Daiesthai

“I think we just ran someone over,” Alina quivers. The moon is wan and ghastly, a blind eye that refuses to not see. It causes Alina’s ashen skin to emit a spectral glow.
“The car did…thud,” Harly corroborates, her voice sincere and shaky.
“Whatever it was, it was probably already ran over by somebody else,” Boombox yawns, speeding down a back-road in Iowa. He glances at Alina ravenously; she shivers, avoiding his hungering gaze. She knows he’s high on glass. He was smoking it as they waited for take-out back out McDonald’s.
Harly stares out the window, dreamy and unconvinced. “Let’s go back and check, just to make sure. It’ll only take five minutes anyway.”
“You want to go back? Fucking walk. You’re not worth the price of gas,” Boombox cachinnates, chewing tobacco. Harly glares at him sternly, folding her arms. She is charismatically blond and freckled, hazel eyes speckled with gold. She is sitting in the backseat, tapping her foot resiliently. Alina is in the front seat, next to Boombox, who, while driving with one arm, is slithering his other sleazily closer to her left thigh.
Boombox, bopping his head to the blaring music, makes a U-turn, back in the direction of whatever they ran over. He’s grinning maniacally, reeking with delusions of omnipotence. “Only reason I’m going back is to run over whatever it is again to make sure its dead,” he smiles menacingly.
They drive for ten minutes or so before Boombox breaks the car to a shrieking halt. On the road is a flattened corpse of what appears to be a teenage girl; her femur is jutting out from her leg and her stomach is eviscerated, the remnants of tire tracks imprinted on what’s left of her skin. Boombox snickers, slamming his foot back down on the pedal. The car thuds again and Boombox slaps the wheel of the car hysterically. Alina, shell-shocked, holds her shoulders; Harly, unflappably composed, is staring at nothing in particular, mesmerized. Boombox continues to mutilate the girl’s corpse, driving back and forth over it, cackling madly. He then parks the car on top of it and vaunts the hydraulics, silently reddening with laughter. Alina unbuckles her seatbelt and flings open the car door, facing away from the corpse and slightly bouncing her feet with terror.
“You know, Box, I think you might be right,” Harly speculates. “Someone ran over this girl before we did. No one saw her, and she made no noise upon impact.”
Boombox, calming down, shrugs, rhythmically chewing his tobacco and bopping his head. Harly can tell Alina is moments away from having a debilitating panic attack. She’s already prone to seizures as it is. She steps out of the car as well, putting her arm around Alina, who’s sallow with terror. Boombox whoops enthusiastically, starting to laugh again.
Harly approaches the mangled, contorted corpse of the girl. She squints and…undaunted, discerns a pair of once gleaming white wings sprouting out of her back, now bloodied and marred. Upon closer inspection Harly notices the girl has fluorescent, iris-less eyes and stark platinum hair.
“Alina…I…come over here,” Harly stammers.
“I can’t; the smell alone is filling my throat with vomit.”
“Alina we didn’t run over a girl. Alina we didn’t even run over a human. Or whoever ran over whatever this thing is.”
Boombox is fixated on the window wipers. His smile is tapered to his face, though it flickers every so often, indicative that his high is wearing off. Alina gets back inside the car, huddling as close to the door as possible while Boombox tweaks and jerks, his smile conveying a flat affect. Harly glances back at the two of them in the car, bewildered. We just ran over an angel, she shutters. Maybe there is a hell after all.
Boombox is fidgeting perfunctorily, his smile contrived and trembling.
“You know no one cares about how fucked up you are,” Alina vilifies, scornfully taking advantage his state of self-afflicted panic and despair. He’s tweaking frenziedly. She tries not to pity him, her maternal instincts instilling her with guilt. She scoots closer to him, putting her hand on his hand, reluctantly, squeezing her eyes shut, near tears again. Boombox thrashes, startled, and begins to tweak even more disturbingly. Alina gets out of the car just as Harly leans against the window; the door slams her onto the ground. Alina gasps, apologizing frantically. Harly, holding one hand against her head, gestures at her with a brush of the hand to stop. She sighs forebodingly.
“Alina I don’t know how to explain this,” Harly flutters her eyes drearily, kicking at the ground.
“What?” Alina implores. Harly wonders how Alina’s eyes always seem to be pleading. She’s staring at her as if she’s trying to maintain more than just her attention.
