It was around three o’ clock in the afternoon on a bone dry day in the middle of the desert.

There was a diner, an old fifties joint that had over the years been converted into a truck stop.

In the quaint but desolate eatery there sat a middle aged woman on her way home from a cross country business meeting.

Muriel Gibson was her name. Muriel was by all accounts an average woman. Muriel sat quietly and read her romance novel while sipping on her black coffee. Everything about the day seemed to be average but a strange feeling came over her as if someone has just gently blown on the back of her neck. She quickly turned from her novel to find that she was alone for two tables in every direction, just a draft she thought. She delved back into her novel.

Miles away there is a distraught young man in his early twenties pacing alongside the road in the scalding desert sun. The man had looked like he had just come out of clothes dryer filled with pumice; his cargo pants and floral print shirt had the impression that it had been almost instantly dissolved by the numerous small rips and tears accented by small blotches of crusted over blood.

The waitress sets Muriel’s food down in front of her, “There you go doll.” The waitress chirped with a wink. Muriel broke her transfixion on the novel and replied to the waitress with a smile and a nod.

He thought his eyes where deceiving him. Finally after six hours of walking in desert heat the man saw the roadside diner. Tears welled up in his eyes, relief! He broke into a dead sprint.

Muriel was taking her time eating and reading her novel, she was in no rush. Muriel had taken the position that she had with her particular law firm because of the travel, because she liked to be in transit, in motion, anything was better than the nothing she had waiting for her every night.

The man was crawling by the time he got to the door; he stopped in the fetal position and caught his breath. Ok act natural, go straight to the bathroom and get yourself cleaned up. The pep talk recited in his head gave him the impetus to come to his feet.

Muriel felt a sudden surge of energy that took her breath away, she looked up from her book and stared ahead quizzically as if trying to calculate exactly what suddenly coursed through her body and made her hair stand on end.

The man limped forward to the bathroom no one even looked up at him, good, he thought. He made it into the bathroom after plunging his head under the faucet while swallowing as much water as he could, he began cleaning as the dried blood and scabs off of his face and clothes. He pulled a switch blade from his back pocket took off his pants and cut the legs off of them, using one leg as a cloth and the other as a bandana.

The waitress had taken Muriel’s dish and left her with a fresh cup of coffee, as she fingered the last few pages of her novel the man sat down across from her.

“Am I a son of a bitch, ma’am?”

“Excuse me ?!” Muriel spoke softly with an edge.

“Am I a son of a bitch? I mean I am still young and can’t stop wondering am I that? Am I the worst and not the best of what brought me into this world? I mean I have been on my own since I was sixteen sleeping on the streets and begging for whatever I can get just to live and I wonder am I supposed to be this way? Am I the delinquent child of two morons who won’t even think about the life they created? Is this my fate, to wander aimlessly and be at the mercy of every thug with an appetite for hate? Look at me I woke up this morning in the middle of the desert because I was thrown from the truck that gave me a ride but when I refused to suck his cock he threw me out, literally now here I am broke, beat, with one foot in the grave and I have barely just come out of puberty. The one thing I have been called more than anything is a son of a bitch. So I begin to wonder am I?”

“Well, umm, young man I am not quite sure what to say.”

“Don’t worry you don’t have to say anything, all I want to know is, what the hell can I do when I am literally bound by nothing?”

Muriel’s jaw dropped, she had never once before been so taken with someone so young besides his rough condition she felt as though he had just spoke the very problem she had been suffering from since her second divorce. Every night she went to sleep alone in her two story home she had progressively noticed the silence and void, the absence of anything meaningful; The Nothing.

“Once again, I am speechless, I have often felt…”

“So basically, where do I go? What do I do now that everything I was told as a child is meaningless, what do I do now that I don’t have a piece of paper listing my address, because I don’t have an address. What do I do when my most valued skill is protecting myself? What do I do when I have nothing? Where do I turn to? My parents have all but disowned me, no other family and nothing but a blade.”

“I guess you have to do what is right for you, nothing else matters at that point, I can’t speak to that because I have never been in that situation although, my son…”

“Is everything ok here ma’am?” Asked the waitress while she placed the bill on the table

“Yes, everything is fine, please get a menu for this young man, and put it on my bill”

The waitress had a half-crossed look as she looked at the young man, but quickly it shifted into a heart-warming smile when her eyes came back to Muriel, “Sure thing.”

The man kept his gaze on Muriel.

“Thank you.”

“No, problem it sounds as though you have had a rough night.”

“No. Thank you for answering my question.”

“I’m not sure which one I...”

“I’m not a son of a bitch… Mom.”