Short Fiction: Daryl Braithwaite

Title: Daryl Braithwaite

"Fuck." The Cadillac rolled to a dead stop on the dirt road. Daryl Braithwaite stared at the road ahead as the car's headlights grew dim and went dark. There was no Moon and any Stars were obscured by pollution. The landscape vanished. "Fuck."

"Well..." Daryl wound the window up and locked the door. Then with the seat tilted back, he settled in for the night. There was nothing he could do until morning. His eyes closed, he listened to the sound of his breathing. "...Shit."

The sound of a small rock impacting on the glass of the Cadillac's window drew him back to reality. Even with his eyes wide open it was still pitch dark. He reached up with his hand and ran it across the inside of the windscreen glass to see if it had cracked. The sound of his fingers wiping across a mild moisture that was condensing on the safety glass. He felt... nothing in the way of cracks.

Still, he had heard it. The sound of a small rock hitting the glass of the car window. Maybe a bat. Or a meteorite. Or volcanic ejecta. Or space junk. Daryl rested in the dark with his eyes open. There were plenty of assholes in this part of the world. It could just as well be one of them.
Exhaustion caught him as he listened to the sound of his own breathing and his eyes closed.

Again the sound of a small rock striking the window of the Cadillac woke him to the pitch black environment of the Cadillac Interior and the darkness beyond it.

He reached across to where he knew his glove compartment was and quietly opened it. Daryl felt about, the sound of his hand causing the objects within to move about filled the car. He retrieved the revolver and a pair of bullets floating loose with it. Daryl's hand slipped open the drum magazine and he inserted the two bullets and slipped the drum back into position.

Again his breathing became the only sound he could hear within the dark interior of the car. He certainly wouldn't hit anything if he took a shot in the dark. He reached up and tried the key in the ignition, the sound of its turn to the start position was as expected though he got nothing from the electrical system or motor. Nothing was turning over.

Through the glass of the windscreen he could see two distant red tail lights. There was no sound of a vehicle as they backed slowly toward the Cadillac through the darkness, growing slowly in brightness and size until they illuminated two obvious radial cracks in the windscreen. There was the clear and present evidence of a pair of impact fractures on the windscreen glass.

Daryl sat in the dark, staring at the two tail lights of the distant vehicle, the handgun tight in his hand, his breathing the only sound.

A line, illuminated red by the tail light was slowly scratched downward from the left impact fracture as though someone was scratching the glass windscreen with a stone, the distinctive scratching sound passing through the windscreen glass.

A second line scratched downward from the right impact fracture again illuminated by the red glow of the tail light from which it originated. Daryl sat in the car, his gun pointed now at the glass windscreen between the two impact fractures.

A third line scratched its way, left to right joining both lines about half way down.

And then, a line angling down from the left impact fracture before bending upward and then three lines one after the next forming a primitive hand at the end of an arm.

And now from the right impact fracture gave birth to a line angled outward and down before turning upward and then dividing into the same three fingered hand.

Daryl starred at the symbol of a man-like figure, it's hands raised and open in surrender now scratched into the glass of the windscreen, and illuminated by the red tail lights.

"Daryl Braithwaite." The voice like stone scratching on glass. "Twenty Seven."

"Flagstaff..." Officer Jacob Petty stared at the corpse laid back in a sleeping position in the otherwise beautiful Cadillac as he photographed the details of Daryl Braithwaite's drivers license into his phone and dropped it into an evidence bag. "...resident."

"Last seen at the Twin Arrows Navajo Casino." Jacob stared at the handful of hundred dollar bills laid out on the passenger seat. It was about a thousand dollars worth. Jacob photographed the currency before placing it in an evidence bag. "Apparently he drove south toward Meteor Crater about twenty miles."

"The firearm in his left hand..." Jacob took a photograph of the gun gripped tightly in the left hand of Daryl Braithwaite. "...is an old police issue revolver."

"Looks like something impacted on the windshield." Jacob photographed the two impact fractures on the windshield, their cracks lined with blood. "No wounds apparent on the body."