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Still was the vast stretch of the Sonoran Desert.
It had seen, for a week, gusts so great that the land itself had rumbled with uncertainty. Birds were grounded. Creatures tucked tight in their burrows. Life of the land completely halted. For those slow seven days, the desert paused, laying in wait for the weather to clear.
Wile E. Coyote was no different. When the winds came and the dust kicked up, and the mere sight of the Roadrunner had become as unreachable as the bird himself, Wile E. retreated into his cave to wait and to plan. For a short time, their chase was put on hold.
… It was only mildly irritating.
It wasn't like they'd never been on hold before. Not too long ago, in fact, they'd gone on their longest pause yet, as Wile E. subjected himself to the great pains of the United States Justice System, and the humiliations of international television. That had been the greatest stretch of time, and distance, that they'd ever spent apart.
So, yes, seven days without chase was not so bad. Not bad at all. The time was an excellent motivator for Coyote’s innovative mind, piles and piles of blueprints and plans rising from the ashes of the tumultuous weather. There wasn’t a night he rested well, nearly all hours dedicated to contraptions and traps the likes of which Roadrunner had surely never seen. When the time came to employ them, he was certain that his prey would be well impressed by his efforts.
The end of the week crept closer, and by that eighth morning, Wile E. was starved. Every breath was taken with yearning for the chase he’d so come to enjoy, every moment dedicated to delectable fantasy of what was to come. When he finally stepped free from the confines of his cave, Wile E. Coyote was simply teeming with ravenous energy.
It was bright outside. In this muted, eerie way. Clouds of ocher cast a muddy film over the land, and sun only peered through in a dull haze, like light through frosted glass.
It was hot. Quiet. Still.
Visibility was only marginally less awful than it’d been at the start of the storm. It was as he crossed the first stretch of land toward the closest main road, narrowly avoiding thick jutting rocks and clumps of cacti, that Coyote began to consider that he might have to wait an extra day or so before getting back on the chase. The thought made him antsy, in a way it probably shouldn't. He'd been away from home, from the Roadrunner, for longer than a week and longer than two. So, what about a mere extra day made him feel so… whatever that indescribable thing in his chest was? Maybe it was an illness. That strange tightness, wound up and squeezing, could only mean a decline in health. A cold, the flu. That would mean he should surely take an extra day off…
… but he didn’t really want to do that.
The road felt further than ever before, but he knew he’d reached its edge when his claws scraped slightly on the asphalt. For a second, he considered whether or not to cross the threshold, whether or not it was worth trying to chase through miles of dust and grime, or whether it was worth pushing through that strange feeling in his chest. Of course, it was stupid to ask himself something like that, when he knew quite well what his own answer would be. It was always worth chasing the Roadrunner. If he had been just a little less intelligent, a little more driven, he might've even tried to chase him through the previous week's ravaging weather. Because it was worth it. Because he needed to. Because of some unexplainable thing, some indescribable phenomena that not even he, Wile E. Coyote, genius, could fully understand.
He took a step forward. His nose twitched, and he breathed in slowly.
There. That smell. Warm feather dust and something sharp. It hooked him so, a terrible trap of the senses, luring his paws down along dark asphalt, all fours moving forward as that scent strengthened in potency. Roadrunner, he noted. It smelled like roadrunner. The mere thought had his extremities tingling with gloriful anticipation. A gurgling growl vibrated his belly, muscles twitching with the tension of hunger pangs, his body aching for sustenance. The wet flap of his gums and the sharp curve of his teeth turned upward as he crept nearer to his prey.
There was something wrong about it all. There he was, lurking in the murky air, creeping along like some common animal, ready to lunge at a moment’s notice. It lacked the sort of finesse that he usually possessed. Normally he’d be quite averse to such primitive methods, knowing well and good that they would not work on his prey of choice. Roadrunner could not be hunted like some ordinary animal, because he was anything but ordinary. Yet… there was something about that scent. Something so tantalizing that it nearly erased every sense of dignified coyote left within him.
It took him just a second too late before he recognized, fully, what it truly was.
It was roadrunner, he noted, as his paw touched something soft and slick.
It was dead roadrunner,
and his paw was buried in its guts.
He reared back onto his feet, stumbled twice a step, and landed on his arse without a single noise. A drum pounded in his chest, harsh and heavy against the thick bone of his sternum, rattling his rib cage with terrible strikes. It urged to jump out of his bosom, to run away, far away from the thing before him and never look back. Yet his eyes, his eyes couldn’t manage to tear away from the sight of it.
It was a few yards ahead. A sick, grisly thing stretched across the gritty road. Ugly and terrible, made of red twisting meat and strings of dirty innards, it laid unmoving. Feathers of blue were plastered and woven between and around the layers of torn flesh. A broken wing lay split at the end of a trail of bowel, its bones jutting out like desperate fingers reaching for him. The neck was twisted, bitten open. His gaze trailed upward, and then stopped completely. Although he was looking right at it, eyes overwide and full of utter awareness, Wile E. simply could not comprehend the state of the head. He turned quickly then, and ran.
If he pressed his paws into his eyes harshly enough, and squeezed at his head with all his might, then perhaps it might undo everything that’d just happened, and then everything before that, too.
Maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe he’d imagined it. Hunger would do that at its extremes, you know. Place the object of your stomach’s desires right before you, served up primly, all its pieces exposed just to satiate your mind. What’s left of it at that point, anyway.
That could be what happened. Desperation. That could be it.
Wile E. hit the base of his paws into his skull once, and then twice, and then three more times. That couldn’t be it, because that wasn’t what he wanted. The object of his stomach’s desires didn’t deserve—couldn’t—shouldn’t! It shouldn’t, it shouldn’t look like that, it didn’t, it—
Maybe it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real, and he was dreaming, and he would wake soon. Wake up, he thought, claws dug into his flesh, knees curled to his chest as he cowered in the great shadow of—of wherever he was.
Bed. Bed, he was in bed, surely, and the dust under him and the rock ledge over him were part of the dream. All quite real-seeming, but certainly because of his greater intellect. His imaginative qualities were just that good. Certainly. Certainly so. He’d made it all up.
Roadrunner was fast. Faster than fast. Beyond the speed of a moving vehicle and then some. Nothing could catch him, nobody could catch him. He was untouchable. Seventy-seven years of experience had solidified this as a great unbreakable fact of life in Wile E.’s mind. There was simply no tangible thing that could ever feasibly harm Roadrunner. If there was, it would’ve happened long ago.
So that thing—whatever it was— in the road, with the meat, and the feathers— it just couldn’t be real. It just couldn’t be true.
It couldn’t be.
It was cold and dark. The light of the moon was bright and clear, beaming down just a few yards ahead, highlighting a hollow burrow and a few speckled cacti. The haze of the day was gone and the heat had vanished. Just a few hours ago, creatures and life began to emerge from their places of hiding. Slowly, steadily, the desert was waking from its slumber.
Wile E. lay curled under the rock ledge, frozen in time.
Everything ached. It might’ve been hunger. It was fierce and violent, tearing at his insides with relentless cramps, a sensation he was not unused to. Eat, his stomach begged, feed me, it wailed, and he turned over onto it to mute its weeping. His blood-crisp paws tucked under his being, and his tail curled around him tight. Everything ached. His hind legs burned something fierce, in a way that nauseated him, but he couldn’t muster the courage to take a look.
Maybe he’d hurt something while running. It was a blur. The crisp details of the blue-red thing in the road were etched into his brain, every minute little glimmer of blood and flesh seared into his retinas. Yet, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember the time right after. There was running. All four paws digging into earth and pushing and pulling and pushing and pulling, miles and miles of relentless terror, or maybe less, or maybe more. He couldn’t recall.
He didn’t know where he was. How far had he gone from the road? From the cave? Could he make it back? Should he try?
A foreign thing inside him did not want to. Any drive to push himself up, to unfurl from his cocoon, was completely sapped. Gone. Maybe he was just tired, he reasoned. Maybe he needed rest.
So he did.
Seventy-seven.
Seventy-seven years. Nearly eight decades of life. A life of running and traps and pain and adrenaline, over and over, an endless loop, the consistency of two persons solidifying itself again and again and again through history. They had breaks and pauses but the chase was never truly over, it never truly stopped, not in the court room, not on the television, not ever. This was something that had become unquestionable to Coyote, and something that Roadrunner only seemed to question once, when he asked about his return in front of the entire nation. Even then, with just an exchange of looks, he’d gotten his answer. They were a constant.
Seventy-seven years of pattern could not just stop.
It was raining. Wile E. watched sheets of water splatter on dust and rock. Thunder rumbled between flashes of light, muting the desperate gurgle of his stomach. In hours past, it had grown louder and louder in its pleas, but Wile E. hadn’t made a move to satiate the hunger within. Now, he couldn’t if he wanted to. The rain was growing stronger, a storm blowing in, and the rock ledge over him was his only protection from the fierce lashings of mother nature.
He wasn’t sure how long it’d been since he’d run from the road.
There was mud and dirt and blood in his fur. Flakes of brown occasionally broke off and drifted to the ground below. It smelled like death. Everything did. Perhaps that was just a trick of the mind. He’d experienced a few as of late. Glimpses of blue feathers drifting in front of him, flashes of twisted, gnarled flesh splayed over the road, the distant beeps of a familiar voice. Tricks, tricks of the mind, to lure him someplace better than where he was. But there was no better. There was nothing at all.
Wile E. closed his burning eyes. It did nothing at all to stop the water from pouring from them, soaking in the fur of his cheeks.
Did it hurt?
Did he suffer?
That was a moronic question to ask. Of course he suffered. Of course it hurt. Wasn’t that the nature of nature? Wile E. wasn’t so stupid as to think that vile things like this didn’t happen. They were dignified animals, yes, but animals nonetheless. It was the way of things. What did he expect would happen when he finally caught him? It would be the very same, wouldn’t it?
Was that what he despaired over, really? Losing his opportunity, his chance for victory?
…he never truly expected to catch him.
That was the thing about dreams, they were dreams, goals on a distant horizon, and things looked very different from a distance, didn’t they? Perhaps the first two years, or even the first five, he had expected something of it. He had expected that eventually, eventually something would work. But at a certain point, even the most determined of individuals had to admit to themselves, “It’s been decades. Really.”
