Her eyes were alight with a secret, he could tell. Instead of trying to pry the undisclosed out of her he decided to sit in silence until she spoke and enlightened him. He was not the type of man to pry unknown things out of the women he chased after and preferred them to tell him.
After a few minutes of the radio demanding the silence, she turned to his profile and lightly placed her fragile hand on his shoulder. He glanced in her direction, straining for control of his eager expression. She smiled at him and then looked at the road again.

He sighed “darling, I don’t want to have to ask, but you’re giving me no choice.”

She giggled her tingling laugh that ran pleasant shivers up and down his spine. He loved her laugh, of course this was another point he might never disclose to her, he knew all too well that the more he kept silent and longer she would stick around to find out who he really was. He had already placed himself at her mercy by informing her that he wanted to know.
“Please dear, I don’t know if I can last longer without knowing.”
She poked him lightly in the chest, “I know you can, some things are better left inside my head. You have to work harder than that to figure me out.”

“But there are so many things left unsaid that the world would be delighted to hear. Come on hun, I know you want to tell me.”

She only smiled and reached out for the volume control knob, turning it up a little. She settled back in her seat and closed her eyes. He glanced at her again, he wanted to pinch himself to see if he was really dreaming, but if he was this was a dream he did not want to wake up from, he reasoned with himself. She was really here and this time he did not want to let her go.

The further he drove, the more the silence bothered him, not the silence in general, due to the radio still pounding away in his ears, but to her lack of comments. She sat there, always a smile on his face and her gaze darting back and forth between his eyes and the road. He knew that he should not press her again for whatever was kept behind those eyes but the silence of his thought was pounding madness in his brain and he could think of nothing else but ways to get the information he wanted out of her.

They were travelling to a meeting. A very important meeting about the sale of his deceased father estate, he was to split it between two very unreasonable brothers of his. He wondered if there would ever be a day when they would look back and laugh at all the trouble they went through to split up the limited number of their father’s possessions.

His mind immediately wandered back to the woman, whose eyes had now closed, beside him. He leaned over and kissed one of her closed eyes. Her eyelids fluttered and she looked at him and unenthusiastically asked him how much longer.

“Just a couple more hours, I warned you it was a long drive.”

He could hear the cutting edge in her voice, but her face did not give her thoughts away; “you know, I could have stayed at home, you only needed to say so.”

“I did not want you to stay home; this drive would not be the adventure that it is without you in it.”

“Thanks, but I am not convinced.”

He knew that next time he would have to come up with e better answer, she was getting tired and distraught with all his attempts to lure out her secret.

He knew that he might have to cripple himself once again and ask her outright.

He drew a deep breath and rolled up his sleeves, he briefly took his eyes off the road and gave her one of his melting gazes, he watched as her eyes softened like snow on a hot day, all the anger and misunderstanding draining back into her head until her eyes were clear and she understood what he wanted.

“Hun, I hate to bother you…”

His inquisition was met with a small grunt from his passenger.

“It really is killing me to know what is going on in there” He tapped her head, to drive his point home.

She slowly turned to face him, sliding forward in her seat slightly. “Austin, some things are better left in the dark, some boxes should never be open and some secrets should never escape lips. But for you dear, because you have promised me that my secret is safe, and you must never ever breath a word of what I am about to disclose to you, or I promise there will be worse than hell to pay.”

He held his breath knowing that if he said or did anything that might convey that his intentions were not to keep it a secret then she would keep silent and his one chance would be gone forever.

“There is a place, not far from here, where I grew up. There was one boy in my class who irritated me. I believe that all people experience a bully at least once in their lives, but I am afraid that this is different. I was in grade 7, in a fairly big grade school. He was enrolled in grade 8, a year older and twice my size. His dark hair and tan complexion all year round gave him away as part Mexican.”

She continued on with the story and how he would shove her into lockers and shoot elastics at her head. Then she drew a shuddering sigh as she neared the main problem.

“One day he grew up. Not in the way most people expected, he came to school one day with a different light in his eyes.”

“I had volunteered to stay after school and work with our local food bank, my job in all this was to create posters. Ill-advisedly I was given a room to myself where I could spread out the posters on the floor and not be bothered to move out of the way for others.”

“He must have known that I would be at the school alone this particular night because about an hour after the school closed its doors for the day, and I had happily begun arranging my paint and posters, I heard a bang in one of the hallways. Being a brave girl I decided to venture out into the hallway to reassure myself that the noise was nothing serious.”

“I wandered through the hallways and to where I thought I had heard the noise. I looked at the ceiling and my gaze slowly shifted down the walls and to the floor. I seared the walls with my eyes and roamed about the rest of the hallway searching for a cause.”

“I found none, but convinced myself it was all my imagination. As I returned back to my assigned room I noticed that the light had been turned off. Fairly certain I had left the light on, I timidly entered the room and reached for the switch. As my hand grazed the switch another hand grabbed mine and yanked it back down, satisfying the room with darkness once again.”

