Dwayne saw him first. Creaking open his one good eye he peered out from underneath his blue truckers ball cap with the silk-screened words “If sex sells, I’m buying” printed on the grease-stained area above the brim he spied the slowly approaching dot through the early afternoon heat haze. Twisting his mouth into a snarl, he pushed a pearl of spit between his brown-stained teeth and on to the dusty ground between his legs. Leaning over, he picked up a chipped canning jar from the worn wooden gas station porch, stood up from the ripped and torn sun-bleached brown recliner, and walked over to the lone gas pump. Holding the canning jar in one hand, he picked the gas pump hose up with the other, flipped the pump to the “on” position with his elbow, and squeezed a handful of gas into the jar. Placing the gas hose back onto its cradle, Dwayne slowly walked back to his La-Z-Boy and sat down, his back creaking almost as much as the old recliner.

The dot was closer now, but not close enough to tell if it was man or woman.

Grimacing in the hot sun, Dwayne rubbed his lazy eye. Lifting the jar to his lips, he took a mouthful of gas and swallowed. Cupping the jar against his thigh he mumbled, “Somebody’s comin’, Sid.”

Sid, lying on the bench behind Dwayne, stirred. “Yep, I seen it now for a minute or two. What dya think? “

“I can’t tells ya fer sure,” Dwayne said taking another swing of gas, “but I think it’s another one of them lost people.”

“Yep,” Sid said, sitting up on the wooden bench, his torn and dirty jeans snagging on a splinter. They had both been out here for nearly three months, and in that time they had seen four lost people somehow find their way through the endless desert and to their gas station abode, their humble hillbilly version of Nirvana.

The dot now had legs, and Sid could make out something billowing in the warm breeze next to it. “It’s a man, that I can tell fer sure,” Sid said, leaning forward and accepting the canning jar Dwayne offered him. Taking a deep swallow of 89, Sid wiped at his lips with the back of his hand and let out a long, slow sated sigh. Poking Dwayne on the back of his grimy neck he handed the jar back, then stood up. Squinting up at the white noon-day sun, Sid coaxed a fine string of spittle from his lips, then looked down to the bleached white dirt. Finding a small rock he picked it up, and looking like an awkward Babe Ruth heaved it towards the asphalt road that disappeared into the distant horizon in either direction.

Landing with a wet smack, the rock lay for a second on the pristine hot asphalt surface. Looking like a tiny white island on a sea of inky black, the lone rock swayed in the desert heat waves. Twenty yards away, what looked like a ripple in a still pond began to form a fast moving v-shaped wave. This undulating, swaggering wave quickly closed the distance between itself and the tiny white Sid island. A black and red fin broke the surface of the asphalt and circled the rocky invader like a reef shark carefully inspecting a struggling, panicked swimmer before finally disappearing back under the onyx asphalt river. Seconds passed, and Sid looked at the now still two-lane road in disappointment, as if denied some sort of expectant reward.

The asphalt river exploded, and what looked like a horrible, frightening imitation of a shark lunged several feet into the air. Its scaly skin dressed in red and black blotches of sickening color. Open seeping sores and bite wounds covered the length of its body. Its mouth was a jagged maw of multiple-rowed translucent teeth, and what looked like yellow goat eyes strained in their sockets, locking on to the tiny stone island. Crashing back into the asphalt river teeth first it enveloped the tiny rock, and with a quick twitch of it’s diseased rotting tail disappeared underneath the charcoal ebon liquid road.

The dot man was almost upon them. Weaving side to side as if in a drunken stupor, he was nearly at the asphalt river. His tie whipping at his sun burnt face, he dropped what looked like a suit blazer on to the dry sand and began to trot like a wounded animal towards Sid and Dwayne. “Shit, he’s seen us,” Dwayne said with a laughing sigh.

“Hello?! Hey! Where….where the hell am I? Hey...hello? Help!” three-piece suit man screamed through the dusty air, his trotting gallop coming to a halt at the far side of the road. He stared expectant and helpless at Sid and Dwayne.

“Thirsty?” a deviously smiling Sid asked the man, holding up the canning jar. “Come on…cross the road and we’ll help ya out.”

Dwayne began giggling, his eyes wide with anticipation. He always thought this part to be the best…