At some point, his goals had changed. He’d not really acknowledged it, because he hadn’t known what to do with the concept of maybe possibly having a friend, or wanting a friend. It wasn’t like it’d mattered anyway, because he really wasn’t going to catch him, honestly, and he didn’t have to worry about planning anything beyond fantasy that he wasn’t sure he really wanted.
It was only when the court case happened, when Roadrunner had admitted to considering them to be friends, that this thought process was challenged. But it wasn’t like any of that called for real change between them. They went back to how things were, like they’d wanted to, like they were meant to. It was the way of things. Wile E. was never meant to try to understand why he did the things he did, but here he was, wondering, what might he have done if he had caught him?
It wasn’t likely that he’d have been able to eat him. Not after the first five years, not after the first two. That wasn’t the real goal of the chase, that wasn’t the point of any of it, and even if Wile E. didn’t know the point himself, he knew what he didn’t want, and it was this.
If he’d caught him earlier, would it have happened?
If he’d been actually successful, if he hadn’t relied so heavily on ACME, or sued them, or something or anything, would things have been different? Was there anything he could have done?
Would he have done it, had he known?
It was humid and muddy and even though Wile E. was still tucked under the rock ledge, in his mind he hadn’t moved an inch from the road. It was him and the haze and the corpse, the three of them sat together, inches apart, and he could feel the guts of his friend and could smell the stench of his rot. All he desperately wanted was to forget, but that was impossible.
Wile E. Coyote could never forget about the Roadrunner.
What was he thinking? What was he doing there? Dust storms were common enough and avoidable, and yet he was out there being an idiot on the road. Wile E. may have thought Roadrunner was invincible, but Roadrunner had to have known better than that. So why was he there? Why? Did he even try to run? Did he try to fight? Could he have?
It hurt. It had to have. The road was so close to the cave. Was it really possible that he hadn’t heard him, even over the roar of the wind and the groan of the cavern around him? Surely the sound of the Roadrunner in pain would have pierced all barriers. Anything he did would reach Wile E. somehow. It always had.
He should have heard him.
It’d been days since he’d eaten. He’d lapped weakly from a puddle a while ago, but that’d since dried, and he hadn’t the energy or will to go searching for anything more. Every muscle in his body was beginning to break down alongside his feeble organs. Seven decades of living on the cusp of sustenance, only to suddenly drop off the cliff edge, made for a swift decline. It was morbidly ironic that the driving factor for his life, his stomach, was going to be the very thing to snuff it out. Eat him whole.
Part of him thought, maybe, that it was wrong. That he should get up. He had friends. Kevin and Paige and that was really it, but they counted. They had stayed in contact as much as they could. A few dinners here and there, or walks, or unceremonious crashings of case meetings. Paige was particularly determined to befriend him and learn of him, and for that, Coyote could be grateful. But even though the thought of his friends brought a slight twitch to his snout, there was no willpower to move.
What would be the point?
He could go on and on about being purposeless, but that didn’t matter as much as everything else did. Roadrunner was gone. That was his—his someone. For seventy-seven years. Framing one’s entire life around another person made the lack of that person so painfully overt, that living on without them seemed incomprehensibly futile. Who would he be without Roadrunner, and was it worth being that person at all? Was anything at all worth it without him?
It was a stupid question to ask himself. Wile E. knew the answer. There was nothing worth more than chasing the Roadrunner, and yet, he was not there to chase.
That was it.
Why did he care so deeply? Roadrunner was his prey for seventy-seven years, his vicious enemy that taunted him and reveled in his misery. Yet, he wasn’t. Roadrunner was his someone, someone else other than enemy, someone else beyond the simple title of friend, and he’d proven it on the stand in front of millions. If Wile E. didn’t have the knowledge that he had from the court case, that Roadrunner had seen him all this time and cared for him, would he still grieve?
Was this grief?
Teeth sink into thick, coiling cartilage. Wile E. bites down on the neck. It snaps, sharp. Blood and air bubbles into his mouth, a hot substance that paints his pearly teeth and swirls on his tongue. Thickly, he swallows, the viscous drip of red sliding down his throat until—
Wile E. woke in a pool of vomit. Bile and stomach acid left an acrid taste on his tongue. Thick clumps of something revolting had at some point dried in the fur around his mouth. The scent of it all filled his nose, a stinging burn that made his eyes water. It was an effort to drag his head just slightly forward, a few inches in the bit of dirt, to get away from the more pungent stench of vomit.
A bitter, weak whine squeaked from his chest.
There was a noise near his hind legs. Feather-like ruffles. Soft croons. It’s him! He thought, stupidly. It’s him! More energy than he’d had in days jolted through him, and the pounding beat of delirious hope began to drum in his heart. Wile E., eager, used the bit of energy he could to turn his head and look to his rear.
A vulture, half his size, pried at the flesh of his hind leg.
Meat hung from the corners of its beak, strips of naked flesh torn from his body, perhaps a while ago. Dried blood spattered its feathers, tufts of coyote fur sticking to patches, and bits of gristle scattered on the ground.
