Haruspicy – Derek Whorley

June 10, 2026

Even with the sun waning and night coming to overtake it, the day is still so very, very hot. It is cooler in the breakroom, but Amelia has to smoke—she does not know why anymore. Beyond the hill, the red sun is still and furious behind the mountains. The light makes the mountains look flat, but she cannot see them. All there is to see are the rows and rows of cars glaring, even in the dusklight, and the other storefronts of the strip as they curve around the lot. She tries not to look at the people coming into Bonnie’s Bargain Bin, shuffling and waddling into the store, hoping they offer the same courtesy of ignoring her on her break. They all look ugly to her, abnormal. She does not want to inhabit these strangers’ minds as a memory. She does not want to exist in this space at all, but no one has gotten back to her about her application.
        She stopped counting weeks ago. It used to be frustrating. She’d chew on the foam filter, feeling the tiny holes of it with her reeking acrid tongue and ask herself why why why but coming up with no logical answer, only a void space. It was the impotent fury which, with no concrete target to direct it at, compounded and roiled in her skull until finally smoldering out as the work day continued. Now, she simply stands by the pottery on the sidewalk, under the brick arches of the strip, looking at nothing in particular, contemplating apocalypse.
        She believes it will happen while she’s at work; some fiery eschaton will soar down from on high and she’ll be here. She probably wouldn’t know it’s happening until the glass doors shatter and explode inward and then there will be a moment of terror and panic, unparalleled and absolute, that would be engulfed in some vaporizing wave along with the rest of herself.
        “Amy!” Her coworker stands just outside the exit door. She is due for her own break, after Amelia’s ends, which was five minutes ago now. “Are you done yet?” Amelia does not see how she let the remainder of her cigarette burn down to a stub of white ash. She flicks it onto the pavement and mumbles “Sorry,” as she walks in through the exit door. A trip to the bathroom sink to wash the stink off her finger tips, then she returns to the register where she remains for another four hours.
        Amelia dreams of the job she might have while she scrubs hardened feces off the toilet bowl. She can see the tall office building, rising against the sky; the edifice of windows catches the morning sun on her way in. She’ll be dressed in nice flats, nice pencil skirt, a light colored blouse—something fun and tastefully demure, she thinks. Not these duct-taped work sneakers she’s worn for the past three years, no, no more of that. She will be lovely, be paid well, have nice and relatable coworkers, she will enjoy her work life. She flushes the toilet, not waiting to see the particulated shit swirl down the siphon jet.
        The drive home is silent. The window is down, blowing in air, her cigarette crackles as she sucks in the tar, and the engine sputters beneath the hood, but it is silent for her. She does not acknowledge the sounds, does not even think. She does not think of swerving her car into a lamppost or the underside of a bridge anymore, tells herself she has grown out of that way of thinking. She knows she’d probably never actually do it. Preferably not in that way.
        She flicks the butt out the window and reaches for another. When she looks up again, she slams the breaks.
        Both lanes are filled with cars, with more slowing to a stop behind her. She pushes in her cigarette lighter and tries to merge into the left lane. The line of cars gradually files on. She puts another smoke to her lips and presses the lighter’s red-hot coils against it; then she smells something rotten that overpowers the tobacco. Undeniably it is shit again, hot and inescapable.
        She is now getting two eyes full of what everyone else was gawking at as they crawled their vehicles around the police car. In the headlights is a green-brown smear that led to a deer lying on the pavement. The stomach exploded on impact; little bits of whatever hit it lay scattered about the scene. It was almost comical, cartoonish how its tongue lolled out. Red and blue lights flash in the black pearl of its unseeing eye. It points up at the sky, stars polluted by the downtown lights. The car behind Amelia honks. She drives on to let the car behind her have their turn in carcass-ogling.
        Tomorrow is one of her days off; she stops at the 7/11 down her street before home. When she checks out with a 40-ounce bottle of Icehouse beer, the cashier greets her with “Hey Bonnie!” She still has her work shirt on, the logo plastered and cracked across the front. She gives a tiny smile automatically, but imagines herself leaping over the counter and wrapping her arm around his neck while he is turned around to get her another soft pack of Camels. Now he would remember her as the Bonnie-Girl; she is surprised she wasn’t called that sooner. She gets in her car and peels off, ready for the night to end.
        She is lucky to have her own place; she knows this. Lucky to have found it, her sorry biweekly paycheck can cover it. She can scrape by, but something is desperately crawling inside her that wants out. It wants to rip and tear and beat into ground beef and stomp and scream. The feeling is always there, but felt in varying degrees. Tonight it writhes.
