"Mhm. Good." The longer the drive kept going, the more the air felt thickened with some sort of tension. He said to relax, but I couldn't feel my nerves back down. I guess I just wasn't made for hitchhiking. Not to mention the multiple other stressors. He broke the pause," Just think on it. Spend some time with it." The RV rumbled over a segment of old road, and we were surrounded by trees. This is about the worst the road got on my commute. This really was taking forever. "... Drivin' can really let you think, if you have the head for it. But I gotta feelin' you don't get pretty lax while drivin'."

I stared at the cracks passing under us on the asphalt, the tires bumping along them. At the moment, we were surrounded by trees. I knew it wouldn't last long. We'd be coming up to another old barn, surrounded by more swaths of tillage. I didn't enjoy talking to this man. At this point, I did want to get to my apartment. If I had the choice, I would be nowhere at all.

What did I even have to do at home, then? I'd have to use some other phone to make a call for my car or something. God knows how long that will take. And then what about my phone? Am I just... supposed to take it into the store? And they're going to wring me drier, of all my stable mind, and I'll agonize again. And there will be an unfair cost to all of this. That is on top of all the time they'll already take from me and the time I've already lost. Christ, it's just... so fucking annoying!

There's the barn. It's got a huge, nasty hole in the roof. Part of the wall was broken through, too. A real big husk-looking thing of a building. Past the dull, grey wood, the inside appears to be just an empty void. Even with all the sunlight, it was too dark inside to get any sense of its innards. I guess, maybe, there's nothing too important in it. No time to fix it. No bother. Even on such a nice day, it looked barren and hopeless. Like the cement.

Back to fields and back to trees, as usual. If I hadn't driven the roads so much before, I'm sure I'd feel lost in the wide-open, esoteric labyrinth. It would feel just a bit odd to get lost in a place so flat and unobstructed, where you could see things for miles in the right spot.

"... What is wrong with your house then, fella? If it ain't your home?" He spoke up again, all of a sudden. He would be an annoying neighbor, I can imagine.

I felt myself getting anxious again. Thoughts blip in for a moment, gone the next. I could feel my throat tightening. Cement coming up the pipe. "It just sucks. I live in a shit apartment. With shitty people." My gaze at the passing landscape outside was strenuous. "It's so tiring."

I could imagine him beside me, nodding his head again as he spoke," Mm, that'll do it. I'm sorry 'bout that." He paused for a moment, with a light sigh, before continuing," Certainly ain't somethin' I'd make my home, either." He had a loose quality about him. It fits with his lanky limbs. "I hope things start lookin' up soon for you." And like a wind chime, he goes and sings a stupid song.

"Not likely." I probably had many things to say, many things I wanted to say. I could build my foundation, blight the landscape, but decency restrained me.

"Not likely?" I heard him smiling again. "You sound like an 8-ball." He had that chuckle in his throat again. "You never know. Things happen in funny ways sometimes." Uttering a groan would've been building the foundation. This drive will end eventually. "People, things... they... They bump off each other. Like ripples." He spoke with the rhythm of an old teacher. I could see him gesturing drops in a lake with his hands, but only in my head. I knew his hands were still on the wheel. "You can't just say it's not likely."

"You don't know me."

He still had a smile on his lips," I know I don't, not much. I'm just speakin' my thoughts." And then he let the silence flow back in, letting the air refresh. I still managed to speak that with tension in the air, but the tension was gone now. At least, the tension of him tapping needles to my skin, thinking he knows what's right for me. But I kept the cement's spigot open. I knew my voice was getting that tense and bitter tone, but I let it out anyway.

"I just want it all to be over."

He tried to be like water and smother the fire, or I suppose, plug the spigot," Now, fella... Just relax. Please." He did sound like he cared. As if he wanted me to just let it all go. "Don't get yourself worked up now. Really, pick up a book or somethin'. I know your mind must be runnin' a mile a minute, just slow it down."

My eyes stayed on the passing trees. They smeared across my vision, like the road, like the grass. Like this guy knew what I was dealing with. Like he had a commute, I couldn't change it if I wanted to. Like he lived in a shitty apartment, no better one available. Like he had a phone— I need it so badly— in this shitty RV, never mind its glow, this guy was too old fashioned to know how bad I have it. Just relax? Like I had the time. Like he knew a damn thing about my life. Like he knew how to fix everything. He couldn't fix anything. These problems weren't solvable. Not really solvable.

He started to slow down, vehicle toddling as he pulled it to the side of the road as best as he could. "Damn it all, I'm sorry." I looked at him out of the corner of my eye as he parked and turned to me in his seat before standing up, smile still on his face," I just gotta use the restroom. I'll be right back, real quick." He lightly gripped his belt and gave it a gesturing adjustment before walking back into his RV. Great. More time.

