Guardians and Angels | Chapter Five | Part 18

Brendan Bragg wasn’t alone the night he was murdered on Gravity Hill, and he wasn’t only with Laura DeAngelo either. No, there was another creature there with them on the hillside roadway that snaked upward like a gravel river running silently overtop Sonoma Mountain that October night—a deadly beast—and it wasn’t his murderer.

It was another type of stalker altogether.

Brendan’s loyal chariot was with him, his 1983 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, an obsidian beauty with golden etchings he affectionately called SAR after the three letters carved into the dashboard of the passenger seat from Sarah Netter when he broke up with her this summer at the river. She had tears streaking down her cheeks that day by the Russian River, sitting in her hot pink bikini, her eyes Miami Vice blue, her cheeks red with anger. She found out about Brendan and Laura earlier that day, or figured it out you could say, when she saw them swim out to the pontoon rafts in the middle of the river to sunbathe together, leaving her on the shore—a discarded mermaid with rainbow-colored chainmail scales drying out in the sun as her boyfriend slipped away.

Sarah watched through her heart-shaped sunglasses—white frames, red lenses—smacking her lips as she chewed on her Big Red chewing gum, exaggerated sounds sparking cinnamon flames inside her mouth. The cinnamon blazing upon her breath was a sweet sting, and it matched the burning jealousy rising within her gut. Something cold, but molten, was awakening inside her, and Sarah felt it squirming and roiling as she watched Brendan and Laura chit-chat. It was a wet heaviness, like a net being pulled into shore filled with trout gasping for their lives. She was like those doomed fish—eyes widened like theirs, heart pumping slower as the atmosphere around them suffocated incessantly, an invisible poison warmed over by a blazing yellow fireball hanging from the sky. Slowly, with mouths hanging open in disbelief like her own, everyone accepted their fate with eyes unable to close. Unwilling to look away.

Sarah watched them giggle and confide and flirt with one another through her rose-colored lenses held in place by their heart-shaped frames. She watched as Laura DeAngelo’s hand slowly reached toward Brendan at times, her French-manicured fingertips traipsing their white-trellised edges down his rippling shoulders as he confided in her about something. Something that made her lean into him. Made her… more interested in him.

Later that day, after Brendan and Laura swam to shore and headed down River Road together, disappearing into the redwood forest known as Armstrong Woods for over an hour, Sarah confronted him at his car. She knew he would always return to his precious fucking car because it was the only thing he was loyal to other than his football dreams. So she waited there for him next to his black machine with its dumb golden bird etched on the hood, fuming away while smoking cigarettes as cars honked and boys catcalled from the highway. Zipping past with wooshes and blurs of summertime reds and blues, cars and trucks sped past as she waited, sunscreen shoulders and sunburned arms pumping out of rolled-down windows, Top 40 jams providing the background beats.

Brendan returned to her that day—or returned to his car—swaying with confidence, happy like a boy who just had something really cool happen to him. His flip-flops were flapping along the blacktop of River Road in Guerneville, California, also known as Highway 116. Not a guilty feeling anywhere in sight. In fact, he had a smirk on his stupid face. A smirk that sent her over the edge. She noticed something nestled under his smirk—something that made everything worse. Something which enraged her and sent her into a blind fury. She saw a purple and blue hickey on Brendan’s neck, an oval-shaped bruise, darkened with moans and moistened with gasps, a badge left on his skin from her enemy. An ochre flag planted on her man.

In that moment, she knew she had lost Brendan Bragg forever—and she lost it.

Sarah knew Brendan kept his Rambo knife in the glovebox. He always showed it off to her when they sat listening to Metallica or some other band with grinding guitars and machine-gun drums. He would hold it up, twisting its ¼-inch steel blade in front of her, his stupid face enthralled by its potential to kill something. He would show her the blade even though she couldn’t care less about his stupid knife, and how big it was, and how sharp he could get it. She was always afraid of its serrated edges and razor-sharp tip and didn’t understand why he needed a 12-inch knife in the first place—nobody was going to mess with Mr. Popular.

Not until today at least.

In her fury, Sarah Netter remembered exactly where the 12-inch Rambo knife was, and how sharp it was, and how the serrated edges looked like the teeth of the chained-up dogs in front of her house with all the motorcycles parked across the grass. The Rambo knife’s edges reminded her of how her father’s dogs would gnash their canines behind the chain-link fence at her every day when she passed by on her way to school, their eyes wide in panic, furiously snapping and biting inches away from her, ready to rip and tear and gnaw at her flesh if she approached too closely. Her father raised the dogs for his fights on the edge of town—the ones he and his motorcycle gang held behind the drive-in movie theater that was closing. Friday night dog fights with the Hell’s Angels was also Daddy Time for Sarah Netter. Pitbulls, snapping furiously within their pits, yearning to eat the child of their captor on school days, unleashed upon one another at the end of the week.