There wasn’t an ounce of pain as he watched it eat him. It had to have been gnawing at him for a bit, the thing, as it seemed well dug into his leg. Was he really so hungry that he’d lost such sensation? Why wasn’t he fighting?
Wile E. looked away. Wile E. looked back.
At some point, his ankle had been broken. Bits of white-brown bone jutted out just slightly from the mess of meat and blood. Surely the bird couldn’t have done that. Surely not.
Wile E. looked away. Wile E. looked back.
Roadrunner was dead. Miles away, he was rotting on the stretch of road that he’d run along for a near eight decades. Bits and pieces of him were being stolen away by scavengers. Round and round they circled him, ready to feast on his memory. It was cruel to not have buried him, Wile E. thought. All of his cowardice had pushed him to neglect something so crucial. In the end, he was just as irredeemable as he’d been when Roadrunner was alive. He never changed. They never changed. Maybe that was the problem.
The run. The run after the road—something had happened, but he hadn’t quite noticed. There was too much happening in his mind. Between the feathers and the neck and the head, the nightmare of it all, he hadn’t registered that he’d broken his leg. Was that why he hadn’t gone home? Was that why he hadn’t yet moved? Was it not grief, loss, the death of his willpower? Did he truly even care about Roadrunner, or was his mind using it to numb his agony?
Wile E. looked back, and the bird was gone, and the light of day had vanished. The flesh of his mangled leg still laid, splayed open like a gift torn, a nasty greedy thing having dug its way into him. There was no possible way he was reacting to this like he should have been. A vulture, a bird, and wasn’t that ironic, was eating him alive. He had no means to go back to his cave, had no means to hunt, no means to contact anyone. He was going to die, alone, under a ledge, and there would be no-one to know or care.
So why didn’t he feel anything?
It was bleary and hot. The shade of the rock ledge was not enough to shield from the burning glow of the blazing sun. Wriggling lines rose up from the distant land, the air writhing from the intensity of the desert heat. He was most certainly going to die soon. Shouldn't he do something about that?
Wile E. blinked slowly and watched the world move along.
Between blinks, he dreamed. Droplets of fantasy swirled over his yellow sclera. Images of running, chasing, catching. Blue-feathered wonders danced prettily out of reach. Roadrunner and him and him and Roadrunner and the miles and miles of space that they’d crossed again and again. It was easy to get lost in the waking fantastical images of it all. Easy to pretend and then think certainly that it was all real.
Roadrunner was alive and his leg was not broken and that road was not there, had never been there at all. There were no snapped necks or missing feet or twisted wings. Only Coyote-shaped craters and ashen remains of explosions and beeps of complete glee. It was perfect, and it was home, and he never wanted it to end.
Part of him must have loved him. Was that not the basis for all of their years together, but a love for the flesh, for the chase, and all that came with it? It wouldn’t hurt so much to lose someone that you didn’t love. If it wasn’t that, if he was misinterpreting the feeling, then it was much deeper and much greater. It was something indescribable. That was usually the case with the two of them. Wordless, nameless things, existing unquestionably.
Wile E. had never had to put definition to any of it, because it didn’t matter and he wouldn’t lose it. That was what he’d thought. What an idiotic, prideful way of thinking. It mattered. Roadrunner mattered and their chase mattered and he thought, somehow, that it was something that couldn’t be lost but it could. It could very much end, that was abundantly clear, and he should’ve done infinitely more to prevent it. Or, at the very least, cherish it.
That didn’t sound much like him at all, though.
If he wanted to live, he’d have walked on the broken limb. Wile E. Coyote was stubborn and persistent. If he really truly wanted to, he would have dragged himself home or to town, and gotten help, and survived. So why hadn’t he done any of that?
Blue feathers, smell of mildew. Flies buzzing, rotting flesh.
Did he really want to die like this?
It was a stupid question, and he knew the answer to it well.
What was the point of asking?
Time and memory smeared together on asphalt. Feathers danced in hot red blood, sticking to that corpse, a terrible caricature of what once was.
He couldn't unsee it.
Roadrunner was dead. He was alone.
Deep, ugly longing clawed within his chest and squeezed at his heart in rhythmic pulses. Once, then twice, then three times. Pain, pain, pain in his chest.
Roadrunner was dead and he was alone. There was no reason to get up anymore. No reason to keep moving.
The barely-cracked slits of his eyes filled and overflowed with hot, salty liquid. It streaked into the mats of his fur, dried with the vomit and the blood and gristle.
The single motivator of his life was gone, and he wished so desperately for it to return, because he did not want to die. He did not want their chase to end, or their friendship to follow, or whatever it was that they had. It wasn’t supposed to end.
A vibration started to rumble in his throat. A low, mourning call that he couldn’t contain, couldn’t will away. Pure grief and longing culminated into sound.
If he could undo every moment and action that led up to what had happened, even if it fundamentally changed all that they were, he’d have done it. He knew that now. What he wanted most was for the past to return, for the Roadrunner to live, for their chase to live on. But it never would.
Coyote howled, and there was no response.
