Moths

Moths

Written by Kenny Porter

            “Get the camera ready!” Jeff shouted.

            “I’m trying,” Carly said, “you left the damn cap on.”

            Jeff climbed onto the hood of his car. The sand caked above the tires rubbed off on his jeans. He couldn’t see any stars, but he didn’t need to. He had the lights.

They all had the lights.

            Crackles and booms echoed across the desert. Jeff could make out the tiny red blips of other cameras up and down the highway where moths were taking in the spectacle. They never knew when the lights would show up, only that they moved west. People liked it that way. Jeff didn’t.

            Dazzling shades of gold fizzled as the otherworldly lights let out a final concussive blast. They vanished in an imploding snap. The shockwave sent off car alarms up and down the road.

            “Did you get it?” Jeff asked.

            “We’re almost out of memory,” Carly said. She turned off the camera and slid it back in her bag. “But yeah, I got it.”

            Jeff watched Carly open the driver’s side door. How long had they been at it? Four years now? Ever since high school. He could remember when the lights first appeared above Jefferson High. The homecoming game went silent in the middle of a play. He saw Carly then for the first time. He saw the unexplainable lights. Since that night they had been together. And since then they’d been chasing those lights.

The euphoric feelings he got after seeing the lights left him in the usual stupor. Like the lights had slid right into an open vein and up his spinal cord.

            Carly cleared her throat. She drummed her fingers on the roof.

            “My parents called me yesterday,” she said.

            “I don’t remember you talking to them,” he said in a daze.

            “I couldn’t, there’s no service out here. Just kept going to voicemail.”

            “What did they say?”

            “They miss me… hope I come home soon. We could head out there tomorrow. Take a break from the road. My birthday is coming up, and mom set aside a couple of applications to the local college--”

            “Weather’s making it look like the lights will be over Vegas next. Going back to Ohio would be out of the way.”

            Jeff heard the car door slam shut. He slid off the hood and crawled into the passenger seat. Jeff could drive, he just didn’t want to. He felt better giving directions. Felt like he was in control of the car more that way, as strange as it sounds.

            He watched Carly’s hands choke the steering wheel.

            “Are you hungry?” Jeff asked. “The map says there’s a town a few miles up the road.”

            “I’m starving,” Carly said, “but I don’t want to eat.”

            Jeff lifted his hand up to gesture to the road. Carly pulled the keys out of the ignition.

            “What happens next time?” she asked.

            “Next time what?”

            “Next time we see them. What happens?”

            “We make sure the lens cap is off.”

            “You know what I meant, Jeff.”

            She said his name. He knew he was in trouble when she said his name.

            “We keep going. We chase it down and grab at it every chance we get.”

            “They’re getting farther apart. You know that, right?”

            She wasn’t wrong. The lights were getting fewer and farther between. Other moths were talking about it online, but Jeff tried to ignore them.

            “That just makes it all the better,” Jeff said. He scratched his head. “It’s like… like having Christmas just pop up on you.”

            “Do you remember last Christmas?”

            “Yeah,” Jeff thought about it, “we went to your parents.”

            “That was three years ago,” she said. “We spent last Christmas in a Dunkin’ Donuts having day-old crullers.”

            Jeff put his feet on the dash.

            “After the next burst, we’ll call your parents. We’ll work out a time to go see them.”

            “But what happens when the bursts get farther between?”

            “You don’t just give up because things are hard, okay?!” Jeff shouted. He didn’t mean to. At least he didn’t think he did. “Who gives a fuck about what happens tomorrow, or the next day, as long as we keep going. You just keep going, that’s what’s important. Now let’s drive.”

            Carly started the car.

            They rode in silence to the next town. It wasn’t the kind of place people stayed for long. The whole city looked like it thrived on moths now.

            Lots of people made money on the moths and the lights. No one remembers if the chasers named themselves moths or not, but the name stuck. Stuck like fly paper. Jeff didn’t give a god damn what people called him, just as long as he had Carly and the lights.

            They pulled into a diner across from the local bus station. Jeff went into the diner to order, but Carly stayed outside to try and reach her parents.

Jeff stared at the “Bright Moth Special” on the diner’s laminated menu. A plate of chicken tenders, golden dipping sauce, and “burst fries,” whatever those were. The same sort of thing he ate day after day his junior year back at Jefferson.

            He was waiting for his food while he watched Carly outside on her cell phone. He could tell she was crying. Her back was to the window, but he could tell.

            She nodded a few times, she always did that on the phone, and that’s when Jeff saw her start walking. He watched her walk right over to the bus station service window. She bought a ticket, sat on the bench, and crossed her arms.

            She never looked back up.

            Jeff finished his food, licking the edge of the plate clean. He climbed in the passenger seat of the car and waited, staring at Carly across the street.

He thought about the camcorder in the backseat. How it was almost out of memory. He’d have to buy another stick in town before he left.

            The keys were on the dash, but he wouldn’t reach for them.