“I think we just ran over an angel. Or ran over the corpse of an already run over angel.”
Alina raises her brow incredulously, her eyes naively watery.
Boombox finally revs the engine to the truck and drives off, leaving the two of them behind. Harly runs after the truck yelling at Boombox to wait for them, to turn back, but the cacophonic music already drowns out her voice.
“Yeah drugs are bad,” Harly snarls. Alina glances at her quizzically. “Oh would you stop with the eyes.”
“I’m not the junkie,” Alina snaps back.
“Just because I use heroin doesn’t make me a fucking junkie you ignoramus.”
“Bitch,” Alina stomps off, accidentally stepping on the corpse of the angel and shrieking. Harly laughs.
“Who’s the clean one now?” She smirks. Alina tears at her hair, stomping off in the opposite direction. Harly pulls out a pack of cigarettes but fumbles and drops it on the ground. As she leans down to pick it up Boombox roars down the road and breaks next to her, running over the supposed angel again. Her head erupted and slabs of her brain sprinkled the road like scattered birdseed.
“Get in,” he barks, deranged by sobriety. There are mulberry swells beneath his bloodshot eyes; his glasses are crooked and cracked. She hurdles herself into the passenger’s seat, circling around the back of the truck.
“What made you decide to come back.”
“My body’s not going to fuck itself,” he asserts, clumsily kissing her forehead and giving her a noogie.
“That’s what the exhaust pipe’s for,” Harly smirks. Boombox chuckles.
“Alright so what’s going on,” he asks, shutting the engine off.
“Well Alina had one of her maudlin temper-tantrums and stormed off to God knows where,” she accounts. “But that’s a given.”
“And the corpse?” he inquires suspiciously.
“Well…it’s not human.” Boombox’s arm flails as he turns to look at her.
“Are you fucking with me?”
“Not yet,” she simpers.
“What do you mean it’s not human. What is it, a faggot?”
“Box, it has wings. It has fucking wings sticking out of its back.” Boombox promptly gets out of the car, leaving the door open. He nearly convulses over to the corpse, berserk with tweaking, jerking, riddled with spasms, scratching himself. He scrutinizes the remains of the corpse, hunching over to tear off one of the wings. It won’t budge. It’s softer than anything he’s ever touched in his life; diaphanous.
“Let’s bury it. Dig up someone’s grave,” he muses. “Toss…oh, yeah. Not much to bury,” he reconsiders.
Alina comes into view in the direction she ran, sulking towards the others. When she’s next to Boombox she says nothing, downcast and blushing. She pulls out what resembles a gum rapper and sits cross-legged on the road, tearing the wrapper open and pouring powder into her hands. Boombax rolls his eyes, snickering. She takes a sawed off straw from her pocket and snorts all the powder. Within fifteen minutes she’s wobbled next to the corpse of the angel. Boombox steadies her as she…lies down next to it. Together Alina and the corpse stare up at the stars.
Harly, still ruminating about what to do with the corpse of an angel, especially if someone were to drive by, motions for Boombox to walk over to her.
“Did she just snort heroin?” Harly stood akimbo.
“I think so,” Boombox stuttered.
“The bitch, she stole it from me,” Harly swore under her breath.
“This is like a requiem for a nightmare,” Boombox sighs, shaking his head.
“I say we just lug her off the ground next to her new drug buddy and get the hell out of here,” Harly suggests firmly. “Even if it is an angel, we didn’t commit the crime.”
“So you just want to leave a dead angel in the middle of the street?” Boombox asks, taken aback.
Harly gazes at him contemptuously.

An hour later, Harly and Boombox sitting in the front seats, Alina nodding off while lying down in the back seat, the decapitated and disemboweled dead angel bedewed in the trunk. No on can hear themselves think because Boombox has the music playing so loud. Harly irrationally wants to dump Alina on the side of the road. Boombox signals to Harly if she wants to score some dope by gesticulating shooting up with his knuckles.
She nods. “No pun intended.” Boombox laughs. Alina is writhing with rapture in the backseat, tears streaming down her cheeks. Harly rolls her eyes. Boombox pulls the car over with a perverse grin on his face; Harly glares at him leerily. Opening the driver’s seat door, he hops out and swings open the backseat door.