They run. Under his feet, the ground feels like soft tufts of cotton. The air is crisp and clear, the sky is a bright and wonderful blue. As blue as the feathers inches from his outstretched fingertips, so close, and so very far. He strains and strains but cannot reach him no matter how hard he tries, and he’s just fine with it. That is the way of things, that is how they are. Roadrunner is always out of reach. Coyote is always miles behind. They will never, ever touch, and he is so, very, hungry.
Something had come to eat him.
A solid thing, smooth and cool, nudged under his jaw. It was steady as it worked, pushing itself low and then up as it tried to lift his head with a scoop. It failed and tried again, and failed and tried again.
Wile E.‘s body ached. A groan squeezed out of his floppy lungs, the tiniest protest he could manage. The small noise caused whatever predator it was to jolt backward, but he could tell that it didn’t retreat. He could smell it there. Something familiar. A distant memory, warm and fun.
For a small eternity, time stood still, and everything felt just right.
The rumble of a car’s engine shattered the illusion. A door shut distantly, and then another one.
“Where?” A familiar voice asked.
Someone responded, but their words were swallowed and swept away. The world twisted and turned.
Wile E. existed in glimpses. Headlights. Hands. Voices. Dark. Leather. Feathers. Croons. Dark. Rumbling. Music. Whispers. Dark. Beeping, rhythmic, footsteps, bright.
Fingers touched his fur, careful and precise. Metal clinked and machines hissed. Plastic pressed to his jaw, a voice began to count, and the waves pulled him back down under.
Wile E. had never been in a hospital, from what he could remember. Injuries that he’d sustained over the years had healed either gradually, or through the logic of whatever thing Toon health seemed to follow. He was resilient, to a fault. So, to find himself curled up in a white-sheeted hospital bed, draped in a blanket, and attached to five different machines, was certainly bemusing.
A sharp contrast to the wilderness of the Sonaran Desert, the modern world was cold, bright, and full of noise. Machines whirred and beeped, chatter and footsteps traveled up and down the hall, and the automated voice of “Code Blue” echoed on occasion. Things grew louder after those announcements, a brief chaos that made his ears twitch this way and that. It was all very, very much. Coyote couldn’t quite tell if any of it was real.
Paige was sitting at his bedside. Her hair was frazzled and pulled into a twisted bun, her clothes were wrinkled and smelled of dirt, and she had a cup of coffee squeezed between her knees. “Hi,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
Wile E.’s ears twitched toward the sound of her voice, limp and hardly movable, if only by muscle memory. Most of his body felt akin to cement. Or, like he’d been placed in one large, itchy cast. The only cast he did have, however, was wrapped around his hind leg. He tried not to think about why that was.
“Are you going to eat something this time?” Paige asked, and she was already picking up her coffee to put on some sort of tray-thing, which had various plain foods laid about. Fruit, meat, and veggies. Plastic-looking.
It was, apparently, not the first time he’d woken.
Wile E. closed his eyes. Behind them lay a road, feathers, and blood. He opened them and stared at the tray again, and then stared at Paige’s searching expression. Whatever she was looking for, she seemed not to find it, and disappointment painted her features.
“You should eat something soon, Wile E..” Paige’s voice was soft. He had a feeling she’d said those words plenty of times before. “I don’t know what happened out there, but we’re worried. The doctors said you’re not getting better.”
She waited for a response, for him to pull out a sign, or make some sort of expression to indicate that he’d heard or cared at all. Wile E. simply laid there, though, looking tired and thin, and not that much stronger than he’d looked when he’d been admitted.
There was quiet for a bit, and then, “Code Blue, Code Blue” echoing through the hall.
“Kevin is coming by again,” Paige continued. “The firm has been busy, but we take shifts to see you.” Footsteps and voices move up and down the hall, and up and down the hall, and up and down. Lulling him, slowly, back to rest.
“We care about you,” she said again, her voice distant, and warm. “We all do.”
“Failure to Thrive,” said a doctor to the room.
“Is it reversible?” Asked a voice, hand stroking his head.
“That’s entirely dependent on Mr. Coyote.” The light clicked off, the curtains shrieked shut, and he slept.
“Knock, knock,” Kevin said, knuckles against fake wood. A bag of McDonald’s crinkled in his fist, smelling noxiously of flesh and oil. When he set it on the tray, it was clear he was trying to do it in some sort of tantalizing way that might urge Coyote out of the position he’d been in for the majority of his stay in the hospital, but like the many other times he’d tried to make food look alluring, Coyote didn’t seem to react.
Wile E. blinked slowly at the human man, who plopped himself down in the chair that’d been designated as Paige and Kevin’s spot. Where one was missing, the other soon filled their place. They’d gone to great efforts to make sure he wasn’t alone, and there was something in him that knew that he should be expressing some sort of gratitude for it, or for the fact that they’d saved his life, but he just couldn’t.
None of it felt real, like living in a dream. Days passed in blurs and smears of colors and conversations. Wile E. couldn’t recall the last he’d felt an inch of reality, or emotion, or anything other than sheer numbness. Was he truly in the hospital? Was he still under that rock ledge, caked in his own vomit, in the blood of his—of Roadrunner? Was he still on the road?
