by Madilyn Hazelton
My mother once told me that my grandmother had encountered something extraterrestrial. She said she was visited when she was driving late at night, down a long straight empty freeway. Now, as I drive down a freeway not unsimilar to my grandmother, alone, tired, with hours ahead of me, it starts to make sense. Traveling down these roads is the closest thing the average person will get to space travel. The dark expanse, sporadic blinding lights of oncoming traffic, distant dots glinting on the horizon, the car’s internal glow of dials and screens. The solitude of emptiness and void. I have a slight paranoia as I fly like a star down the road. It’s a common route but, because it is a Monday night, I find myself mostly alone on my space odyssey. The music is turned up to an ungodly volume, piercing my ears and rattling my eyes open. Oh my god—
I apply so much pressure on my brakes I wonder if diamonds are formed under my shoe. My headlights beam onto a small grey coyote, standing in the road like a rogue meteor. My chest aches from the hole in my ribs where my heart flew out. The coyote stands frozen, five feet away from my car. Its stare bends time around it and all my other senses pause to stare back. The coyote softly turns and trots off back into the black hole of the hills. My foot tenderly approaches the gas and I creep away in my metal spaceship. Maybe my grandmother did encounter something out there after all.
About the Author
Madilyn Hazelton is a second year Writing and Literature student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She finds her inspiration in waterfalls, bean dip, and kitchen table hypotheticals. Fiction is her genre of choice, but she occasionally branches out into poetry and creative nonfiction. She was born and raised in Fresno, California where she built up a resistance to 100+ degree weather but now spends her weekends enjoying the relaxed temperature of Santa Barbara’s beaches.