The water was cold. Carl ran it over his hands, over his face, and the water ran pink down the drain. He dried himself with a towel that had holes in the corners. He looked at the mirror. He looked away.

The gas station was empty at 2 AM. It was always empty at 2 AM. The fluorescent lights hummed. The cooler behind the counter made a sound like breathing. Carl stood behind the counter and looked at the door and waited for someone to come in.

They never came at 2 AM.

At 3:17, a pickup truck pulled into the lot. It was dark blue, rusty along the bottom, with a camper shell on the back. The driver got out. He was a man Carl didn't recognize. He was maybe forty, maybe fifty. He had a beard and a hat and tired eyes.

"Fill her up," the man said.

Carl took the nozzle. He walked to the truck. The man stayed in the cab, rolling down the window. Carl put the nozzle in the tank and pressed the trigger. The gasoline made a sound like rain.

"How much?" the man asked.

"Twenty."

"Full, then."

Carl stepped back. The tank was full. He turned to go back to the counter, and the man saw his face.

The man's eyes got wide. Just for a second. Then he looked away. He looked back at the dashboard. He looked out the windshield at the desert.

"Keep the change," he said, and left a five-dollar bill on the dashboard.

Carl took the bill. He went back inside. He put the five dollars in the register. He looked at the mirror above the register. He looked away.

At 5:43, the sun came up. It was a pale yellow light, thin and weak, like it didn't want to be there. Carl locked the front door, turned the sign to CLOSED, and walked to his truck.

His truck was parked behind a motel on Highway 90. The motel was called the Dry Creek Inn. The word DRY was missing the O, so it said DRY CREEK INN, which was accurate because there was no creek for more than six months of the year.

Carl's room was number 7. The carpet was red, the kind of red that made you sick. The bed was a double, the sheets were white, and neither of them had been changed in probably three weeks.

Carl sat on the edge of the bed. He took off his work boots. He took off his socks. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the wall.

On the wall was a stain. It was brown, maybe coffee, maybe something else. Carl looked at it for a long time.

Then he got up and went to the bathroom. He turned on the light. The light flickered once, then stayed on. He stood in front of the mirror.

He didn't touch his face. He just looked at it.

Three years. Three years since the botched run. Three years since the chemical burned through his skin and into the bone and made him something he wasn't.

He didn't blame the guys. Not really. They had given him a choice: help with one last run or deal with the consequences. He had chosen to walk away. They had chosen to make an example of him.

The chemical had been in a metal canister, the kind used for industrial cleaning. They had thrown it at him from about ten feet away. It had exploded on impact, spraying him from the chest up.

He had run. He had run through the desert for two hours with the chemical eating through his face. He had found a dry wash and washed it with water from a cactus, which made it worse. The cactus water mixed with the chemical and created a reaction that burned deeper than the original contact.

By the time he reached the highway, his face was a mess. By the time he reached a hospital, it was too late to fix.

He turned off the bathroom light. He went back to the bedroom and lay down on the bed. He stared at the ceiling. The ceiling had water stains that looked like maps of countries that didn't exist.

He didn't sleep. He never slept. He just lay there and listened to the motel make sounds—cars passing on Highway 90, a dog barking somewhere, the wind moving through the dry mesquite trees.

At 7:00 AM, his alarm went off. It was a cheap digital alarm clock, the kind that beeped in a high, thin voice. Carl turned it off. He got up. He put on his work boots. He put on his socks. He walked to the mirror one more time.

He looked at his face. He looked away.

He walked out of room 7 and down the cracked concrete walkway to his truck. The morning was cool, maybe fifty degrees. The sky was the colour of old dishwater. He started the truck, turned the heat up, and drove toward the gas station.

The gas station didn't care what his face looked like. The gas station didn't care about anything. The gas station just needed someone to be there from 10 PM to 6 AM. Carl was there. That was enough.

He unlocked the door, flipped the sign to OPEN, and stood behind the counter. The fluorescent lights hummed. The cooler breathed. The clock on the wall said 10:00 PM.

He waited.

At 11:42 PM, a woman pulled into the lot. She was driving a sedan, silver, late model. She got out and walked to the pump. She was maybe thirty, wearing jeans and a jacket with the hood up.

Carl took the nozzle and walked to her car. She turned as he approached, and he saw her face—tired, worried, the kind of face that had been worrying for a long time.

She looked at his face.

Her eyes got wide. Her mouth opened slightly. She took a step back.

"I—" she started, then stopped. She looked at him, really looked at him, and something in her expression changed. Not pity. Not fear. Something harder to name.

"Fill her up?" Carl said.

She nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, please."

Carl filled the tank. He checked the oil while she stood there, watching him. When he was done, he handed her the nozzle.

"Thanks," she said. Her voice was quiet, careful. "How much?"

"Eighteen fifty."

She paid with a card. She stood there for a moment after the machine was done, like she wanted to say something. Then she got back in her car and drove away, heading east toward the nothing that was Texas.

Carl watched her taillights disappear on the highway. Then he went back inside the station and stood behind the counter and waited for the next customer.

There probably wouldn't be one. It was almost midnight. The desert was empty at midnight. The desert was empty most of the time.

He went to the bathroom and turned on the light. He stood in front of the mirror. He looked at his face.

Then he picked up the bottle of whiskey he kept in the bottom cabinet, unscrewed the cap, and took a drink. The whiskey burned, but not as much as his face burned when it rained.

He put the bottle back. He turned off the light. He went back to the counter and sat down and opened a magazine he had found on the floor and hadn't been able to finish reading.

It was a car magazine from 2019. It was about new truck models. Carl looked at the pictures of trucks with shiny chrome grilles and massive tires and leather interiors. He looked at them for a long time.

Then he closed the magazine, put it back on the shelf, and looked at the door.

The door stayed closed. The fluorescent lights hummed. The cooler breathed. The clock said 2:00 AM.

Carl sat in the chair behind the counter and looked at the door and waited for morning.

At 6:00 AM, the shift manager called. "You holding up?"

"Yeah."

"Good. I'll be there in twenty."

The phone clicked. Carl stood up, stretched, and walked to the window. The sky was getting lighter. The desert was getting lighter. Everything was getting lighter, slowly, the way it always did.

He went to the bathroom one more time. He looked in the mirror. He looked at his face.

Then he picked up his jacket, hung it on the hook by the door, and waited for the morning shift to arrive.

// OTMES-v2-Code: TI=48.00 | M1=8.0,M2=5.0,M3=4.0,M4=2.0,M5=4.5,M6=0.5,M7=5.0,M8=3.0,M9=5.0,M10=3.0 | N1=0.30,N2=0.70,N3=0.60 | K1=0.50,K2=0.40 | R=0.10,I=0.30 | θ=270.0° | Classification: T4-沉沦级-DirtyRealism