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The alabaster skin on her arm was nearing its tearing point.
A thin pinkish line developed along her forearm from her wrist to her elbow. She
could sense her chest swelling as well. No one would notice, though, for she
was alone, and the highway had thinned long ago. She just continued to drive
along a road she didn’t recognize to a place she did not know.
She heard an angry cry in her head. Was it in her head, or did
she make the sound? She wasn’t certain. She was numb. She couldn’t hear any
noises but those that originated from within her. She couldn’t speak,
couldn’t feel the steering wheel under her grip nor the car seat at her back.
She felt nothing, felt--dead.
The scream, again. Not so much a scream as a lamenting grunt
of sorts. In what little memory she had left, she remembered making similar
sounds when she gave birth to her son. Somehow, she knew that she would never
see him again.
The line on her arm became longer, wider, redder. She knew
she should worry but seemed no longer capable of such a sentiment. It had
stolen her emotions, along with her memories and not least of which, her body.
Something was inside her, letting her remember and do and feel only what it
wanted her to. Earlier, it had allowed her to remember to turn on the headlights
when the sun fell below the tree line. It also let her recall when to brake and
accelerate. It only seemed to let her process any information that pertained to
driving the car—only where it wanted her to go—with little torments, like not
ever seeing her little boy again and tearing his arms off while she watched,
thrown in. In between recollection and instruction and quiet torture, she felt
like a zombie.
With a darkened psyche, she knew it vaunted of superiority
and smiled contemptuously from within her. It made her think debasing thoughts
about herself, her son, the human race. It gave her glimpses of Hell, where it said
she’d soon be going. It thought it was unstoppable.
But now it appeared to be—a bit pissed off. It seemed to
have thought that her body would have lasted the entire trip. It hadn’t known
that she was weak and frail by surviving the chemotherapy needed to treat her
Hodgkin’s disease. She was rotting faster than it had hoped.
She sensed something rip and crack and tear from her chest,
but it would not permit her to look down at it. Indeed, she didn’t even seem
to care, though she knew it wasn’t good. In her meager reflection on the
windshield, she noticed her ivory sweater seep a trace of red at a bulging wound
sight-hidden underneath its tightness. The blood that used to course her veins
had earlier pooled in her buttocks and legs, so the seepage was only slight. She
knew (it let her realize) that if not for the sweater, the contents in her chest
cavity would have spilled onto her lap.
She couldn’t even be happy that she was spared pain, for
this pain would be unbearable, if not quick. Even a pleasure as simple and
deserving as that was not tolerable. But the thing inside her permitted her to
feel the sorrow, the hopelessness of ever seeing her little Chad again; a life
without a mother, a mother without her little protector, torn from the one she
loved so dearly. It let her feel that pain and if allowed to choose, she
easily would rather have felt her chest explode.
It was anxious, now. By its own will, it made her look around
for a turnoff. It would not let her spoil its destiny.
It could easily finish the trek without human aid, but
didn’t want to take the chance of being beaten to the key. Highway travel was
still the most direct route, and it needed a fresh body to finish the journey.
That stupid priest-man had no doubt realized the error of his ways and was back
on the trail once more, maybe closing the gap.
Had it been born more powerful or at least had an adequate,
more angelic mobility, as some of its kind had been born with, it would not have
to rely on the humans. Even so, it relished its new freedom and in a sick way
took pleasure in the opportunity to manipulate them, show them who, in the grand
scheme of things, was the more powerful creation.
Just ahead was a sign for a four-way cross roads. It made her
slow the car down, and at the intersection, they stopped. She looked up the
gravel road then down. It was trying to choose the best place to go. Finally she
turned right, up the meandering, gravel road, up into the deeply wooded
hillside, into a thick blanket of night. Within moments the car’s lights could
no longer be seen from the highway.
Later, in a lightless spot along the road that reminded it of
its own Hell in that little room in Scotland’s belly, with dark, lowering
pines as whispering witnesses in the night breeze, it ripped her body apart
slowly, ever so slowly from within, letting her mind go last, letting her
contemplate a life without her little boy and a little boy without his mother. A
life she thought she had triumphed over with successful treatment; an unfair
life she forgot that held no certainties.
©2004 StoriesByEmail.com
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