Smitty Anders would get what was his. He'd be damned if that bitch of a kid sister would get in his way. Jesse stood in the doorway with her arms pushed out against the frames of the door of the brick home Smitty had hated so much while growing up. They'd treated him like dirt. Everything he'd come to be was their fault. Why wouldn't they see that?
"You need to go home, Smitty! You know Mom and Dad said you ain't allowed back here 'til you get help," she said, eyes wide. Her red hair stuck out of order. It was three am and she'd been asleep. She was scared for sure without Mom and Dad to rescue her chunky ass like they'd always did, but she was also seventeen. He was twenty-two and that'd be a helluva assault charge. And Mom and Dad would back up the dopey, doe eyed bitch. Mom called her 'goddess curvy' and him a 'problemed child' He'd always gotten in trouble for beating the shit out of her like when they were younger. Though she'd deserved every bit of it. She was the one who'd gotten him kicked out after all.
"Get the fuck out of the way Jesse or I will kick you fat ass out of the way," Smitty said.
Jesse narrowed her eyes at the threat. "Try it you skinny-ass dope banger."
Smitty bowed his shoulders and leaned forward over her best he could, but she shoved him back with no give. He didn't want to hurt her. Not yet. Softball playing bitch. So, maybe he was skinny. More so than she was fat. Guess he needed to eat and exercise more if he was going to be banging dope, but you didn't really need food, sleep, or much of anything else when you had it.
What he needed was some more dope. And Smitty knew the old over-under shotgun his granddaddy had given him was under Mom and Dad's bed. He didn't give a shit if it was supposed a sober gift for a clean twenty-first. It was his and it was worth something. Smitty chewed his lip. Scratched at his face. Damn holes all over. If he get cleaner dope it wouldn't be shoving through his skin like this.
He made to turn around.
"Fine. Be that way," he said, turning his back. Jesse watched but couldn't react in time as he swung back around and clubbed her across the face with the flat of his hand. She made a wet gasping sound as blood welled up between her cheek and teeth.
"I fuckin' told ya!" Smitty lowered his shoulder and threw it against her chest. She cried out and fell over and he walked right over her into the front hall where he bee-lined for the parents room. Past the ornate little book shelves filled with Jesus-talk and Jesse and Mom's shitty collection of romances. Dad's crime novels. Louie L'Amour and James Patterson. Made him sick. He'd never have these things.
The room was dark, but Smitty was used to that. He'd broken in and stolen before until they'd gotten alarms put on everything. He had to make this the last trip. And he had to do it when Jesse was home and no one else so the alarm was off. She wouldn't call the cops. Or, she shouldn't if she knew better. He'd have to be quick. She'd do a stupid hateful thing like that. Jesse was always Mom's favorite and if she was too dumb to see that and have some goddamned sympathy for the entire situation, then she was just like all the others. Smitty dropped to his knees and reached his hand underneath, clutching for the ornate firearm. Cool charcoal metal, embossed chamber and an oak wood stock. Yeah, it'd be worth a dollar or two.
He heard Jesse's voice from down the hall.
"Jack? How-"
A pair of hands took an iron grip on the back of Smitty's neck and he shoulder.
"Don't ask," a deep voice said.
Smitty gagged and threw a free hand up to fight. It was useless. He was hauled up from beneath the bed and up off the ground and thrown across the room. Smitty landed hard against the dresser, his back catching every contour and knob in a way that wracked him with instant pain from every angle. He cried out louder than his sister had ten seconds before and rolled to the ground moaning. The same hands hauled him back up. They were hot. Fever hot. He had one arm twisted behind him and the hand went back to the nape of his neck.
"Jack, stop! Don't hurt him anymore!" Jesse yelled. The light went on. Smitty found himself shoved up against the wall, he neck twisted to the side. He could see Jesse in the doorway, but not the man behind him. Jesse's teeth were red with blood and he could see the welt forming on the side of her pale baby-face.
"Why? Who is he? Are you okay?"
Who? Who was he? Obviously his kid sister was slutting it with some guy she barely knew if she didn't even have the respect to tell him about her only brother. What a bitch. What a fucking bitch. He struggled against the hands, but it was in the same way he might push against the side of a cypress tree. They weren't just strong. They refused to give in any sort of way. So he gave up.
"He's my brother. Just." Jesse paused and looked at Smitty. His breath came in short bellows through his teeth. Animal-like fury coursed through him. Jesse shook her head. "Oh hell. Just take him outside. I'm going to call the cops."
"Good. I don't like him. He has badness in him."
Smitty thrashed. "You fucking would!"
"You just fucking hit me and broke in!"
"I slapped you 'cause you were being a bitch," he shouted back. He felt himself being drug away and down the hall. "It's my fucking right to take that gun! This is all y'all's fault! Mom and Dad always treated your bitch-ass better and hope you're happy when I fucking go and kill myself."
"Oh, how typical. Jesus no one's against you, Smitty. No one is out to get you. We tried helping you and all you did was steal and lie and go back to the same shit. I get to hear you threaten suicide every single time. Every time Mom tried to get you to take all of your meds. Every time you needed to go work."
