DMH Fiction: Somewhere

“Where are we?” Scott asked, looking over Fozzy’s shoulder. He pushed up his glasses even though they didn’t need it.

Fozzy shrugged. “Somewhere.”

“Is that somewhere near where we’re supposed to be?”

Fozzy shrugged. “It’s somewhere in the mountains. Are we supposed to be in the mountains?”

Lido handed Scott the map. “Are there mountains in Texas?”

“No,” Scott said, wanting to grab handfuls of hair and tug until his scalp hurt. He wanted The Hatchet to come out of its blankets and chop down the mountains and get them to Texas. “We have a problem. We need to be in Texas in an hour.”

“This isn’t Texas,” Fozzy said.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Lido said. “I told you to take that right.”

“We have an hour before we have to load in, and we’re staring at the frickin mountains!” Scott leaned back in the seat and kicked, hoping he caught Fozzy in the butt. Idiot. How many times had he said, “Go East. Due East. We’re in Arizona, so there’s no way we can miss Texas”? How frickin dumb was the guy, and who the hell had stuffed him in the back seat where he wouldn’t be able to see well so he could catch this mistake earlier?

“So what do we do?” Lido asked. Scott could see the panic creeping into the guy’s eyes, hear it in his voice.

“Like I know?” Scott shot back. “If you’d followed the stupid map…” He grabbed it out of Lido’s hand and looked at it.

No wonder. Lido had been holding it upside-down.

“I guess,” Scott said, taking the deepest breath he could manage in the mountains’ thin air, “we turn around and go home. And hope like hell someone’ll hire us again once word about this gets out. You know it will.”

“There’s no way?” Fozzy asked.

“Dude, we don’t even frickin know where we are!”

“Gimme that map,” Fozzy said. Once it was in his hand, he carried it back to the trailer Lido’s dad had loaned them for the quick trip to Texas. The Hatchet was in there, sleeping.

Scott seethed while Fozzy waited for The Hatchet to do its thing. Lido hung his head, lit a cigarette, and tried to look cool.

Gecko just sat and stared at his hands, folded in his lap.

Scott wished he could be more like Gecko. Nothing bothered Gecko.

Including the confetti Fozzy brought back up to the front.

“Good work,” Scott said. “Now how do we get home?”

For every ShapeShifter in the world, there’s more than one Deadly Metal Hatchet. Hapless but well-intentioned. Talentless but with a great marketing gimmick. And hoping to make it big.

Explore more Deadly Metal Hatchet here. And be sure to leave a comment so I can return your visit, eh?

If you need a Trevor fix, there’s one I posted right below this one… Come on… you know you do!