“Get out of here,” he preens, wriggling himself into position; Harly rolls her eyes, again, and steps out of the truck, leaning against the door she closes behind her. Within seconds she can hear the sound of flesh lapping against flesh; a depraved, dulling sound, inspiring her to circle around back and check on the angel’s corpse. She’d pity Alina if the bitch hadn’t filched her heroin.
Harly pops open the trunk, her mouth instantly agape. She scampers over to Boombox and throws a rock at him to gain his attention; he swears, his ass jiggling, and swirls around. Harly beckons him to follow her and, naked, he jumbles behind her.
The angel is no longer there.

“You ever see that movie I Know What You Did Last Winter or whatever,” Boombox asks, alluding to their current circumstance.
“It’s Summer you imbecile,” Harly retorts. “And angels aren’t hooked killers that come back from the dead.”
“How’d you know.” Boombox scoffs. “Ever met one?”
“Well then we’d both deserve to die anyway,” Harly mumbles. Alina is still struggling to keep conscious, lying in the backseat. She’s foaming at the mouth, drooling like a spider weaving a web. Harly starts thwacking Boombox to stop the car, enraged at the sight of Alina. Boombox complains that he’ll have no one to, well—he begins to stutter as Harly climbs into the back seat, flings open the closest door, and scoots Alina’s body out of the truck. Boombox, still protesting, refuses to drive unless Alina gets back in the car; Alina unfortunately can’t move as she’s so drugged. Boombox locks the entire car so Harly can’t get in either; she pounds on the passenger’s seat door, grit with resentment.
Despite the commotion, Boombox has been listening intently to the radio, which broadcasts the description of a missing girl age fourteen wearing an angel costume; Boombox listens to the description until the explicit similarities instill him with dread and he—panics, unlocking the truck and tripping over himself as staggers to open and close the trunk in denial, hoping eventually upon popping it open the corpse will manifest itself. Harly observes him, skeptically akimbo.
“What the hell are you doing,” she asks.
“Missing fourteen-year-old girls don’t just disappear out of trunks,” he replies.
“Angels probably can,” Harly raises her brow.
“I just heard on the radio about a girl gone missing with the same exact description of the girl we might have killed.”
Harly, no longer snarky, mouth agape: “Are you serious?”
“Do I look like I’d be doing this if I wasn’t serious?” he snarls.
“You never know; you’re always on drugs.”
“You just happened to caught me at a time when you’re not.”
She ignores him, “What about Alina? We can’t just…leave her here?”
“That’s the plan,” he says, still flinging the trunk up and down. Harly rushes over to Alina, who’s still gaggling with rapture, trying to snap her out of it. She begins to tug her body towards the truck, but as she does, Alina protests and unsteadily, arises to her feet, only to fall again. Harly helps her stumble into the backseat of the car, muttering incoherently.
“Alright, looks as if the angel isn’t going to show,” Boombox confirms. “She couldn’t have gone far, though. Must be in the proximity.”
“Proximity is a pretty big word for you,” Harly smiles giddily. As they get back in the car Boombox snatches his meth-pipe from the dashboard. Harly notices this and as he’s about to take a hit, punches the pipe out the window. Boombox stares at her with rage and despair. He pulls over, stupefied. “I’m not going to be the only sober one here,” Harly proclaims, holding out her extended fist where the collision took place. Boombox ignores Harly like a mother ignoring her child’s self-inflicted wounds, mourning over the loss of his potential high.
“We’re going to ditch the car by the woods on our right,” Boombox orders, tragically. The woods look surreally lugubrious. Harly gulps.
“What about Alina?”
“Junkies don’t have feelings too,” he ducks out of the car. Harly glances back at Alina, who’s still unconscious. She tries to wake her up but proves futile. “You coming or not?” Boombox shouts. Harly, riddled with guilt, follows him with a laconic, solemn gait, as if she were wearing stilettos instead of pockmarked sneakers.
They trudge off into the woods wordlessly, scrutinized by a vigilante moon. Each colossal pine tree they pass judges them; the farther they pursue the harsher the verdict becomes.
“What exactly are we running from?” Harly gasps. Boombox obviously hasn’t considered this yet, as it takes him five minutes or so to respond; his thoughts process like flat beer.
“I don’t know,” he stammers. Harly twirls around; they’re thoroughly lost.
