I slammed on the breaks at the last minute, wheels sliding along dirt and gravel until the front end of the car rested two inches from it. The dust settled and I stared out into blackness, blacker than the night I had come to know intimately.

This was a crack in the ground, thousands of miles wide and thousands of miles outside of the city. Beyond it was nothing, at least I assumed, just a never-ending ledge in the middle of nowhere.

I lit a cigarette, took a puff, and let it drop, tracing its decent for miles, the orange glow finally fading from site, lost into oblivion. The end of the world; at least the end of this one.

I followed the crack along the desert for weeks. My trunk housed enough gasoline for a few weeks, but I knew I would need it to get back, if I couldn’t find a way to escape. Part of me didn’t care; about coming back. But, logic solved that problem. That next day, I saw it: The tree where I started, exactly three weeks and two days prior. How I made it back to this spot, I don’t know. I don’t think anyone is supposed to know; that’s just the way it is.

I would have laughed were I not so hungry. It had been too long since I had fed. Only a few bottles of nourishment rested in the backseat of the Buick, a full two nights of hunting. I figured I would most likely encounter a few meals along the way.

I figured wrong.

Almost starved heading back. My vision was blurry and I couldn’t stop salivating. Found myself staring at my own hand a few times.

Managed to pick up a transient about three hours outside town. He was wet from the rain and babbling about past sins and future redemption. He stared intently at the side of my face, saying it had been over a year since he had seen a woman; a pretty one at that.

I watched his blue eyes suddenly dart about, his demeanor shifting like the tides, as his hands clutched at the remaining tufts of hair that billowed out from his sunburn scalp.