Three men stand in front of my car,grinning…laughing.
No.
Surely this is the universe playing a sick fucking joke on me.
The young one is twirling a hammer between his fingers. The tall one stands there puffing on a cigarette, completely unfazed, and the other one, who I hadn’t seen until now, starts to unbuckle his brown leather belt while making vulgar actions with his hand at his crotch.
I lay my palm down on the horn, and then I just fucking break. “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT FROM ME?”
“Clockwork Enemy” by Thousand Below pounds through my speakers. My hands are white knuckling the steering wheel, and when I swallow, I cast my thoughts back to the fifteen-year-old girl who only tried to find the brake as she sent her family spiraling toward the lake. I remove my foot from the brake,the one thing that could have saved my parents’ lives and press down completely on the accelerator.
I did learn something that night.
I learned how to save myself, while killing everyone else.
All three men jump out of the way, and I fly past them, the sound of squealing rubber thick and jarring beneath me. I spin the wheel in the palms of my hands, almost losing control as I merge right onto the desolate highway.
Glancing over my shoulder, my frightened pulse clangs in my ears, and I see them running to their bikes, throwing legs over metal and igniting their engines.
Turning up the volume, I drown out their growls and hammer my foot down on the gas, racing toward my death.
Careening headlights are at my rear.
The way I knew they would be.
The way I remember.
My limbs vibrate with fear as the odometer pushes a hundred. I blink, my vision becoming distorted, the lights behind me only drawing closer, bleeding through the cabin with a piercing glow. My heart punches heavily against my ribs, that familiar feeling of air evaporating from my lungs crawls back to haunt me. Jaw tight, my body falls into a trembling mess when their crowd of motorcycles surround me. I turn the music up louder and scream. They tear out of me violently while tears and snot pour over my chin.
“WHY ME?! WHAT THE FUCK DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?!” I scream and scream and scream until my throat bleeds, and then, I scream some more.
I don’t dare take my eyes off the road.
But it’s just too much, too real,too raw.
I shatter into a million pieces.
My eyes reluctantly fall closed when the burn takes them, and thenI beg for fucking mercy.
It feels like a long time passes, the song clicking over. I peel my eyes open and watch the crowd of motorcycles fly past me, laughing, having a great time, finding pure joy in terrorizing me.
Onlyhestays back, the one who grabbed me, the one who put his hands on me.
His eyes are locked on mine as we stare at each other, and then he grins, directing his thumb toward his throat, slicing across it in one sharp, slow movement before carving his hand into a pistol and blowing a shot to my head.
“No, please, no. Please don’t do this. Please just slit my throat or shoot me in the head, not like this,” I beg around cotton until my throat burns.
My hands fly off the steering wheel, scrunching into fists before I slam them right back down onto the rigid leather.
It can’t be them.
It. Just. Can’t.
He smirks wickedly, and then bullets forward, disappearing right into the eerie abyss in the distance.
And this time,my foot finds the brake.
The car zigzags, and I lose control of the steering wheel as it spins through a carousel of chaos beneath my palms. I whimper, trying my absolute best to save myself.
