Her picture hangs above our dashboard. Little Adeline. She's beamin in front of a backdrop of daffodils, picked out herself. Her cousins all raised hell at the department store, cryin and hollerin, but not our Adeline. We did her hair in curls like mama used to wear. She told us she felt like Lizzie McGuire. <span id="punch1">[[<img src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/pihgadzu6o5oize/button.png?dl=1">->1.1]]</span> <script>audio.whatever.play();</script>Our steel knuckles crack the exoskeleton like a crab shell. The roach's pained hiss tells us we delivered a good hit. Way gravity resists movement at this scale, our actions gotta be decided fifteen seconds ahead. Ain't unlike bein drunk. <span id="punch2">[[<img src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/pihgadzu6o5oize/button.png?dl=1">->1.2]]</span><script>audio.punch.play();</script>We reach into the carapace with our free hand and curl our fingers around the mess inside. The warmth makes my sister think of Christmas, her deft extraction of turkey organs. My absence in the memory gnaws at me. I push down the emotions and together, we pull hard. What comes out could feed the whole state of [[Arkansas|1.3]].<script>audio.punch.play();</script>Arkansas. Home. Border's only fifty miles from here. Makes my skin crawl how close this [[roach|1.4]] got. They'll never make it past Tennessee, we said. Too damn wide. Now Texans say the same shit about us.The disembowled roach flails around like a wet hen. Pained, but motor skills intact. These creatures are packed with extra organs. <span id="punch4">[[<img src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/pihgadzu6o5oize/button.png?dl=1">->1.5]]</span>We grab the roach by the scruff. Rotate. We slam its nasty pug face into the mountainside, into the hickories, maples, and sourwood trees, thorns every shade of green, bronze, and scarlet. Ain't nothin prettier a sight than the [[Great Smokies|1.6]] in autumn.<script>audio.punch.play();</script>Used to plan routes so my time in the sleeper berth would fall in East Tennessee. Nothin here for entertainment, just the way the mountains swallowed up that massive Peterbilt felt like bein wrapped in a warm blanket. [[Now it all looks so small|1.7]] …Wide folds of flesh burst out of the roach's thorax. Wings. Four of em, each one veiny and nasty as hell. This one's so little—about water tower-sized?—I'd have sworn it were a child. No time to react: it's already on our chest, claws embedded, scuttlin up toward [[our head|1.8]].The roach crawls into our steel snout. <span id="bite1">[[<img src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/pihgadzu6o5oize/button.png?dl=1">->1.9]]</span>The roach's death call cuts out as our incisors shred its flesh. Yellow guts flood out our snout, rain down on the mountainside. [[Crew|1.10]] will have a time cleanin this out.<script>audio.punch.play();</script>Workers back at the shop watch the action on fuzzy tube televisions on their table corners—news copters buzz around us like gnats in summertime. War correspondents. I know our little Adeline watches, too, miming [our fists]<ourfists| … (show: ?myfists) (show: ?ourfists) (click: ?ourfists) + (transition:"dissolve")[[my fists]<myfists| …] (click: ?myfists) + (transition:"dissolve")[[[our fists|1.11]] …]The cylindrical spike withdraws from my spine. My head feels lighter, quieter. Lonelier. I look over at my sister—she's hunched over in her harness, clutchin at her chest. For a moment I've forgotten how to talk to her with words. "Just [[my heart|1.12]]. I'm fine," she says. "It'll pass."Always feels unfair, way she got dad's heart when I'm the one who's lived so hard. A [[voice|1.13]] crackles from the CB."Y'all shut down out there, Mama Possum? Give the word and I'll send some deadheads to haul you out, over." Ted, that sweetheart. What a [[damn worrywart|1.14]]."We're fine. Roach just gave us a workout, over." I drop out of my harness, stretch the blood back into my limbs. My little eyeballs can't see much out the windshield, way the [[fog|1.15]] rolls between the peaks. Good as the Smokies look on a postcard, in combat I can't never see shit.Shapes grow in the mist … (live: 1s)[(if: time > 3s) + (transition:"dissolve")[then vanish. Nothin. I must have the jitters. (stop:) (live: 1s)[(if: time > 6s) + (transition:"dissolve")["10-4," I hear Ted say from [[the CB|1.16]]. There's that lingo. Fella wants to be Burt Reynolds so bad. (stop:)]]]]"Ted, satellites picked up this one roach? Just the one?" Clouds above, clouds below. Wish Mama Possum were as tall as other mechs sometimes. [[Radio crackle.