It felt like it. Every time he blinked, it was there. That long stretch of road, with him streaked over it, bits and pieces of seventy-seven years scattered.
There were two worlds that Coyote lived between. The one on the road, and the one off of it. Every time he blinked, he traveled to one or the other.
How could he make it stop?
“Someone’s coming today,” Paige said, running a brush through the thick growth of his fur. She pulled it out and pressed a button, and his shed dropped into a pile beside his head. Slowly, she was building an entirely new, functional Coyote.
“We finally managed to get him on the visitation list. Uh, it didn’t really help, with the lack of citizenship and everything.” Kevin was scribbling on a notepad, glancing between a manilla file folder and his paper like he was translating an ancient language. “Seriously, we almost had to go through another landmark case.”
Paige looked at him pointedly. “It would’ve been worth it.”
Kevin began to sweat. “Well, yes. Yeah.” He scribbled, and scribbled.
“I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you,” Paige whispered.
The brush glided through his fur again, and Wile E. closed his eyes.
Something wet and warm swiped over his nose.
“Should you really be doing that?” A voice murmured.
Again, it happened.
Wile E. shifted, nose twitching.
“He moved!”
Was he being licked?
“Beep-beep.”
That—That noise. That voice.
“Beep-beep.”
Wile E.’s eyes opened painfully slowly, and the world graced his sight.
It was then that he realized he’d truly lost it.
Most certainly he had. No sane-minded coyote would be seeing what he was right then.
No sane-minded coyote could see the dead.
“Beep-beep!” Two big eyes stared at him from beyond a curved beak, mere inches away from his snout. That blue-feathered head cocked to the side just slightly, and two black pupils searched his face for something unknown.
It looked so very real. More real than anything had in such a long time. Yet, it couldn’t be. The Roadrunner couldn’t be standing in front of him, because he was gone, because he was on that road and he was dead.
“Beep-beep.”
“Oh, I don’t think you can—okay.” Paige, it seemed, gave up quickly on stopping the bird, who had apparently decided that he was going to climb onto the hospital bed with him.
A body of feathers pressed up against his side, and a wing fluttered up and over him. It'd been a long time since he'd read any book on psychology, and even then the most recent was on Psychology of Roadrunners, but he wasn't sure that hallucinations could feel so tangible or elaborate. Even Paige was reacting to the spectre of Roadrunner. Maybe that meant she wasn't real, either.
If that was the case, he couldn't be certain that any of this was real. That was a cruel trick of the mind, indeed. Dehydration must've gotten to him under that rock-ledge. Now he was stuck in a loop of feverish dreams with no way out. He was going to die insane and pathetic, never to be found again. Coyote closed his eyes.
Coyote opened them. There was something tickling the top of his head. It took a few moments before he realized that the bird, the hallucination, was preening him. Whatever version of Roadrunner that his mind had conjured up, was running his beak through his fur, picking and nibbling at dander, pulling away loose tufts.
It wasn't nearly as demeaning as he thought it should be. If he'd had any more mind than he did then, he might have found it frightening how easily he relaxed under the ministrations. The lids of his eyes sagged slowly, the world blurred, and a long, groaning sigh pushed out of his nose.
Someone laughed. “I think he likes that.”
“Beep, beep.” Said Roadrunner.
He sounded just like the real thing.
Rock, rain, and sand. Coyote dug his paws in the mud and whined, desperate.
Nobody was coming to save him. Did he want to be saved?
The lights clicked on.
“Shh,” a woman said, dressed in nurse's scrubs, kneeling under the rock ledge. “It's just a bad dream.”
It wasn't, he wanted to tell her. It was really happening. It was just that nobody could see it but him. But he'd never been much for words.
She turned the light off and left him under the ledge, and he shivered in the rain all night.
Their name was Therapist, and they spoke in questions.
“What's making you feel this way?”
“What can we do for you?”
“Are you in pain?”
“How can we help?”
“Do you want help?”
Being mute didn't matter. Even if he could speak, he just didn't know the answers.
Every day, Roadrunner would come to preen him. It would start with licks to his face, tongue swiping over his nose, snout, and cheeks like a greeting. He'd open his eyes and stare at the creature, and he'd get a beep and a smile in turn, and then Roadrunner would climb on up to start the preening.
It wasn't so bad. Wile E. hated to think what had become of his psyche to make up such a thing, but he wasn’t going to fight against it. He wasn’t even sure that he could if he wanted to. Moving took an amount of energy he just didn’t have. So he sat every day and let the Roadrunner preen him slowly, working through his fur bit by bit, day by day.
It was nice. It almost felt real.
“There aren't many options. He isn't improving,” a doctor said.
The window was dark with nightfall. Paige sat on her perch, clutching documents to her chest, glancing between the doctors and her uncle with fervor.
“You've barely given him time to improve. There's still a chance for him to turn around, right?” Kevin was wearing pyjamas and slippers, hair tousled, bags carved under his eyes.
Another doctor sighed. She sounded empathetic. “Mr. Avery, he's being sustained off a feeding tube, he's incredibly lethargic, and he's largely unresponsive.”
Something fluttered over him. “Beep-beep?”