Through the tears that tumbled out of Sarah’s eyes and the accusations being flung forth from her cinnamon-tinged tongue, she reached into the glove box and grabbed the Rambo knife by its thick round carbon metal handle with the small bumps that helped grip it better, and she clenched it tightly with a white-knuckled death grip. With a guttural groan emerging from her throat, she stabbed it down hard into the black polyurethane dashboard covering the steel frame underneath and ripped her jagged initials into Brendan’s beloved chariot, naming it for eternity.

THUNK!

The Rambo knife pierced the dashboard material easily, and like an angry child scribbling with an oversized crayon, Sarah carved her initials into his car, forearms shaking from the force she was exerting, tears streaming down her face, leaving her mark before she left forever.

“Fuck you, Brendan!” she wailed. Her last words on this Earth.

S – a snake of a letter, coiled forever in front of any girl riding shotgun.

A – a sharp rise and decline, like their love, a long slice across the throat.

R – half-finished at first, then a downward slice, meant to curl but ending in a straight stab.

As Sarah slashed downward to complete the R in her name, the blade of the Rambo knife cut through the polyurethane and emerged with a downward arc, continuing into Sarah’s tanned thigh, sinking an inch deep into her flesh. The knife’s thickness stood prone, stuck inside her, emerging from her like a stake in the ground, marking the next tragic casualty that summer in Sonoma County. As she paused in silence, taking in the sight of the knife penetrating her, she heard both the doors of the Trans Am slam shut with a violence that sounded like an explosion, the force from them closing creating a soft blast of air that puffed on her tearstained cheeks. She jumped in shock, letting out a scream, and heard the locks snap into place.

CLICK!

In front of her, the Alpine radio sprang to life with a roar like a cougar protecting its cubs… the digital stations scrolled wildly on the screen, numbers flickering a thousand digits a minute while spitting out static mixed with bass booms from the 6x9 Pioneer speakers. Abruptly, the radio settled on a station—93.9 FM—and began blaring a Def Leppard song at maximum volume, the lead singer screaming raspy revelations.

Love Bites!

Love Bleeds!

It’s bringing me to my knees!

From the corner of her eye, Sarah saw Brendan outside the driver’s side window frantically pulling up and down on the handle trying to get into the Trans Am, his yelling muffled, a soundless panic being mouthed from behind the glass as he saw the damage she was doing with her blade to his car. From the speakers the song “Love Bites” by Def Leppard crashed forward, guitars and cymbals shattering Sarah’s hearing, warbling her eardrums with the pressure from the speakers as it pounded furiously at her from all angles. Pressing in, constricting, and then re-releasing, then violently pulling back in, her ear drums a rubber band snapping inside her head.

Love Lives!

Love Dies!

It’s no surprise!

She heard another metallic CLICK!... this time from the ignition as it turned, no key in sight. The machine beneath her awakened, thundering alive underneath her. The Trans Am began shaking itself violently, trembling with a growl and then a full-grown roar. A mountain lion’s roar, erupting with the sound of pent-up rage bellowing forth, a chariot full of frustration. The entire Trans Am shook and trembled with vibrations as the engine revved and rumbled around her, the lead singer screaming his findings into her ears from the pounding speakers.

Love begs!

Love pleads!

It’s what I neeeeeeeeed!

With the Rambo knife stuck an inch inside her right thigh, her ears quaking, her mind in a frenzy, Sarah Netter yanked at the door handle of the Trans Am, subconsciously engaging her escape plan, yanking up and down, up and down, frantic for independence. A sudden POP! sound emerged to her lower right, and she saw the door unlock, the knob popping up and signaling her freedom. She pushed the door open with both hands, grunting with rage as she did it, and with her right hand she grasped the handle of the Rambo knife with her fist. She bolted out of the Trans Am and onto Highway 116, a broken heart screaming in her chest, her eardrums now bleeding unable to hear, fate shoving her forward.

She felt the stinging heat of the highway blacktop on the soles of her bare feet, the last sensation of her seventeen-year-old life—hot asphalt on a summer day, the warm sun on her shoulders, the air from her inhalation crisp from her cinnamon-coated breath. A second later, from behind, a Volkswagen bus going sixty miles per hour down River Road struck Sarah Netter with enough force to fling her body thirty yards away, killing her instantly when she struck the hot highway pavement, her heart-shaped sunglasses covered in blood.

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