        She knows there is something wrong with her. She is human, violently human. The constant awareness of her body enrages her. She is not this shell, this flesh and blood and bone. She is only the little currents of electricity that flow through it, the spirit. She knows those currents dictate who she is, the person. She knows that the material can change how those currents flow but she cannot see herself in the material, the manifestation of people.
        Amelia believes humans cannot fathom the looping and stretching highways, the stripmalls, the stinking cars, the doughy and wrinkly faces of dog-walkers and joggers, the cluster of buildings downtown; these are the creations of people. She believes that she cannot be part of them. She cannot play any real role in these things. There is nothing for her and nothing of her in any of those. There are only a few choices she has at her disposal, and none feel as if they really matter.
        The bottle is more than half empty and she is laying on her futon, her eyes glazed over at the TV. She thinks of the deer. How the doe did not have any say in the human takeover of her land. How she could not have ever known what a highway is, or a car, or that death would come in the shape of such unknowable things; punishment for trespassing on motor-vehicle owned property. Death would never come in the sharp fangs of a bobcat or as the gentle curtain of the final sleep. No; it came in some alien thing, a product of centuries worth of recorded history and exponential industry. Unfathomable.
        Then there is some spark of an idea. She had gotten a gun a couple months ago from a pawnshop, for protection. It was expected of her to get one eventually, a single woman all on her own. It was a tiny revolver, five shots and a good grip. She removes it from the drawer by her bed and lays it on the coffee table before her, just looking at it. She runs her fingers over the gunmetal, feeling the little grooves of the cylinder. It is loaded. She releases the cylinder and removes the bullets carefully, one by one, attaining some kind of fluid precision that could only be attained when she was the right amount of inebriated. She flicks the cylinder back into place like she’s seen on TV. It really damages the gun if you do it too often, but it looks undeniably cool. She draws back the hammer, feeling its miniature ridges and lets it fall on the empty chamber with a click. A click. A click. A click. She does not put the empty gun against her head or against her breast or set it in her teeth anymore. There was nothing new to feel. Instead, she gets it in her head to go downtown and finishes off her beer.
        Besides driving a little faster, her driving is unaffected by the buzz. The main street is quiet. Most of the businesses are closed, save a dive at the far end of the street. No one is on the streets except Amelia, who walks slowly, her eyes jumping between what is in front of her and the other side of the street. Her hand is in her coat pocket, gripping the revolver tight. She feels herself getting ready even before she sees him, a coil winding up inside her, working up the nerve. It is nearly indescribable when she spots him. She wants to jump out of her skin at him.
        A man in a suit is making his way down on the other side of the street, towards her. He emerged from an unremarkable office building, his necktie hanging low under his unbuttoned collar.
        He stops at a crosswalk and Amelia stands at the opposite end, staring him down. He is looking at anything but her. She worries that he’ll run away, but she knows this man. He is the enemy. He is the product of people and everything they’ve wrought. He is completely immersed in the material world, shaped by the innumerable minds of people. He could never understand to be human, only those desires designated as “human” and the infinite grey that comes along with such a label. This, she knows.
        The pedestrian signal flashes white and he steps into the street. Amelia walks toward him. He is still not looking at her, until they are about to pass. A quick little awkward smile is pulled across his mouth for only an instant.
        With the stubby barrel of her gun, Amelia feels his soft underbelly through the off-white satin shirt. This sensation registers simultaneously with the shot fired. The man stumbles back, off the white stripes of the crosswalk. There is a look of abject amazement and terror stricken across his face. Unfathomable. Amelia’s face is stone. He does not turn back, but runs past her. She fires, the report ripping through the empty streets for a second time, a third. The man trips on the curb and does not scramble back up. Amelia does not examine the body; she does not take his wallet; she does not kick his lifeless body. She looks up and sees that all the stars are out tonight.
        When she returns home, she is buzzing all over; a warm, electric feeling spreads from the back of her head to every nerve ending, trickling down her spine. There is nothing resembling guilt or regret, no mourning beneath her exuberance. She feels like a person; no animal kills without some reason, she thinks, certainly not with a gun—this epitome of human evolution.
        She sleeps, those stars still fizzling underneath her eyelids.
        The next morning, there are no sirens or police banging at the door, foaming at the mouth, fingers on triggers. Instead, she receives a call from a company downtown she applied to. She cannot remember how much time passed since she applied. Months at least.
        “There’s been an opening in the position you have applied for and we’d like to schedule you for an interview. Would today be okay?”
        “Yes,” she says. “Today will be wonderful.”