This piece is a response narrative for the Autofiction x Worldbuilding submissions call.  It was inspired by this Autofictional seed. For this call, we asked people to write a response to another author’s autofictional submission, based on the original piece and this bit of cryptic world lore.

This, and other Worldbuilding pieces are being published to a Wiki, which will allow contributors to edit, link, and otherwise annotate their work and that of their peers.

Freightliner, Company-Owned

The lot lizards got me sick. I put decals on my cab windows that said no lot lizards. That was stupid because lot lizards don’t read. Before you cast stones that I’ve got my morals screwed on wrong, I should clarify that I’m talking actual lizards. Darla is the one I reckon that got me sick and she was a green anole. I don’t know how she got in my cab but we was hanging out for 700 miles until I let her off at a tree because she needed leaves and not just Burger King.

Anyways salmonella sucks just about all the time but especially when you’re hauling your own ass, putting a towel on the seat because the truck stops don’t come fast enough. My cab smelled like shit and I needed a new place to stay.

My name’s Brandon, I guess you could say Darla was my best friend. She let me listen to hour-long radio shows about how to prepare corn, back when an hour-long radio show about how to prepare corn wasn’t the worst idea. I knew Darla was female because she didn’t have a dewlap. A dewlap’s like an Adam’s apple for lizards, but they’re better because lizards don’t have to shave and get cut. And the dewlap’s bright red the way the Lord or the serpent made them, depending on your point of view.

Anyways I missed Darla but I was no herpetologist, I was just a lonely young man wearing Depends and taking a classic rock break even though AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” was increasingly becoming a bad idea. I drove dry goods from the warehouses to the grocery stores, my speed capped to double nickel. Not great, considering. I was trying to keep my intestines to myself. I was trying to forget my girlfriend who broke up with me. Sara. It’d been five months and I was still not ready to say ex-girlfriend yet, because what if she came back?

I was saving money because if Sara came back she would get flowers every time I came home, she wasn’t going to think I didn’t care about her anymore. She’d know I cared about her more than driving and NPR.

I was just along the river and it was dark and late. I was missing Darla because even though she got me sick, she was super-nice when I got to talking about Sara, wrapping her tail around my steering wheel. My cab still smelled bad, but I found this nice cool shed on the river. The padlock on the door was left open so I helped myself to it and got to sleep. I slept soundly. I felt Darla’s tail wrapping around me. It was a great damn dream.

I woke up more or less coated in glue. No idea why. Why didn’t matter.

Thing about introspection is, sometimes it gives some new bad thing more time to get stuck to you forever.

I had to basically rip myself off the floor boards of the shed. Human Velcro. No more arm hair. Still, I was sticky. I got back to my cab and tried Googling everything. I tried nail polish remover, steel wool, ice chunks. All things you can buy at truck stops. The cashiers didn’t look at me too weird because you wouldn’t believe what shows up at truck stops.

Anyways getting the glue off gave me crusty bloody lesions, but I was free. Nobody caught me for sleeping in the shed. I left the padlock just the way it was on the door except for a little sticky trace I left behind. But I missed Darla.

I dreamt of gluing her to my skin and woke up smiling. Like I hadn’t been that happy in years. I thought about stopping at the forest and bringing her back to the shed next time Kroger’s needed soup and cereal.