Sammy Hutch considered himself a good man, even if he was aroused by tragedy. He claimed “it wasn’t a sex thing,” but the women that worked the Big Squealer Truck Stop knew better. Those ladies of the lot kept one ear tuned for news of bad accidents, it was a way to steel themselves in advance of a visit from Mr. Hutch and his appetites.

  Rapture Radio always played in his rig. Father Darnette spoke truths that some ears just weren’t fit to hear- words that resonated deeply with Sammy. Sure, he got a little rough here and there. Sure, he disagreed with the liberal agenda and didn’t really like certain other types of folk. Rapture Radio wasn’t broadcasting for those snowflakes anyway. Rapture Radio was for real men that were ready for the real truth. He’d heard some of the mechanics refer to Rapture as “wife beater evangelism.”

  That couldn’t be farther from the truth.

  Sammy never hit his wife too hard, or at least he never left a mark; that was reserved for the lizards working the Big Squealer. His wife was a good woman, even when she went full shrew because he “worked” 70 or more hours in a week and brought home pay suspiciously close to 40.

  As far as Sammy was concerned, money made off of his sweat was his business and his alone; that was why he insisted on only getting paid straight cash. He knew damn well that the government was tracking the transactions of every sheep’s debit card. Sammy Hutch wasn’t a fool, after all.

  He was six hours into the night, hauling a broken down sedan on his back- the woman that drove acted strangely when he offered her a ride, claiming that she’d rather “wait for her friend.” Typical dumb female behavior, far as Sammy could tell; thinking every man was a predator.

  They all wanted to be victims so goddamn bad.

  Sammy’s thoughts drifted as he ventured further down the highway. He found himself fantasizing about her. Nothing sexual, of course- even though she dressed like she wanted that sort of attention. He was a married man, after all, that vow meant something.

  There was a stir in his loins thinking of her parts strewn across the highway after getting struck by an eighteen wheeler he saw earlier. It played in his mind like a racy, brutal cartoon- the way she would splatter if she got hit. Aw hell, he thought, that shit’s borderline sinful.

  His brow furrowed as he powered up the radio. Hutch put that dial up as far as it would go, letting the words of Father Darnette rise over the sound of the diesel engine that pulled him and the wreck through the dark. The tail end of an organ song rose over the hissing mud of AM radio, somber and sad. They were playing tapes of old sermons on Rapture Radio again. Still, that was preferable to the rumble of his ancient engine and the darker parts of his own thoughts. Damn fool of a thought, turning off the good words so some tart would be more comfortable. Sermons made Sammy feel like Darnette was in the cab with him, guiding him through the night with words of salvation. Sammy was surprised that he didn’t recognize the lecture; he thought he knew all of Darnette’s words.

  “Rejoice, those who have sworn servitude to Our God. Rejoice for you have found a sinless life by joining my flock. No lizard of the government and no false badge holds any authority over you. You listen, and they know you listen- that leaves you beyond the reach of the oppressors’ bullets and chains. There is no reason to fear your freedom being snatched and shoved behind bars of iron. You are free, that is Our God’s promise. Worry not who judges you, worry not for who idolizes or even hates you. Keep one truth in your heart, always: that you are without sin and that gives you the right to cast the first stone. Simple as a serpent- The Old Book teaches us so.”

  Sammy flicked at the brim of his sweat stained cap and whistled as he nodded during a natural pause in the broadcast.

  Darnette continued, initially with a calm tenor, “I am not here to scare any of you. I am here to inspire you and to put balms on the burns that this cruel world has left upon you. Times are changing, folks. It’s sad, but it is true. The Unravelling is coming and we need to collect ourselves. Only in community and in devotion to Our God can we survive it. Together we will be stitched, together we will be strong enough to keep the world in Their hands. Come to me, my children far and wide. Come to Oakvane, let this recording be the fire that sets the hearth in your heart ABLAZE. Come to us, up atop Bobcat Mountain. Receive the gifts that Our God will give- strength and freedom to do as you were intended to do. We are all made with a very specific design, one that nonbelievers cannot understand and that terrifies them. It should! For we offer the flames of liberation and the light in the dark before The Unravelling.”

  Hutch was heading toward the Long Curve and approaching Cemetery Gorge when he first caught sight of the police lights, followed by screaming sirens. Being a law abiding man, he pulled off to the side. Four cruisers and two fire trucks howled through the night in streaks of flashing lights.

  Hutch licked his lips with anticipation. The night suddenly seemed very promising. He was giddy when he heard the tires squealing before losing contact with the road and the crumpling of steel as it yielded.

  Hutch hefted himself out of the driver’s seat and hastily dropped the sedan on the shoulder. Whatever was brewing down the road was calling him and he needed a reason to be there. If they saw he was without a car on his back, they may not turn him away. It would provide him an opportunity to be the good samaritan while still slaking his morbid curiosities. The sound that followed caused a most pleasant chill to dance up his spine, like the nails of a passionate lover.