|1.17]]"Just the one. Rest got bombed in Carolina, over." For a moment the sun passes between the clouds. In the golden hue cast upon the mist I see a [[whirlwind|1.18]].The wings of roaches, beatin hard in the fog, headed toward our position. (live:1s)[(if: time > 3s) + (transition:"dissolve")[I dash back to [[my harness|1.19]], pull myself inside so fast I nearly swing right back out.(stop:)]]I check on my sister—just a look to make sure she's doin fine, nothin snobbish—and her burly eyebrows tell me all I need to know. (live:1)[(if: time > 3s) + (transition:"dissolve")[I bite down, count three, two, one … (stop:) (live:1s)[(if: time > 6s) + (transition:"dissolve")[the [[spinal spike|1.20]] bores into my backbone. (stop:)]]]]First day of mech school. Real intense fella, shaved head, chalks the word //solipsism// on a board, then crosses it out. Didn't think much of it, till I had my whole sense of self stuffed in a blender with my kin. Got rid of some [[resentments|1.21]], made others ten times worse.Wasn't around. Enrolled in a community college three counties away, dropped out to repair junk on submarines, came home just to drive trucks anywhere companies wanted em drove. Treated e-mail and mobile phones like inventions of Lucifer himself. Anything to put [[Arkansas|1.22]] out of sight and out of mind.Her hate washes over us both. Bitterness cause I didn't help with funerals, divorces. Jealousy how I'd gone off somewhere else, somewhere better in her mind. Frustration that I never picked up the phone. Used to tick me off. Didn't she see me [[survivin|1.23]]?Well, she didn't. Couldn't. Easy for me to claim the high ground when I wasn't the one upset. (live:1s)[(if: time > 3s) + (transition:"dissolve")[Five roaches. Not in some formation, just a nasty swarm headed toward the Arkansas border with nothin in between but Mama Possum. (stop:) <span id="punch2">[[<img src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/pihgadzu6o5oize/button.png?dl=1">->1.24]]</span>]]The roach flies so fast and our fist hits so hard, ain't much of a surprise when the green guts hit our windshield. <span id="windshield1">[[<img src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/pihgadzu6o5oize/button.png?dl=1">->1.25]]</span><script>audio.punch.play();</script>Wipers take care of the viscera, but already a roach has claws in our back. Three others buzz around us, causin a godawful racket. <span id="punch4">[[<img src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/pihgadzu6o5oize/button.png?dl=1">->1.26]]</span>Whole cloud of nasties and our fist doesn't even hit one of em. Lights flash red on the dashboard—fella on our back must be causin trouble. A battered lookin roach dives toward us. <span id="bite2">[[<img src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/pihgadzu6o5oize/button.png?dl=1">->1.27]]</span>Can't open our snout. Glued shut with the mess from earlier. The roach hits us square in the chest. All the slack in our harnesses gives out as we lose our footin—Mama Possum is [[on the way down|1.28]].Feels like somebody hammered our skulls open when the back of Mama Possum's head collides with a boulder. External air rushes into the cab. I can feel my sister's alright, but I [[look over|1.29]] to be sure.She gives me a thumbs up. (live:1s)[(if: time > 3s) + (transition:"dissolve")[Above us, roaches circle like vultures … one, two, three of em. Must have crushed the one on our back.(stop:) <span id="punch4">[[<img src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/pihgadzu6o5oize/button.png?dl=1">->1.30]]</span>]]We take hold of slate and pull Mama Possum to her feet. (live:1s)[(if: time > 3s) + (transition:"dissolve")[Our heads pop back as a roach lands on our cab, blockin our windshield with its banded belly, split open and leakin green. Those Carolina bombs do hurt.(stop:) <span id="windshield2">[[<img src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/pihgadzu6o5oize/button.png?dl=1">->1.31]]]]The wipers stick in the wound. (live:1s)[(if: time > 3s) + (transition:"dissolve")[The labored groan of torn metal echoes inside our heads. Through the split in our skull, [[mandibles|1.32]] crane down and enclose my harness.(stop:)]]<script>audio.punch.play();</script>I lean back in time to avoid the mandibles' arc. (live:1s)[(if: time > 3s) + (transition:"dissolve")[The hatch coverin our metal belly opens up wide—my sister's initiative. Our babies. Our dozens of nuclear babies. A last resort: most don't hit the roaches.