ETTA

 

No, was the first thing I thought. This won’t happen to me again.

Still in disbelief, still shaking, I looked over my shoulder. The old man was sweating, looking into my eyes as though he was hungry for blood. He licked a bead of perspiration from his top lip. I kept staring, kept getting sucked into his eyes that seemed to get blacker and blacker until…

I looked down at the knife. What was he going to do with it? Was it just a threat? Was he actually going to use it? As the glow from the overhead light glinted off the blade, I could make out the reflection of the girl behind me. She was smiling.

“Do it, papa,” she laughed. “Do it!”

“No,” he replied. “There’ll be no money if she’s dead.”

His eyes flickered up to hers for just a moment, just a fleeting second but I knew how much that time meant and I took my chance. Before I even realized what I was doing, my hand was curling into a fist. It reached up, springing to life as my knuckles connected with the brittle jaw of the old man.

He let out a yelp and staggered backward, his teeth scattering out onto the floor like bloodied pearls.

“Papa!”

I spun round and slapped the girl. Then I took the knife and ran.

The dog raised its head as I rushed by, water dripping from his jowls. There was a brief look of recognition in his eyes but it quickly vanished and he was dipping his face in his water bowl again.

From the kitchen, I could hear the old man stumble around, clutching at his mouth as he swore through blood that poured from his gums.

“Get back!” screamed the girl.

As I reached the front door, I felt her gaze on me. She was only a few steps behind me with pure hatred in her eyes. I’d hurt her beloved papa and now she had to hurt me.

I ran.

I ran as fast as I could until my feet were kicking up dust and the sun was scorching the top of my head. The heat dried out everything, my eyes, my breath, my mouth. I panted hard as I ran through the dirt, my legs being torn apart by the clusters of brambles and cacti.

The blood was cascading down my ankles and running into my sandals. It was being squeezed out from between my toes but I didn’t notice. I just ran.

Behind me, I could hear the girl’s footsteps as she gave chase but her heels were high and she struggled to keep her balance as she dodged around the ragged rocks. She ripped off her shoes and hurled them at me. One missed my head by a few inches, landing in a bush ahead of me. The other one hit me square in the back. I didn’t realize until the spike of the heel caught the space between my shoulder blades and knocked the air out of me.

But still, I kept running.

The girl was screaming, yelling things at me I didn’t understand. She stumbled barefoot over the rocks until her feet were bleeding, crying out with both pain and anger. Yet I was more desperate than her and so, propelled by the desperate urge to never be a victim once again, I ran faster.

She may have been younger but she was slower and with all the smoke and tar in her lungs, she was no match for me. I left her struggling to catch her breath, bent down sucking up sandy air and coughing.

The land ahead looked as empty as the land behind it. There were times when I felt as though I was traversing Mars, the blistering heat growing by the second, bleaching everything it touched.

My tongue was dry and stuck to the roof of my mouth but my hands were damps, drenched with sweat. I ran until the girl behind me shrunk to nothing but a pinpoint of blackness on the horizon.

Who was she? Who was the old man?

I didn’t care. All I wanted was to get home. But where was that?

The desert spread far, far into the distance. There appeared to be no end to it. I’d moved around in circles, had walked around and around until I didn’t know where I was. There were no markers, no buildings. What little plants were out here grew sparse until they disappeared and became nothing but shriveled up leaves trying to escape from beneath the rocks.

Somewhere in the distance, a bird called out. I looked up and shielded my face with my hand but it did little to subdue the heat of the sun. A vulture circled me, or was it a hawk. I couldn’t tell. I was a city girl. All birds were pigeons to me.

Still, there was something about it that worried me. It followed me, made me feel as though I was being watched. Maybe it knew something I didn’t. Maybe it knew I was close to death.

My head hurt more and more with each step, the heat dehydrating out my body until it felt as though my brain was trying to force its way out through my skull.

Home, where is home? It must be over here… Or… Is it back that way?

Way off, where the sky met the mountains in the distance, I thought I could see someone, a figure shimmering toward me. But when I blinked and rubbed my eyes it disappeared along with the mountains. There was nothing ahead of me, nothing behind me. I didn’t know how long I’d been walking. I didn’t know how long I’d been out the house, or how much further I could walk without collapsing. I was beginning to not even know who I was anymore.

There was just the pain in my feet and my head and the constant thirst which consumed me. It hurt every cell in my body, made me feel as though everything was swirling in front of my eyes.

Somewhere behind me, there was a rumble. It was the sound of the tractor approaching. I squinted to focus into the distance but couldn’t see it coming. But I could still hear it.

I closed my eyes and prayed it was just my imagination.

“Just a hallucination,” I told myself. “He’s not coming.”