“I was too afraid to scream as two hands groped me from behind and ripped my shirt off. In the dim light from the hall I was able to see who my rapist was once my eyes had adjusted. I was shocked but not entirely surprised when the head of my tormenter appeared above me.”

“Mercifully I blacked out. I must not have been left out long, because when I regained consciousness I could make out the blurry figure of my intimidator fleeing the room. I crawled over to the light switch and flicked on the light.”

“I slowly and painfully gathered up my torn clothes. Paint was everywhere, the posters were battered and ruined, and my dignity was in shambles.”

“Needless to say the next day of school was not the easiest to face. I did not let a single soul in on what had happened the previous night. I numbly walked to the bus stop and gingerly boarded the bus, wary of what school might throw at me today.”

“I could see him standing in front of the school as the bus pulled up. His massive arms were firmly folded in front of him and he held a malicious expression on his face. A part of me trembled, my heart skipped a beat. I watch the other children pile off the bus. I nervously walked down the narrow aisle and hopped down the steps. Then I bolted in the opposite direction of my attacker.”

“I felt his hand settle on my shoulder and drag me to the far side of the school that was not a popular place to hang out. He spat in my face and shoved me into the wall. Then he proceeded to tell me that if I ever, ever told a soul, he would hunt me down, rape me again and strangle me.”

“I was terrified. But there was nothing I could do about my current situation.”

“About a week later, one of my close friends approached me and told me about her experience with my tormenter. A few days later they found her body floating in a river in town; the cause of death was strangulation.”

She went on to tell him that one of her worst fears had to be kept silent, she told him that she had watched three more of her friends fall prey to his wicked endeavours. She told him that each one of their bodies was expediently placed in areas that she traveled to school, places that her tormentor knew she would realize. She told how it has plagued her all throughout high school and college. How she could never shake the feeling that she was guilty for those deaths. She knew where he lived now, alone in one of the houses that a lot of money bough but did not fill. She recognized the emptiness in his life as it echoed her own and she confessed to him that occasionally she watched him.

Part of her morbid satisfaction in her tragic past liked knowing that her tormentor was as messed up and lonely was se now was.

He dared not ask but he felt the words seeping out of his mouth and could not stop them as he blurted out;

“Is he still alive? What have you done recently about him?”

She smiled and settled back in her seat.

“Don’t worry; he will never torment me and my fragile life again. I placed two bullets in his skull. And don’t be afraid, they are untraceable and I placed the gun and remaining bullets in his grave with him. I assume that forensics will adopt the theory that he committed suicide.”

He forced himself to breath. He dared not look her in the eyes so he glared at the black pavement ahead. She touched his arm gently and whispered in his ear that it only gets better.

He sure hoped so. His immediate thought was where he could drop her off so she had no way of getting back to him. He had already had enough death in his life to deal with the known fact that his girlfriend had murdered, in cold blood, the man she loathed. Her explanations were thin and he knew that the police could have done nothing, but he still wanted them involved. Uniforms always comforted him, explaining without words how everything would be alright; they were safe and warranted protection.

“I know how much this is upsetting you—-”

“You know this? How?” He knew his anger was clearly on display.

She glared at him.

“You are silent, you haven’t said anything for a full ten minutes, and I can see your brain boiling. I know you would have done the same thing.”

“I would be smart about this and get the police involved, instead of placing myself and more people at risk.”

“I never placed anyone else at risk. Why are you being so difficult? It’s clear what I could and could not do, I was not allowed to go to the police or I would end up like my friends.”

His temper quieted. He breathed few slow shallow breaths to calm himself.

He could feel the tears stinging in the back of his eyes. There was nothing he hated more than the foolishness of his tears. He felt a couple escape his eyes and fall down his face, leaving a wet reminder in their place.

She looked embarrassed and darted her gaze to the road, not sure of what
she should do next.

“You can drop me off here, I understand if there is nothing else you want to do with me.”

He looked at her. Her face was blurry from his tears and his head ached from holding the rest of them back.

“I want to drop you off; I think the next service station is a great place. I will give you cab fare back home, I don’t ever want to see you again.”

Half an hour later he pulled up to the next truck stop and dumped her off at the McDonalds entrance. He watched in his rear-view mirrors as she half-heartedly entered the shop, and then he stopped looking.

He drove the rest of the way to his brothers in silence. He turned onto his departed father’s road and braked hard as he encountered a transport truck out of control, freakily swaying back and forth. He glanced in both directions and decided to chance it. He sped up and dashed beside the truck, desperately attempting to get out of its way.

He was about to celebrate his success when he heard the sickening crunch of his vehicles roof caving in. The last thought through his mind was how he had unreasonably abandoned his only love. Then everything went black.

Paramedics rushed to the crushed car and pulled out a man. They examined him and pronounced him dead at the scene. No one came to the hospital to claim his body.

She was long gone. Moving further up the map she attempted to escape her former life for her odds in Canada. Nothing could stop her now; she had heard the news of the crash on her radio and knew that another branch of her life had been cut short.