Smitty thrashed and stuck his leg out against the side of the hallway.
"I took my fucking meds!"
"Oh, sure you did," Jesse said. Smitty hated that sarcastic tone, "Nothing but the sleeping pills and shit that would fuck you up. You left all the things that would level your fucking ass out. I'm done feeling sorry for you. You need help. I'm sorry, but you need help and you've got to want it. But no. Everything is everyone else's fault."
"That's because it is and you get your fucking fuck-friend off me I swear to GOD." Smitty screamed and jerked against Jack's grip. He thrashed and cursed and spat and kicked two holes into the wall on his way out with the sharp point of his boots. When he got to the door he thrust out both his legs and jammed them against the sides of the frame. "I ain't going nowherAAAAAUGH!"
He felt both knees give away as Jack shoved him past his own bodily limits. Again, as if it'd been nothing. His groin throbbed, muscles twisted up. Smitty began to cry. Angry, frustrated tears as his boots drug across the ground. He'd worn them for years. The last thing his parents ever bought him. Never mind the old short-and-wide Chevy of his sitting in the driveway. It was an old piece of shit. He'd wanted a new Ford. And instead he'd gotten a piece of shit piece of iron that refused to die no matter how hard he drove it. He'd wreck it, he decided. That's what he'd do. He'd wreck it nice and good and then they'd be sorry. If he died then he died. It didn't fucking matter anymore.

Jack threw him to the ground. Smitty rubbed the sleeves of the work jacket across his eyes and rolled over to see the asshole his sister was screwing. It was dark out, but the flood lights had come on out front. Jack was about to shout at him but his face had stopped his heart cold. He had no eyes. Just white holes where the eyes supposed to go. And-
No, no he had eyes. Jack shook his head at the dark-haired young man in front of him. Pretty-boy fake. His face was wide and strong. His button down plaid was neatly pressed. Dark black and grey. The deep blue Wranglers looked new too. Oh he'd never knew what it would be like to be in Smitty's shoes. Parents hated him. Sister hated him. No one ever gave him things or tried to help him.
Jesse stood in the doorway of the house with a phone. Jack had pulled him out into the yard. Smitty stood up on his feet and spat.
"Fine. I'll go. I won't come back. You'll see."
Jack narrowed his eyes but didn't say anything. Smitty tried to stare back but couldn't. A very real sense of doom coursed through him the longer he stared. He turned away and limped to his truck, supporting himself on the hood as he made it to the door. His knees hurt. His inner thighs hurt. Goddammit he'd never deserved this. Not once did the thought cross his mind that any of it was his fault. How could it? He'd been wronged. It wasn't fair.
He yanked his door open and climbed in. Jesse was still there in the doorway. So was that asshole Jack. He hadn't moved an inch. Hell, he hadn't even blinked, the arrogant prick. An idea formed in Smitty's head. Oh, he'd show 'em alright. He started his truck but left his headlights off. He wanted them to see him turn around, as if to back up. The old eighties hunk of iron idled steadily as he dropped the automatic shift into gear.
His boot hit the floorboards and the truck launched forward. Jesse's scream cut the air. Metal bent and warped as he connected with the mother fucker in the driveway. Smitty slammed the brakes and turned and balked. Jack was on the hood, but he wasn't dead. His body splayed out over the hood. Smitty could see the dent in the front where he'd connected, but he also saw Jack's eyes, still staring. And they had gone white. He could see it. No pupils. No iris. Nothing. Smitty put the truck into reverse properly and gunned it. Jack slid off the hood as gravel shot up into the wheel well and the truck went back. Smitty's torso swung inside the truck as he twisted the wheel and whirled the truck around.
Smitty threw it into drive.
He drove.
He took off down the driveway and slid halfway across the road before he caught traction. Wind rushed through the cab through the eternally open passenger window. It'd jammed and he'd never had the money to fix it. Typical piece of shit that his parents had given him. He hated them. He hated Jesse. And he hated him, that cowboy piece of shit that'd thrown him out. That freak of nature. Where'd he even come from? There hadn't been any other car or truck when Smitty had pulled up. And there hadn't been one when he pulled away. It was all wrong. Probably had snuck in so he could sneak his dick inside his sister.
Smitty turned onto the highway and finally flicked on his head lights. He cut the corner short, and desert rock and brush kicked up behind him as he took off. He shook with the adrenaline of it all. God DAMN IT. Now what the hell was he going to do? He would listen to music, if he hadn't sold the radio. He would drive out to Caldera Pass, if he wasn't out of gas. And all because that bitch-kid sister and her boyfriend had got in his way. And now, hell, he was probably wanted for assault cause of Jack. He wasn't even hurt, really. He'd gotten up, hadn't he? Smitty could see the dent in the hood of his truck but he'd also seen the look in Jack's eyes.
