Night is a Mouth with No Shape by Joshua Jones Lofflin

There’s the fog, always, a mist that clings to the girl’s legs. She walks along this darkened highway—not a real highway, but a narrow stretch of pitted asphalt with hardly any shoulder. Cars sweep past. She used to be afraid of them, those unswerving cars, but she likes them better than the ones that stop, the ones that idle with their hazards blinking awaiting her slow approach. Then the passenger door swings open, the car’s dome light comes on, and the man— it’s always a man—leans forward and says, Hey baby (or honey or sweetie), hop in.

His eyes are hooded. His smile catches the yellowed light. He always smiles.

Where you headed, he might ask, patting the empty seat beside him.

Sometimes he’s old like her father, sometimes raw-faced like her boyfriend. Not that it matters. When she walks on, he says, Hey, where you going? It’s not safe out here!

And perhaps it’s not, here along this winding road, in the cold fog, and her wishing she wore more than a thin cotton dress. She tries blowing warm air into her fists, but it never helps.

She walks on.

C’mon, baby (or honey or sweetie), he says and works the car forward. Its fender brushes her leg.

The asphalt bites her feet, and she notices she’s no longer wearing shoes. This always surprises her, this lack of shoes, when she sees her feet flecked with mud or something dark. There in the foggy night, it could be anything black and glossy.

How far you going? I’ll take you there.

She used to give an address, the numbers falling from her mouth like small stones. But lately it’s all a jumble, and she only remembers an image of a gray house with a gray window above its gray porch. The window’s glass is spidered from where her boyfriend plipped it with a sharp stone. It was on a night just like this, a thin slice of moon rising above the pines.

C’mon, get in. You’ll catch your death out here.

Sometimes the driver smells like her boyfriend’s cigarettes, like his animal crush of sweat. Sometimes a scent of whiskey like her father’s breath. Always, a mouth wide and grinning. Her own mouth is small. Too small to say no, really, there on the passenger seat, the road’s stripes now speeding beneath them, faster. Faster still.

Sometimes he asks her name, but she always shakes her head, her dark hair shimmering in the night, shaking loose something black and glossy that could be anything.

What’s a pretty thing like you doing out here anyway?

He downshifts. The engine growls. His hand brushes her leg.

The night swallows the road, the fog, the headlights.

They approach the mangled guardrail at the bend in the road. The headlights glance against gnarled fingers of steel that look as if they’ll grab the car.

He downshifts again, leaves his hand against her knee.

A pressure bubbles within, pushes against the hole of her mouth.

His eyes flit to her face back to her chest, her legs. He doesn’t notice her nose is already running.

You’re really something, he says.

The hole of her mouth opens, widens, grows taut at the seams.

His hand finds her thigh. His smile sharpens. The lines of the road blur as the headlights slice black trees. Somewhere there’s a gray house with a cracked bedroom window. Its crack has been growing for years now.

The hole opens wide, so wide, and glossy night seeps out.

Always, his fingers creep higher.

Glossy black night running down her chin, her chest, almost dripping on his hand.

He turns the wheel one-handed. He no longer shifts. The engine roars as his mouth widens.

Her own mouth has no shape.

The night swallows the road, the headlights, the car. But the fog is still there. Always, the fog is there.

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JOSHUA JONES LOFFLIN — Joshua’s writing has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. His work has received numerous awards and has been anthologized in The Best of the Net, The Best Microfiction, The Best Small Fictions, and ECO: The Year’s Best Ecofiction. He lives in Maryland. Find him online at jjlofflin.com.

Art by OLA AL-FATEH — Ola is a writer, illustrator, and language instructor currently based in Japan. She takes inspiration from a wide range of sources, but feels most at home with the many stripes of surrealism and horror. Her own fiction has appeared in Gallery of Curiosities, Bleed Error, and The Future Fire.