The truck door slammed shut. Jude could barely make out the face of the man through the darkened window, still lined with condensed sweat. The vehicle remained still for a few moments. Without seeing, Jude sensed the man’s stare through the thin layer of tempered glass, either brooding or desultory. 
        Certainly not regretful, he thought.
        The truck took off with a start, its tailpipe billowing out a thick cloud of exhaust. Jude watched as the frame of the vehicle shrunk in the distance, twin red lights soon disappearing over the horizon. A light summer wind filled its wake. In the encroaching silence, Jude took stock of his surroundings. He’d been dropped off in some strange places before, but nowhere quite as desolate as this. Tall grass stretched out on both sides of the road — Jude scanned the horizon for evidence of civilization, but no luck. The only light on the horizon came from down the road, in the opposite direction of his last client. It was a small glow, one that suggested a rest stop, or perhaps even the border of a little town. 
        Jude thought that he might find a bar there, maybe meet another guy and make a little more tonight. The last john hadn’t been stingy, but he certainly hadn’t tipped for extra effort, either. He’d been rough, so a bit more money wouldn’t have hurt. 
        Before starting off, he knelt down and laced up his boots, scuffed and beat up from many long months on the road. The right sole was economically wrapped with duct tape. He’d been walking on the highway when it had first come undone, somewhere in Alabama. The pavement had been hot that day. Jude had looked like a strange little jackrabbit as he hopped unevenly down the shoulder.
        One, hop. Two, hop. Three, hop.
        He hadn’t gotten his hands on anything to fix it until he neared Montgomery. The duct tape had eventually done the job, but the sores on his right foot remained. Even as he walked down that strange and lonely road surrounded by empty fields, a dull ache still persisted, thrumming to the rhythm of his blood. 
        It didn’t take long for him to reach that distant light. Although his clients often remarked on his boyish face, Jude maintained a muscular figure. He could walk for hours without losing stamina, a trait that had become useful in recent months. As his broad legs carried him forward, he felt a pinch on his shoulder. 
        Horsefly? Spider? No matter. He brushed his hand under the neck of his ratty shirt, swiping at whatever it was that fed on him. He was approaching the light now and he was close, close enough to make out–
        A little bus stop.
        Jude let out a sigh of disappointment. It was going to be a long night. 
There was a bench with an awning overhead, and a single lamppost across the street. To his surprise, Jude could just make out the figure of a man. He was alone in the night, a needle of darkness below the streetlight’s glow. Maybe, just maybe, there was hope yet. 
	As Jude approached, the shape of the man’s body became clearer. Even though a loose, dark jacket hung from his frame, it was immediately evident that he was quite thin. Jude thought about the roulette of men he had entertained over the past few months. They had come in all shapes and sizes, but none were as skinny as the man under the streetlight. The vast majority of the men who took interest in Jude’s services were large. Arms filled up with hard muscle and sinew, legs like aluminium pistons.
        Hands that could unmake.
        Jude got a cold feeling in his gut. There was something wrong with that man over there. His legs begged him to turn them around and jog them back into the darkness from which he’d come. That was silly, though. Jude knew that. A vision flashed in his mind — himself, lost in the fields and then lost in the forest, fashioning a hut out of sticks and sucking marrow from bones. When an adventurous hiker stumbles upon him, they’d write about it in the paper: “Queer Found After Living in Woods for Decades.” That wasn’t in the cards for him, certainly. Better to find civilization, and maybe a stiff drink.
        He sat across the street from the man. There was a sign displaying what looked to be a bus, although a patina of rust made the image near-abstract. Jude considered the fact that this line could be out of service entirely, and he would be waiting out here all night. Then again, the looming presence of the stranger contradicted this theory. If there was any information to be gleaned, it would be through him. Jude knew this, but still couldn’t bring himself to start an approach. His body willed against it, a stubborn machine of meat and bone. 
        He couldn’t quite see the figure through the glare of the streetlight, hazy and inordinately bright.  It stung his eyes to try. It occurred to him that the man could be staring at him, could have been staring at him this whole time and he would be none the wiser. His pulse quickened, and he decided that it would be better to unmask him.  Stand up, walk over, and say hello. Then, he could sit right back here in peace and wait for the bus. Maybe even lay down on the bench and get some sleep, if his body allowed it. 
        Jude had made beds of many a bench. He had a particular knack for twisting himself into uncomfortable spaces. Benches were as good a place as any, although no competition for a nice motel room. Better than going back to a john’s place, sometimes. Jude thought about the man with the townhouse back in Louisville. The place was rotting from the inside out; old newspapers were stacked in towers along the hallway, loosely disguising large patches of mildew on the wallpaper shaped like continents. After seeing the old man’s bed — more of a nest than a bed — Jude had gotten out of there. A bench would be much better. Familiar, at least. 
        Now, on that lonely stretch of road, Jude was again confronted with the unfamiliar. This time, he could not run.