  Soon followed tires screeching in the distance, steel meeting steel in a catastrophic collision. His body shuddered at the cacophony; if he were not so enraptured by that sound and what sights lay around it- he may have heard the calls from the gorge. They may even have dissuaded him from moving forward.

  Distant and dissonant they were, possessing a curious dual tone- their cries were alive in the thin night air. These were unearthly sounds, registering to the ear as the fusion of a whale’s song and a lupine howl. The night was silent in their wake, save for the slamming of a tow truck’s door.

  Alone on the road, Hutch stomped the accelerator. Rapture Radio was growing choppy as he followed the slow and suspenseful curvature of Long Curve.

  “Do you like to watch?” Darnette asked in a moment of clean broadcast. “The light leaving their eyes...” the voice was again lost to static.

  Long Curve feeds directly into Cemetery Gorge, which itself has Bobcat Mountain looming over it. Now, everybody knows that Cemetery Gorge lives up to its name. It is a particularly thin and winding section of the highway with one lane leading in either direction. There is a precariously thin shoulder on either side of it, which quickly meets with a sharp incline filled with sharper shards of shale. After that, there are only modest creeks on either side before meeting with a harsh and abrupt cliffside.

  On a highway without lights, even the beginning embers of a fire stand out. On that night, Cemetery Gorge would have been better named the Kiln. A fire was starting that would forge Sammy Hutch’s future.

  “Walk through fire,” Darnette was briefly crystal clear before another blanket of static interrupted him. “....get a higher perspective. Go for the guts… you want to see...be sinless.”

  What he came upon in the gorge was so beautiful that it brought tears to his eyes. Fifty feet past the county line, where Cemetery Gorge became the domain of Oakvane, there were such wonderful and terrible sounds. The serpentine hiss of fire feasting upon gasoline, screams of terror and agony rising like a hymn from the wreckage.

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  A familiar tractor had jack-knifed with such severity that it went flat against the ground on the passenger side, the trailer had twisted and split at the seam. The responders had made a mural of mysterious despair in their own collisions, blocking Hutch’s view of the really good stuff beyond the flipped and mangled fire trucks. The cadavers of the two vehicles blocked the whole of the scene, teasing Hutch only with the silhouette of the trucker’s hand so feebly reaching for the half moon from the shattered window.

  Then the scene became truly breathtaking when fire took over, illuminating the night in shades of orange with such intensity that it seemed like dawn. An immense heat, not unlike the throes of a hot summer’s day, washed over him. The smell of gasoline becoming fire and cooking meat was truly intoxicating, until it was stolen away from the nostrils by smoke’s more pedestrian scent. The police and the firefighters howled out such wonderful tunes against the percussion of gunfire. Sadly, that staccato ended quickly; it was replaced by only the hums and pops of fire- discreetly backed by the rhythmless mastication of still cooking flesh.

  The radios of the vehicles came to life, all speaking in Darnette’s voice.

  “We have nothing to fear from the flames of Hell. We are sinless. We are ascended. From up high, everything else is so small. My only question is: are you strong enough to walk through those fires- are you strong enough to see what’s on the other side? Sure...it’ll hurt. It always hurts; but do you really think butterflies didn’t suffer in their cocoons? Change is agony, but it will also set you free. What sights we have for you beyond the threshold of change, if you are only brave enough to follow your truth.”

  The curtains of flame obscured the scene, leaving only their crackles and the gnawing sounds to be heard. He was not a man of much imagination, but he was a man of intense and morbid curiosities. Hutch needed to see what was beyond the crackling veil, needed to know what ate among the flames.

  He didn’t remember leaving the truck or walking towards the fire, but he rushed back. Hutch huffed and struggled as he unlatched the fire extinguisher from its bracket. He cast to the blacktop with an ignoble clang. Empty? Goddamn it. Without it, how would he carve a path through the flames?

  The radios had gone silent, leaving him alone with his thoughts. That was when Sammy Hutch realized that this was a test. Just like the radio was talking about.

  Sammy Hutch reckoned this was his literal fire to traverse. That this was a test of his faith.

  Hutch walked to the inferno as it rose higher, licking the walls of the gorge and making the distant Bobcat Mountain seem impossibly tall. He buried his face in the crux of his elbow, the once comforting smell of grease and oil embedded in the fabric now muting the more tantalizing scents he had discovered that night. The first exposure to flame was the worst of it, that’s when the skin feels it the most. Even as his nerves screamed against the white hot agony, Hutch pressed on. The heat was so severe that he swore he could feel his eyeballs boiling, but he pressed on until he reached the first flipped firetruck. It was so goddamn hot.

  So goddamn hot that it felt like his bones were jellying, maybe melting.