“Yeah,” Kevin agreed, “what are you suggesting here?”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause.
“What are the laws on euthanasia?”
The room exploded into chaos.
“You look tired, buddy,” Kevin said, his hand hovering over his head as if afraid to touch him.
It had been Paige petting and brushing him all this time, he realized. Kevin must have been the voice arguing with doctors and vets and nurses. He was proactive for his clients when he re-awoke that part of him that believed in something, but he was still utterly godawful at the friendly bit of it.
The hand tentatively touched his head, and slowly brushed over his fur. “You’re the most determined coyote I’ve ever met, Wile E.. I know you can push through this. But you have to want to. I don’t know how to make that happen for you.”
There was sincerity in his voice. Kevin Avery was not an insincere man, but he was not one to be overly vulnerable either. There were mountainous walls built up around him, that very few seemed to be able to chip away at. Only when he was at the podium or on the floor did he ever show such a level of passion. This, though, was different. Wile E. couldn’t quite pinpoint what was different about it. But there was something indeed.
“I need you to try, man,” Kevin said, voice strange. “Can you do that?”
Pain. It was pain in his voice, that much Coyote could recognize. After nights and days of constant, unrelenting pain, it would be impossible for him not to. Kevin was in pain and he was asking something of him. He was asking for help.
Coyote had howled, and howled that night. Calling and calling without an answer, and he hadn’t expected one, but he had hoped for one. That was what Kevin Avery was doing. Calling without answer, not expecting, but hoping that Wile E. would provide one.
Every blink was a gamble on where he might end up. The road, the rock ledge, the hospital. Those three different worlds made not a lick of sense to him. But there was sense in what he knew, and what he knew was that he cared for his friends. For seventy-seven years, he had convinced himself otherwise. But he cared. These past days, real or imagined, proved that he cared.
When Kevin called, he answered.
“The doctors said a liquid diet only,” Paige reminded him, her smile a wobbling crescent, eyes filled with hope. She brought the cup and straw closer to him, and Wile E. made an effort to scoot closer in turn.
Whatever it was tasted abysmal, but supplemental nutrition was all that he could keep down. The doctors had said something or other about a gradual introduction of new and old foods. He couldn’t entirely remember. He’d been in and out of sleep for the conversation, as he’d been for many conversations before that. Paige, though, had been keeping track of all the information and instructions the doctors had given. She was almost religious about it. Sometimes he wondered why. The idea of someone caring for him to such a point was still so foreign. Yet, she did. They all did.
“It’ll be hard,” said one nurse to another.
“I think he can do it,” responded the second. “He’s resilient.”
“Aren’t they all?” A blanket slid over his form.
“No. No, I don’t think they are.”
Kevin Avery’s expression of disturbance was poorly hidden behind the wide palm of his hand. His fingers dug into his cheeks and pulled at the flesh, and his shoulders hiked up as the cast cracked open and the doctors pulled it right off.
“That looks bad,” he said, eloquently. A nurse glared at him.
Wile E. could not muster the courage to look back. Not while the doctors wiped at the healed wound, or while the nurses swept up the dust from the cast. He kept his head laid on the bed, perched on his front paws, and tried his best to ignore his reality.
“It’s not so bad,” Kevin lied.
The doctors had gone through their spiel and left not long earlier, darting from the room with their squeaky shoes and flapping coats. After some apparent argument some time ago, they’d all gotten much more skittish while in his room.
“They said partial use, possibly, so that’s—it’s something, isn’t it?”
Coyote gave him such a look of unimpressment, that Avery could do nothing but sit on the bed beside him with a sigh of defeat.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
Things were quiet. A long while ago, things had changed in the halls, and the noises of “Code Blue” and rushing feet had come to an end. Now, it was squeaky wheelchairs, and the click-clack of crutches along polished tile floor. It was a much calmer place than the previous. He wasn’t sure whether or not he liked it.
A hand landed softly on his head. It was something that his friends seemed to do a lot, lately. Coyote inched closer. Only one of his hind legs was good for pushing him. The other was a weak, unpredictable thing. It dragged behind him like dead weight. The reminder of its unfortunate existence made his lip curl with irritation, and then droop along with his ears.
He laid his head on Kevin’s leg, and the man scratched at his scalp. “It’ll be alright, Wile E.,” he promised, “you’re the most stubborn coyote I know. If anyone can get through this, it’s you. And you aren’t alone, either. So. Yeah.”
Right.
He wasn’t alone.
Roadrunner’s beak ran gently over the rungs of his ribs. It tickled.
Coyote’s side spasmed under the touch. With a suck of breath, his lungs flared, and his ribcage pressed further outward, enunciating the thin layer of flesh curled around his delicate bone.
“Beep,” said Roadrunner.
It wasn’t like he could help it, could he? Being preened was a particularly unfamiliar thing. Even if it’d been happening for a long while now, he was sure he’d never be used to it. Nobody but himself had looked after his fur for decades. This was new to him, not moving was hardly an option.
He made his response known with an exaggerated huff of breath through his nostrils. Roadrunner puffed up, all offended-like, and nibbled between his ribs with extra fervor. Wile E. did his very best not to squirm, which was not well at all, and ended up wriggling away. Of course, Roadrunner, able-bodied, followed and nipped at him.
