Drive

She was on the porch with a smile, standing gently against the shadowy gloom of her house. The front yard was decorated with gardens which seemed to be an odd contrast of bright colors shrouded in a blanket of dimmed light.

I waved goodbye from where I sat in the car, gently sputtering in the street. I pressed my foot on the worn pedal, causing the car to shiver and inch forward. A strange feeling rippled through me - one that caused my foot to hesitate and the car to end its progress.

I glanced back at the porch to see her enter her house.

Why did I hesitate? It had been a strange feeling, almost unrecognizable.
The car crept forward. The lights turned on, illuminating the darkness ahead. I drove through it attempting to ignore the feeling, yet it persisted.

There were no street lights in her neighborhood, which gave the place a mysterious atmosphere that was exciting at times, but now only added to a feeling of dread which was slowly creeping its way through every limb of my body.

The headlights played tricks on my eyes. Shadows seemed to stir around every house.

I took an unexpected turn and found myself in front of her house again. Something is wrong, I thought to myself. I could see her on the porch smiling, even though she was not really there.

Then I knew what the atmosphere was trying to tell me. This would be the last night I would see her.

I wanted to go up to her door and warn her, but I knew that she would think I was crazy. Instead I began the drive home.

“It’s just a stupid feeling.” I told myself. “Nothing bad can happen to her.”

House after house passed with only porch lights to barely illuminate them, and the headlights of my car to cause the shadows to dance and spin about.

A deep breath slowly escaped my body as I began to calm down. And then a whisper echoed through my car. What if. I knew that it had not been physically said, but something caused me to look around as though a ghost had set the words upon my car like a trained dog, carefully assaulting my calming demeanor.

It was amazing and horrifying how fast my heart burst into movement. It was as though my calm had been standing on the edge of a cliff by a single toe, easily knocked to its deadly plunge by the smallest quiver of air.

Her smile stained my thoughts as the last memory I would have of her. And then I noticed that I was parked in front of her house - again. I wanted to run up to the door and carry her away with me to the safety of my car. But how could she believe something so crazy?

“Better safe than sorry.” I justified as I pulled the keys from the ignition and hopped up the steps to her door. I tried to remain calm yet the doorbell rang somewhat excessively at my fingertip.

After a few moments with nothing stirring in the house, I rang the doorbell again and peered through the dark windows as best as I could with my hands cupped around my face. Before my eyes could adjust to the dark interior, the door burst open.

“Are you crazy!” she shouted as loud as a whisper would allow. “It’s one o’clock in the morning, you’re going to wake up my parents!”

“I’m sorry, but there’s something wrong - I mean, this is important!” I wasn’t sure how to tell her what I was feeling without her wanting to have me committed. “Look, I have a real bad feeling. Something is going to happen to you tonight. I don’t know how to explain it, but I know that this feeling is real. Something bad is going to happen!”

She looked at me for a moment. Her forhead wrinkled and her eyes squinted. She put her hand to my cheek and said, “everything will be fine. It’s not like I’m going to get robbed tonight or anything.”

“No, I know it’s hard to understand but I just have this feeling that I can’t get rid of. I just feel like this is the last time I’m going to see you. Almost as if fate or something is telling me, warning me to enjoy this moment because it is the last.”

“Listen to me,” she said in her soothing tone, “everything will be fine. Your imagination is going wild because of the movie we saw tonight. Scary movies always make me think a lot too.”

“But this is different!”

“It’s just a feeling. How many times have you been scared about something? Just because it’s dark outside and your imagination has been running around.”

I looked at the ground for a moment, knowing that her words made a lot of sense. “You really think so?” I asked. She nodded. “But this felt so real. And I couldn’t get it out of my head. I felt like someone else was telling me, like someone else was putting the thought into my head.”

“It’s just because of the movie. Go home, get some sleep and you’ll wake up tomorrow knowing that it was just your imagination. You’ll see, everything will be fine. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

I thought about it for a moment. “Okay, thanks.” I kissed her.

I turned the keys in the ignition and again my headlights revealed the road ahead of me, less dangerous and less mysterious than they had ever seemed.
She smiled at me with the same beautiful smile as before, only this time adding a wave.

“Goodnight! Drive safe!” she called.

“Sleep safe!” I called back.

As my car sputtered through her dark neighborhood, the shadows no longer whispered; or if they did, I no longer heard them. For the first time that night, I pulled up to the intersection that bordered her neighborhood and stopped at the red light, her smile glimmering within my eyes.

“It was just my imagination.” I assured myself as I looked back at the dark neighborhood. It reminded me of a dark and wicked forest out of some book, a forest that I had conquered.

I turned around to find that the light had turned to green and I pulled out into a bright light that seemed to press itself onto me, stretching across my eyes, a car horn screaming, and the sound of metal crunching and scraping; and her smile fading; fading into a darkness thicker than the darkness of her neighborhood.