My eyes wandered around the RV a bit. I looked back into it, past the seating, past the kitchen, past the bathroom, past the bed, but I stayed seated. It was still light, though less so when the windows were spotted with the shade of tree leaves. It was a pretty RV. I felt a groan in my head again like I had before, turning back to look down the road. We were so close. Just a few more turns, and I would be out. The road was nice and smooth here. There were no cracks yet. Still, not yet out of the farm fields. The transition between them and a town is more tight than people might think. I eyed a book on the dashboard.

Hunting Humans: An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers, Volume 1

Strange taste.

I stretched forward, plucking the book from the dashboard and sitting back in my seat. It was a runty but decently thick paperback book. The cover was plastered with the yellow, high-contrast mugs of, I can only assume, serial killers. It shouts HUNTING HUMANS with black text against a great, red splatter. Cracks ran up along the printing of its spine. Above the title there was a quote:

"THE DEFINITIVE WORK... A MUST READ FOR ANYONE INTERESTED IN CRIME" Jack Olsen, author of DOC

... Whatever "DOC" is...

I can't say I was very interested in crime. Not very interested at all. I would bet that I would not want to be near most people who read these types of books. I wouldn't even touch them with a ten-foot pole. I knew I got weird vibes from this guy.

Even still, I opened its yellowed pages. It had that dusty book smell. Past some names, some familiar and distasteful, and past some acknowledgments came the preface.

The face of modern homicide is changing. We are caught up in the midst of what one expert calls an "epidemic of homicidal mania,"- I rolled my eyes, I couldn't help it, -victimized by a new breed of "recreational killers" who slaughter their victims at random, for the sheer sport of killing. I didn't exactly want to keep reading, but as I peeked at the dashboard again, the other book seemed to be of the same flavor as this one. Is it all he reads? I sure hoped not. In the years since World War II, our annual solution rate for homicides has dropped from 90% to 76%,- I read on and was easily sucked into the words. They were in my thoughts, and though I didn't care for the topic, I was well-focused. It did take my mind off of everything else. It's the best I could do right then. The other things on the dashboard— It was just slim pickings. I'd rather not look at cars, and I didn't see a pencil in close reach. Terrence looked like he belonged on the cover of—

Ted lunged his arms up, down, and back into himself as he held the cord to Mason's neck, pulling and pulling and pulling tighter, tighter, tighter against the passenger seat, against the struggling man," C'mon..." Mason tried to pull his fingers under the cord that quickly dug into the thin skin of his neck, against the larynx, against the jugular, any vessel within constriction's reach, rasps and coughs sounding so loud in the air, but so weak, Ted gritted his teeth as he felt his arms shake with the stress," C'mon..." it's so much faster than you think but feels so much slower, his forehead got tacky, the both of them. Mason went slack, falling unconscious. Ted removed the rope, tossing it to the floor as he let Mason sit there in his sleep for a moment. It doesn't get easier, but it isn't very hard.

Ted pulled the man from the seat and held him up from under the shoulders, lumbering him right behind the driving seats where the floor was the widest. Right now, it was just routine.

He got his tarp under the body. He kneeled over it, the body on its side and his knees sitting behind it. He pulled out his trusty hunting knife and made a quick, deep cut across the throat. The blood came quickly, and so did the sound of air sputtering through it from the windpipe. the blood flowed down the tarp, with the RV tilted just slightly off the side of the road. Ted wouldn't let it get messy, though. Not this time. He shouldn't stay here much longer. Mason just needed to be dead. Then, more would come.

Ted still marveled at the stunning red color of it, pulled the tarp this way and that to prevent the blood from getting out of control. Eventually, he was satisfied and simply sat and kneeled. He kept looking at it. He always did this. He felt the back of the body against his knees and held an arm with one of his hands. It was still warm. Death, it was there in every sense. Feeling them turn cold was just as fascinating as the blood, every time. He didn't always think that way.

Ted thought about Mason. He glanced over to the book he had picked up. It fell to the floor beside the passenger seat when Ted attacked.

Hunting Humans: An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers, Volume 1

Ted slipped a hand into Mason's left pants pocket, pulling out his wallet. Ted sighed as he opened it, looking through and staring straight into the eyes of Mason's ID. He pocketed the wallet. He would check the rest of the body and clean it for disposal later. He should be getting back to Marshmot. It isn't far of a drive.

Ted felt an ache in his chest, like a chunk of cement lodging between his lungs.