The World, Silently Spinning by Maskovas M.B

Author:Maskovas, M.B. [Maskovas, M.B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

The Captain

She pulled into the parking lot of the visitor center for Yosemite National Park. In the dark, her headlights illuminated the spiraling dust. The parking lot was completely empty, framing the low stone building. The night was overcast, so the forest around her was dark, but Katy knew that beyond the parking lot and the trees framing it was the crest of stony peaks and mountains. The air was cold as she stepped out of the car, her breath coming out in hot puffs as she took a crowbar from the back seat. The glass of the visitor center door cracked slightly when she pried the door loose, but it didn’t shatter to pieces.

She unloaded the gas tanks, her food, and her sleeping mat, and tossed it all onto the floor in the main room of the visitor center, next to a rack of maps and brochures. Once she had finished unloading the car, she made a makeshift bed behind the front desks, tucked between two filing cabinets. A taxidermied deer kept her company, and the exhibits around her showing maps of the park lulled her to sleep.

She woke up when the sun started streaming through the dusty windows. Without electricity to keep the lights on, she’d begun sleeping when the sun went down and waking when it came up again. Having never really been a morning person before (hell, she’d been nocturnal before during her work in Austin), the change of pace felt refreshing. Today, she laid on the floor for some time while she examined every crack in the well-worn hardwood floor and the scuffs and scratches on the tan-painted walls. She had a tendency to lose herself in the details now. She would stay frozen in one place while her mind explored the world around her and made inner dialogues to keep her company. After about thirty minutes, her bladder demanded she get out of her warm sleeping bag. She stretched and opened the front door.

After strolling around the back of the building to relieve herself, she set up a small kitchen station. Breathing in the clean, crisp mountain air, she heated a can of beans on the small burner she had packed with her. As she waited for them to warm, she undid her hair and began to braid it into one long, neat pleat. She tied off the end, and it brushed her hips as she flipped it over her shoulder to give the beans another stir. After the first few months of panic and despair, and a good long conditioning with bottled water as a rinse, she had managed to work out most of the tangles. Now, she carefully brushed out and braided her hair for practical keeping. A few times, she had considered cutting it all off, but as soon as she went to get the scissors, she couldn’t stomach the idea. Her hair had been long her entire life.

She remembered the last time she’d been at Yosemite. It had been crawling with sightseers from all over the world.

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