“Got any suggestions hotshot.”
“Look, I didn’t force you to come with me,” he makes excuses. “You could have stayed with Alina.”
“You mean ‘should’ve stayed with Alina’,” Harly snaps.
“Don’t be such a bitch, I’m sure we’ll find a way out of this,” Boombox attempts to reason with her. She slaps him, leaving a neon red hand mark on his cheek.
“I’m sure I will…I’m not so sure about you,” Harly snickers, scampering off in the direction she imagines retraces they way they’ve come, her matted blond hair trailing behind her like the siren of a vice
A car honking resounds through the forest, causing them both to dash in its direction. “You must’ve left the truck on,” Harly heaves.
“I’m pretty sure you can use the horn without killing the battery, if that’s what you’re getting at it,” Boombox spits.
When they reach the road they see Alina’s forehead almost still lolled against the horn, caught in a handle-section of the steering wheel. She’s drooling onto the passenger’s seat, eyes flickering, and upon closer inspection, having vomited, still dry heaving, and wet her pants. Boombox punts her into the backseat and begins to whine about the mess and the leather until Harly slaps him again. He rubs the mark she’s left and reaches for a packet of hamburger buns in a secret compartment of the truck; he takes one out and starts to ferociously chow down. Harly gazes at him with amazement, throws up her hands, and returns to tending to Alina. .
“What, have a problem with hamburger buns?” he taunts, bug-eyed.
“No. Just you,” Harly beams.
“I dare you to try one,” he giggles. “Just one. Try it. Dare ya.” He tosses one to her; she catches it with both hands.
“It tastes like…bread.” Boombox starts guffawing, slapping his knees. Harly shakes her head, staring at him in awe, beginning to laugh as well. “By the way, I think she’s coming back to…” Alina reels over the backseat of the car and jarringly vomits onto the road.
“Has she even ever done smack before?” Boombox rolls his eyes.
“She’s seventeen you fuck. You should be behind bars.”
“As far as I know seventeen’s the legal age, harlot.”
“Don’t fucking call me that. And you should be behind bars anyway,” Harly retaliates, blushing furiously.
Boombox staggers backwards momentarily and catches a glimpse of a body lying on the road nearby. It looks conspicuously like the body they’ve already ran over repeatedly. Boombox shakes Harly until he gets her attention; when she sees the body she raises her hand to her open mouth.
“We’re being followed by a dead body.”
“At least it’s not trying to kill us,” Boombox smirks.
“How do you get rid of an deathless dead body,” Harly utters.
“Well the body’s dead, it’s just following us in death; however, it remarkably acts dead as well,” Boombox hypothesizes.
“God you’re a fucking genius,” Harly throws up her hands, slapping her thighs and biting beneath her lip.
“Are you suggesting that it’s not dead and it’s just acting dead?” Boombox suggests credulously.
“Why don’t you go fucking ask it,” Harly sputters. She pushes Boombox out of the way and stomps towards the corpse. Boombox starts thinking about how he’s out of shape. Is seventeen really the legal age? As he ponders over this he notices Harly screaming at the corpse, tearing at her hair and blaming it for all her life’s irresolvable progeny.
Alina flops out of the car onto the road, one eye half-open, vomit drooling from her mouth, her pants soaked with urine. Boombox looks both ways and rips her pants off, throwing them in the woods, then picks her up in his arms and throws her in the backseat.
“Harly,” Boombox shouts. “Harly wait!” She’s already leaning over, tugging on the wings of the angel. She tugs until her entire body is bloodshot and her veins are protruding; Boombox jogs over to help her. Together, they both try to pull off one of the indestructible wings of what’s left of the corpse.
A mini-van driving in the direction they’re not facing coruscates towards them. The driver and passenger are paying more attention to each other than the road, slightly speeding; enough to kill someone upon impact. As the driver attempts to break before colliding with Boombox and Harly, all he can see is two people, a male and female, pulling at, apparently, nothing.
After both victims were dead and the driver and passenger had gotten out of the car and reported the emergency, they both noticed that the corpses had fluorescent, iris-less eyes and platinum colored hair. They also seemed to have…wings, sprouting out of the spines of their backs. The couple also found another body, in a car nearby, half-naked, which was later confirmed by coroners as a fentanyl overdose.