        He rose to his feet, fumbling in his pocket for a pack of Camels. After a moment, his fingers found the paper edge of the box. He lit up, the smoke hot on his teeth. It was a nasty habit, Jude thought to himself. Still, on a night like this, it felt crucial.
        Jude tapped his cigarette, sending little sparks of ash westward on the wind. Even as the last little thread of smoke left his lips, the back of his tongue still tasted of semen. He rubbed the sore spot of the back of his head, remembering the way the man in the truck had rutted and spasmed as he pulled on his hair. Lying there, mouth full, Jude had felt like a wind-up toy. 
        He looked over at the man under the streetlight, then walked over noncommittally.
	The light flickered above them. The thin man nodded.
	“Hello,” Jude said.
        In the light, he could see the stranger all too clear. His figure was even more gaunt than it had appeared from across the street, his eyes set deep and jaws deeper. Jude pulled his jacket tighter to brace against the wind.
	“Hello,” the thin man responded.
	The word was edged with phlegm, weak but somehow resonant. His mouth was open in a strange smile, as if the two had just shared a private joke. A hush fell upon the road. In this silence, a strange realization crept upon Jude. 
	It was completely silent.
	Not your garden-variety silence. True silence.
	In all the places Jude had been, he had always heard something. Remnants of sound carried on the wind, a continued frequency that permeated every corner of his life. Even in his most silent moments, there was still the indescribable hum of the world, barely perceptible yet unyielding. Here, under the streetlight, there was nothing. The wind was gone, and the insects crying in the fields were silent. 
	A thought leaped into Jude’s mind.
	He stopped them.
	The stranger was looking at him, still smiling that empty smile.
	Jude felt frozen in place, frozen the same way the sounds of the world had been caught in the air, suspended like stuck flies. The aura of darkness surrounding the streetlight drew inwards, substituting that familiar almost-purple night for inky black.
	The stranger’s eyes reflected that darkness. Jude couldn’t look away, but he was struck by the feeling that there was no malice in those eyes. He recognized that look: one of intense and overpowering loneliness. 
	It was one he knew well.
	Jude felt a deep pang in his heart, a profound puncture that splayed his insides out. He was open now, and there was no going back. Another image played in his mind — a fox dragging itself off the highway, legs separate from body and intestines curling behind it, twitching like many wagging tails. 
	He was hurt. This man, this stranger, he was hurt terribly. Jude would help him, if only he could lift himself off the ground. He was on the ground now, he realized. When had he fallen? It didn’t matter, really. The thin man was undressing. His coat dropped down to the ground, folding into a messy heap. He reached down to the hem of his ragged T-shirt, lifting it up to reveal a skeletal torso, ribs delicately stacked on top of one another. His stomach retreated behind them, bulging with the outline of his internal workings. His pants fell to the ground next. Not with great difficulty, of course. The man simply had to unclasp his belt and they dropped without hesitation, revealing two pallid tindersticks, hardly fit to support the weight of a body. Still, he remained standing, all of his jagged parts resting on top of one another like a twisted experiment in balance. A schoolyard game. A being created for play, animated just to suffer. 
	Jude looked up at the man now, his stretched figure white as bone. That strange smile was beginning to crack, raw desperation edging into his eyes. He began to extend his long hand towards Jude, as if to help him to his feet. 
	It was at this moment that the silence broke. A low rumbling began to sound off in the distance, piercing the stagnant veil of Jude’s surroundings. 
	It sounded like thunder.
	It sounded like fire. 
	The sound grew to a dull roar, and the thin man looked up in response. In the shadow of that sublime noise, he was dwarfed. Jude could see fear etch its way across his visage. Another light, outside the bounds of their little circle, began to glow on the man’s body. He looked down at Jude, eyes pleading. But there was nothing to be done. 
	In the next moment, the light became blindingly bright, shining through the thin man’s body. It rendered his skin glasslike, uncovering his withered organs. His heart, still pumping, faltered in the light from beyond. His veins untethered, floating in the air as if underwater. His bones began to glow a piercing white, shining through his skin. 
	In that last instant, his eyes locked with Jude. 
	A word echoed through his head, loud enough to rend his skull from his body.
	Please.
	And just like that, the thin man was gone.
	The headlights of the car flew by the streetlight, past Jude. 
	That was all it had been. Just a passing car.
	It took a few more hours for another car to come by. Jude had slumped against the streetlight, vaguely gesturing with his thumb. The man who obliged was kind. A cross dangled from his rearview mirror, jumping along with every knot and crevice in the road.
	Jesus Saves, it said.
	It wasn’t until the next night that Jude found another client. He was a kind man, too. A firefighter, he said. They had good sex, and the firefighter held him in his arms after. He was warm, his tough skin gold in the glow of the motel’s lamp. It was only then, wrapped in those arms, that Jude remembered.
	And he wept.

Sebastian Anderson is a Boston-based writer and filmmaker currently in the undergraduate program at Emerson College. His work explores the absurd and bizarre through a humanist lens, oftentimes focusing on LGBTQ+ stories and perspectives.