  He began to climb, so deep in the throes of agony that it began to do a jig on the line of pleasure. When he hauled himself up by the exhaust pipe, he realized that he was moving too slow. Truth is that if you leave skin in contact with hot metal for too long, it starts to stick- like a burger left unattended on a grill. He tried to tear his hand free, fighting back the urge to marvel at his own cooking hide.

  He cried out as the skin of his palm was left behind, stuck to the metal of the firetruck. There was so little and so much left for him. He was without pain as he fell too hard to the blacktop, splaying out on his back like he was trying to make a flame angel. Such an impact should have rattled his bones, but Hutch was only aware of a muted sensation meeting his fatty back when he struck.

  His skin was steaming and hissing across the surface; since the road may as well be a griddle. Without pain to dissuade him, Hutch scrambled to stand. His footing was a little shaky as the rubber of his soles began to liquify. His own weight felt oppressive, too heavy for his spine and limbs to support as he took on a curious lean forward. He wanted to see, especially when a new scream kicked up from over the roar of the flames.

  He needed to see so badly and that is when he felt the first crack amidst the vertebrae of his neck.

  Then another crack.

  And another.

  His perception of the scene was changing in perspective. His neck was growing by the foot until he just could peer over the overturned fire truck, his head bobbing back and forth in the manner of a marionette. Hutch thrust his head downward as the door of the wrecked tractor came hurtling in his direction, the impact it made with his truck was literally shattering. Broken glass kicked up from the strike and rained down behind him, almost musical in the fragile tones of it shattering ever further.

  The man’s scream was like a shot of whiskey after a long night, flushing a new wave of endorphins through his veins. He heard the collision of a body to the pavement, followed by a scream of pain so severe that it boiled with madness.

  He had to see. He was so goddamn hungry and he had to see. That call emanated from amidst the ruin, again it was a curious collision of wolf and whale. From places hidden by or atop the gorge, even more called in reply.

  Hutch realized that it was a dinner bell and that he was going to be late to the table. His stomach was screaming for fulfillment, urging him to motion.

  As he moved, he found his strides longer as the bones in his limbs began to pop and bend. Hutch went down to all fours; it just seemed more natural amongst the flames that no longer burned. His teeth began to pop out of their sockets. They rained down from ten feet, then nearly fifteen as he came to his full standing height. New teeth came, ragged bits of calcium that jutted past the boundaries of his lips.

  The fire truck was no longer an obstacle for him, it was simple enough to step over- arm followed by the corresponding leg. He followed the origin of that intoxicating scream, even as it grew more feeble and wet.

  Crossing over the truck as the flames tickled at his belly, Hutch saw her toying with her meal. Held aloft by her limbs, her body bobbed about ten feet at the shoulder. Her head playfully snapped to the left and the right about five feet further up, with a mess of oily brown hair cascading down from it. Her eyes caught the light of the flame like those of a cat.

  She was the most beautiful creature Hutch had ever seen. She swatted at the prone trucker, rendering the cheek ragged and silencing the screams. Eye contact was made between her and Hutch. It was kismet, love at first sight.

  Her smile was beautiful, those teeth so sharp that they split her own lips. She bobbed her head up and down in a welcoming manner, backing away from her prey and sitting down among a tangle of her own limbs. The trucker was still producing some noise, mostly sobs that were barely heard through the ragged ruin of his face.

  As Hutch loomed closer, he realized that ruin would be a good term to describe all that remained of the trucker. Every limb was shattered, though he was uncertain if that was caused by the wreck or by the female. To the trucker’s credit, he still had some fight in him. He continued to struggle away by dragging his shoulders across the blacktop. In doing so, he revealed his plump belly. The fatty morsel flopped over his belt buckle and was already taking on a reddish hue from the heat.

  She looked at him expectantly, licking her tooth riddled lips. His stomach howled with such an incredible hunger that it could be called nothing other than punishment. He wanted to eat, he needed to eat.

  He drove his face down into the trucker’s torso and found it tender as veal. His body shuddered at the first taste of that sweet belly fat, then the flood of salty blood. Hutch dug and slurped until there was nothing left but a hollow where organs once were.

  When he pulled his face from the cavity, he felt free. He licked the remaining viscera from his visage with all of his new tongue’s length. Hutch had never felt this sort of power before- even when he went rough in Big Squealer’s lot. He loomed for a moment, regarding the female with a nod before he moved on to the face of the trucker. Hutch hooked his canine into the meat of the intact cheek, one of the more flavorful bits of any cadaver. He chuffed at her with a mouthful of trucker, bidding her to join him in the meal she made.

  Samuel Hutch heard the call and he answered. Gone was the hypocrisy that he lived in. Gone were the self deceptions and the secretive liaisons at Big Squealer. He was finally nothing more than his natural self. The beatings and the lies never satisfied him anyway.

  Now he was ruin incarnate, bound by the borders of Oakvane.