Begrudgingly, he laid still again, and Roadrunner got back to work. It went quiet, in a comfortable sort of way. A clock on the wall softly ticked. Mechanical noises whirred from nearby monitors. It was hard for him to feel like any of it was real. When it was just Kevin or Paige, things made more sense. They seemed tangible.
But when the Roadrunner came, everything tilted on its axis. There was something in his mind that could not reconcile that he was indeed alive, and that it was all real. Every time he afforded to convince himself, he could only think of that road, and those days under the rock ledge. It was sure that he couldn’t have survived this long under there without food or water, so surely this couldn’t be some elaborate dream. But, his mind was hesitant, perhaps terrified, to entertain the opposite consideration that Roadrunner was actually alive. If he let himself believe and hope, and that was ripped away from him again, he wasn’t sure he could survive it.
If he just asked, perhaps it would ease his worries. If he asked the doctors or Kevin or Paige, they’d either give him a yes, or they’d give him a no and a few other things with it. It was that latter prospect that stopped him from asking. Wile E. didn’t want the answer to be no. Living in this in-between was the most confusing bout of emotional torture he’d ever experienced. But living in an absolute world without the Roadrunner, now that, he'd seen, was the worst thing that could ever happen.
That was a pain that he never wanted to experience again.
The hospital dinner of the night was chicken. A pale breast with a side of berries and fruits, and some varying vegetables. Coyote stared at it plainly, an indecipherable expression on his face, his ears raised and tail tense. A moment passed. Another. Slowly, Wile E. dragged his gaze to the face of Kevin, who looked minutely hopeful, but also like he was trying not to seem as such. It only succeeded in making him look quite uncomfortable.
Wile. E. looked back at the chicken. Would it be particularly insane to suggest that he never wanted to eat again? Could he reasonably survive off those supplemental drinks and the disgusting baby-puree that he’d been fed for the last however-long it’d been? Probably not. The doctors had mentioned something of chronic starvation some time ago, and the unfortunate irreparable damage on very, very important structures that kept him alive. Like his heart.
“You need a balanced diet,” Paige had said some time ago, looking tired and sad, entirely because of him. “If you don’t eat right soon… well, the doctors… it just doesn’t look good.”
Coyote looked to the ceiling and hated that thing that he’d discovered within himself, that apparently cared about the wellbeing of others and how his own wellbeing affected theirs. With effort, he pushed himself upright, and Kevin did his very best not to explode into action. In fact, with abysmal nonchalance, he quickly rolled the tray close to the bed side and lowered it for Wile E.’s ease of access.
“There, buddy,” he said, awkwardly. He patted the tray like it was Wile E.. “Have, uh, have at it.”
And that was that.
Blue feathers and asphalt. His dinner went up and out and splayed in chunks over the floor. The nurse that cleaned it didn’t look all that bothered, but he felt something terribly guilty curdle inside him nonetheless.
“The damage is just too severe,” a doctor said. “I wish there was more we could do.”
Wile E. watched as the doctor told this to Kevin, and wondered why he was a spectator to his own diagnosis. It was fair to consider that he hadn’t exactly been present, mentally, to receive any sort of medical news for the last several weeks. But he was present now and he wanted to be addressed now. Was that so much to ask?
Yes, he supposed, it was. Because he wasn’t much more than an animal to these people. They were giving him a sentence that meant almost certain death for a wild coyote like himself, but they didn’t have the nerve to say it to his face because they likely didn’t think he could rightly comprehend it. They didn’t care. Nobody cared, he wanted to think, but he knew he couldn’t and that it wasn’t at all true.
People that didn’t care didn’t cry for his loss, like Paige. People that didn’t care didn’t argue on his behalf, like Kevin. People that didn’t care didn’t show up every day and put effort into him, despite how resoundingly lousy he was at returning or rewarding it.
Wile E. Coyote had people that cared. It was just that it didn’t matter, not in that moment, because it couldn’t change the fact that he would never run again.
Still was the vast stretch of the hospital room. Discharge papers sat neatly clipped on the edge of the unmade bed. The whiteboard of patient info had been wiped clean.
Roadrunner stood at the edge of the doorway, holding a sign up, sincerity in his eyes.
[IT DOESN’T MATTER TO ME.]
Wile E. clutched the arch of his cane tight. He could not look him in the face.
[I CANNOT RUN ANYMORE. I CANNOT CHASE YOU.]
Roadrunner stared for a moment. Another sign pulled loose from his feathers.
[CAN’T YOU?]
The world was blurry and wet and cold. When did the distance between them become so infinitely far? Wile E. looked down at his next sign, clutched tight in his free fist. It trembled with the force of his uncertainty.
Roadrunner took a step closer, and then another, and another. The blue of his feathers glowed bright in the dim light of the hospital room, and there was no red to accompany them, and no asphalt underneath.
Wile E. turned his sign around.
[ARE YOU REAL?]
Roadrunner cocked his head and observed him for a long moment.
Whatever he was looking for, he seemed to find it, and he smiled.
[AS I’VE EVER BEEN.]