(stop:) <span id="missiles1">[[<img src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/pihgadzu6o5oize/button.png?dl=1">->1.33]]]]As I reach for the button, a mandible cuts my harness. The spinal spike rips out of my back, splits our minds apart like a wet napkin. Cabin feels a thousand times brighter, so bright the light sears orange blotches into my [[closed eyelids|1.34]].The floor rotates under me. I know this sensation: mom drivin us to ShowBiz Pizza Place, a truck t-bones our old Chevrolet. Some invisible force throws my body every which way. That moment after [[industrial violence|1.35]] when I don't know what the world looks like anymore.My fingertips search for wounds. Body sends a hundred reports to my brain about breaks and bruises, but I'm not sweatin a couple ribs. Find some lacerations here and there, nothin a dab of iodine can't fix. I work up the courage to [[open my eyes|1.36]].My sister. Tangled in her harness, a pool of blood beneath her. Sparks shoot out from the machine runnin the spinal spike. The spike withdraws from her flesh, then stabs her. (live:1s)[(if: time > 3s) + (transition:"dissolve")[Withdraws. (stop:)(live:1s)[(if: time > 5s) + (transition:"dissolve")[[[Stabs|1.37]]. (stop:)]]]]I spring to my feet and my left ankle gives out. Broken. I hit the floor facefirst, fillin my nose up with blood. Broke that too. Gotta [[crawl|1.38]].Grab on to any object I can reach to pull myself closer. My sister looks up at me—she's still alive. Blood pours from her mouth. She lifts an arm, points behind me … the [[windshield|1.39]]?Out the windshield, roaches fly on toward the Arkansas border, leavin us for dead. They're still in range of Mama Possum's missiles for a time. But an awful mechanical grinding from across the cab raises the hair on my neck—I know damn well what [[my sister|3.0]] is about to suffer. <span id="missiles2">[[<img src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/pihgadzu6o5oize/button.png?dl=1">->2.0]]Angle of the floor slides me away from my sister. I wear out all my arm muscle, pullin my broke body, till I'm just baby fat and [[adrenaline|3.1]].I pull myself up to the dashboard, all weight off the bad ankle, and lean into the button. Hold down for ten seconds … (live:1s)[(if: time > 5s) + (transition:"dissolve")[the floor rumbles as those beautiful steel babies hiss out of Mama Possum's torso, trails of smoke behind em. [[No time|3.0]] to watch the fireworks. (stop:) <script>audio.punch.play();</script>]]<script> var audio = {}; audio.whatever = new Howl({ src: ['https://www.dropbox.com/s/z4fgtzl6zvbi1ev/MP3MamaPossumFADED.mp3?dl=1'], html5: true, loop: true, }); audio.punch = new Howl({ src: ['https://www.dropbox.com/s/m7pobd38avx03q1/mamapossumPUNCH.wav?dl=1'], html5: true, loop: false, }); </script>I grab on to her harness and pull myself up. Way her body convulses hurts my heart. The spike cranks back, about to complete another loop in its broken cycle, and I know my sister won't [[survive|3.2]] another.I swing my body around and the machine tears through my arm like a drill press, corkscrewin an awful hole in my humerus. When the spike retracts to start the whole process over I'm lit up with [[blindin pain|3.3]].I cut a harness strap with a knife pulled out of my boot and our mangled bodies tumble to the floor, one last painful impact as we roll to the [[dashboard|3.4]], accelerated by a nasty Slip N' Slide made up of our blood.I hit the talk button on the CB. Roaches didn't knock the antenna out. "Ted," I cough out, then compose myself. "Hey [[Ted?|3.5]] Over.""Hearin you, Mama Possum. Medevac is close, over." Great. I pull a dram of bourbon from my bra, struggle with the damn cap—which in this moment I hate even more than roaches and industrial machinery—and as I down the little firecracker I pray to Jesus to transmute the bottle to a fifth. I'll be [[unconscious|3.6]] before the EMTs arrive.I'll wake up in a hospital bed or not at all, I figure, so I take a last look at my sister, who is long past any mindfulness of our situation but still breathin, and I remember a [[good time|3.7]], just in case I die there.Drivin up the gravel to my sister's two-bedroom trailer, she's already sittin in a lawn chair with Adeline, or who I guess is Adeline cause I ain't seen her since she sucked a bottle. It's dark out, so I kill my headlights as to not blind em, and they vanish into [[silhouettes|3.8]], too obscure to see.I could have driven away, then. Could have drove off with that snapshot and still possess this inklin that my sister had done it. She'd gone and built a household that looked nothin like the one we were raised in. Just threw the whole poisoned blueprint in the trash and made [[a place love could survive|3.9]].Ain't that its own kind of [[miracle|4.0]]. <script>audio.whatever.fade(1,0,3000);</script><span id="title">[[<img src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/965zf6hy6csg7ot/titlebutton.png?dl=1">->1.0]]</span>[[the end|0.0]]