He stared down the road and shivered. He thought about putting on his seat belt and said fuck it. Reflectors and yellow lines zipped by. What was he going to do? Hell, maybe he would kill himself. He'd tried before. Or, you know, sort of tried. His parents had caught him hanging himself, but they'd taken forever in finding him. He'd cut himself once too but then had driven himself to the hospital, scared of how much blood had started to pour. He'd picked at the stitches and scabs. He had the scars. They didn't care.
Static poured through the speakers. The headlights flickered once, then twice, and then to the point of having more darkness in from of him that light. Smitty sat back from the wheel and held up his hands in confusion. What a piece of shit truck. He reached over and punched and pulled the headlight lever. On-off. Off and off. Then on for a second and more flickering.
"Well, fucking come on!" he hollered, loud enough to hear himself over the wind. He punched the lights off. Then yanked them on.
And there he stood.
"HOLY-"
Smitty didn't get any further. He jerked the wheel to the side. If he'd been smart he would have kept going. If he'd truly been a killer not a coward he'd have kept going. But he was a scared man and saw the glowing white NOTHING of that man's eyes. Not even eyes. Just white glowing spots. His mouth had glowed, but it hadn't really been a mouth either. Just an imitation. A glowing white hollow pulled up into an uneven grin.
The truck tired screamed as he barreled straight for the opposite lane of the road. He overcorrected to miss the shoulder and failed to do so anyways. The back end slid off the road. The sound of rock and dirt being chewed hummed through the cab as he steered back the other way and watched the horizon move sideways in front of him. Too little. Too late. The truck slid for another forty feet before the traction of the wheels gave way and sent the old pickup into a roll.
Smitty felt his window shatter next to him. The glass and road sand-belted his shoulder before he was thrown to the other side. His foot snagged beneath the console and snapped as he went back to the other side with the roll. Then back again--and Smitty hit the road and felt his body fall halfway out from the cab. The same foot and leg caught in the window and flung him up.
Smitty closed his eyes as he felt nothing but air.
The truck rolled another five times before it landed upright--engine still running. Its roof caved down into the cab in a way that made it look angry. Passenger door was gone. It wobbled and trundled to the side off the road and slowly drove into the ditch where the one remaining headlight flickered. Smitty hit the ground with a sick kind of thwack that was something like a melon being dropped from ten feet up. He rolled and rolled, arms flailing around him. And then he came to a moaning stop.
Smitty sobbed for a minute. Why was he still alive? Or fuck. At least he couldn't have been knocked unconscious. He could feel warm liquid pulling around his legs and he thought it was blood but really he'd let his bladder go. Everything hurt. Everything ached. Pain shot through his right leg. It was broken in three different places, not counting the numerous compound fractures in the foot. His left shoulder had been shaved off a few inches. Blood seeped out of his ears. His head throbbed. His mouth gaped.
Somewhere deep in the fearful spot of Smitty's mind, he remembered why he'd wrecked. He made a whining sound as he pulled himself up and looked over to the idling truck. Slowly he turned his head back the way he'd came.
That otherworldly glow of the grin sat floating the darkness nearly fifty feet down the road. It neared ever so slowly, floating over the road on that darkened form.
Smitty made a crying kind of sound and crawled towards his truck. He laid on his left leg and drug himself forward. His head spun. His vision blurred. What if he was already dead? Did the reaper cause death? No. No no that couldn't be it. Smitty gasped for air and pulled himself up. He hopped and drug his foot on harried balance. Terror trumped pain but god damn was he hurting. He turned back.
The thing pulsed in the distance. It blinked in and out of existence and for a moment Smitty thought it might go away. Then it blinked in twenty feet closer, appearing nearly in two spots at once as it flickered in and out of existence and arrived and cut the gap in half.
Smitty shrieked again and nearly tripped. The truck still wheezed in its spot in the ditch. The light strobed. Maybe it could be driven. At least to town. Or at least away from that thing. Caved roof or not he'd hang out the goddamned door and drive before he'd be taken by some specter or spook. It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair.
He turned back again. It began to flicker in and out again. The truck in from of Smitty wheezed and finally quit. Smitty turned back to it and sobbed. He put too much weight on his leg and it gave out from beneath him. With a cry he fell and twisted and landed on his back. He looked up. It flickered again and a form materialized in front of him.
The form filled Smitty's vision and he screamed long and hard and the last thing he saw for an eternity was the white holes of nothingness on its tar-black face as the mouth yawned and pulled wide to reveal the blinding, maddening light within. It blinked and Smitty felt a hot oily feeling pour in through his eyes and then--
And then nothing.
The truck's headlight flickered back on.
When the highway patrol pulled up thirty minutes later onto the scene, the middle-aged patrolmen would find nothing. He'd take of his hat, scratch his head, and mutter bullshit until he radioed in. No foot prints. No drag marks. A search of the truck and a sweep of the spotlight along the road revealed nothing. And in the following week a four-wheeler and helicopter sweep of the desert on both sides of the road would reveal nothing. No body. No tatters of clothes. No bones.
It was as if Smitty Anders had always been nothing at all.