Freewrite Day 164: fool

Photo by Jens Herrndorff on Unsplash

This piece follows the Day 162 freewrite. You may want to read that one first.

Already, Priya had begun to regret her decision. Her fiery certainty had fled. Ethan loved her, and she had left him on a fool’s errand. She knew he would move on, eventually. Tthe thought had comforted her when she left, but now it only tormented her.

This was wrong, all of it was so wrong. The scorched earth on either side of her car, the diffuse gray light from the low-hanging clouds, the desolate road winding away into the distance. She clenched her jaw and fixed her eyes on the shadowed hills where they rose above the land. She had been driving for hours, it seemed. The needle on the gas tank had been hovering at the mid-point for too long. No matter how long she drove, the hills never appeared any closer.

Biting down on the frustrated scream that was building in her throat, Priya jerked viciously on the steering wheel, pulling onto the shoulder and slamming on the brakes. She ripped off her belt, shoved the driver’s side door open, and threw herself from the vehicle. Pacing back and forth, she hissed words of recrimination for her own actions.

“Priya, you idiot! What have you gotten yourself into? You’ve lost your baby, and now you’ve thrown away your husband, and for what? You can’t even reach them!” She slammed her fist down on the hood of the car. “Damn!” A horrifying thought struck her then: what if she was stuck? What if she couldn’t even turn back? What if she was trapped forever, driving her car down an empty stretch of road towards the ever-distant hill? She shivered.

“You should not be here.”

Eyes wide, she spun to look behind her, tripping on her own feet. She landed hard in the dirt, recoiling from a figure she knew had not been there just seconds before.

Standing on the median line of the road was a short, bald man in a trim black suit. His black oxfords neatly bisected the yellow of the painted line. His hands, clothed in gray cotton gloves, were folded in front of him. He watched her, his gaze clinical. There were no whites to his eyes, just a glittering, insectoid black.

“You should not be here,” he said again, words devoid of all inflection.

She scrambled to her feet, pressing her back against the solid bulk of her station wagon. “I just wanted my son back,” she whispered.

This is my response to the daily freewrite hosted by @mariannewest. Today’s prompt is ‘fool;’ check out the original post (and the responses) here. Thanks for reading!

Divider created by @javehimself, and used with gratitude.