Night Drive

Night flies past on either side, beyond looming hedgerows, faster than the speeding vehicle itself, and silent as only darkness is.

The headlights light the road ahead and the leaves and the branches to the sides, tunnel vision in a void.  There's the inside of the car, and outside the road, and beyond that, big black nothingness surrounding one little bubble of halogen beam racing through the dark.

Inside, lights illuminate against the warm dark of the car, orange and red: Speedometer, petrol gauge, engine temperature. The red line of the speedometer inches around; 40, 50, 60. The white lines marking the tarmac, gleaming in the headlight's beams, race towards and then slide beneath the bonnet, faster, and faster.

Inside, he looks at the road, and not at her. His hand, the hand that guides the steering wheel, is gripping it far too tightly to be comfortable. He's still furious, and so is she. What reason she has, why she's playing the victim, is beyond him, and that makes him angrier.

She is sitting with arms folded, legs crossed. He wants to look at her, to explain, to reach out, but he can't bring himself to do it. Not yet. The words die in his mind as he tries to think of them, and he knows that for a few minutes at least, this heavy, choking silence will endure. Thus, instead, he strains his eyes at the road and at the darkness beyond the headlight's glare. Trees are slipping past on side, bark and branches briefly revealed as the car races past and beyond them. Ahead, the tarmac twists, hiding behind hedges.

'Watch the road'

He'd already seen it, of course, and she knew he had. He touches the brakes, and the car slows as it swings around the curve, illuminating a tall wall of hedges, and then back onto the road again. The stifling silence, briefly interrupted, seems as if it will again settle, but then:

'You didn't tell me he'd be there'

'I didn't realise you'd get so worked up about it'

'What did you think I'd do? Stand there? Like a fucking idiot!?'

The petrol gauge has just flashed red, and the anger that's crawling back in climbs a little higher, a red spider in the back of his head. He flashes a look towards her, afraid to take his eyes off the road for too long on this winding country path, but desperate to see her reaction to his mounting fury, desperate to see her respond, even if it is only to attack him, to meet his anger with her own.

She's still not looking at him.

He breathes through his nose, trying to reign in his temper before it gets out of hand. He cannot, however, completely resist vocalising his displeasure.

'Fuck...'

She sighs, audibly exasperated at his childishness. She rolls down the window, pulling a cigarette from her purse. She knows it'll infuriate him; he hates smoking in his car. Normally, she's the only one who gets a pass, but now? She's doing it to taunt him, and they both know it.

He turns, rising straight to the bait and not caring, ready to really let loose, to make her cry, make her hurt, to somehow end this icy, detached superiority she seems to think she has, and that is proving so maddening. He opens his mouth, and, despite himself, watches her eyes widen, body tensing and sinking into her seat. Her face is suddenly strangely illuminated, by a light coming from nowhere, by oh fuck headlights.

His head jolts round, panic rising in his chest. Somehow, in the midst of his anger, he's forgotten to watch the road, and his control of the vehicle. Another car, a black shape hiding behind twin beams like their own, has swung round a bend he didn't see coming, and they're right in the middle of the narrow country path, they're right in this newcomer's way, and they are going far, far too fast.

'Jesus Christ, the road!'

A horn blares, shaking him out of his reverie, and he can't even see the driver amongst the dark mass, and Jesus Christ its close where did it even come from!? He feels more than he sees her as she pushes herself back into her seat, left hand suddenly clamped around the door's handhold.

He swings the wheel to one side, and the bonnet of the onrushing vehicle just misses the front of their car, as the horn continues to blare in the otherwise silent night. A mass of metal shrieks past on the right of them, a dark shape gone just as suddenly as it appeared.

But even as this ghost car, this unforeseen, blaring behemoth, recedes into the darkness behind them, they're not safe yet. The front of the car is now racing straight towards the steel barrier on the left; the forest previously around them disappeared along with the phantom car that caused this chaos.

He spins the wheel, swearing under his breath, praying that it's not too late, watching the metallic barrier in front of him shine and slide in the drunken headlights, closer and closer. The front wheels twist, and the rear of the car lurches, as the back two wheels struggle to follow the example of their more sensible brethren at the front. The car swings, and lurches, and spins.

And suddenly, the barrier and the woods and the hedge are gone, and ahead is only, once more, open tarmac. The car is racing along a suddenly open highway, the trees and grass to either side of the road pushed back and guarded by looming streetlights, glowing orange in the night.

He touches the brakes, slowing the car. He swears again, and he hears her draw a deep breath, before doing likewise. His heart's still racing, but it's falling back down his throat now, dropping back to its rightful place, and only then he notices her right hand on his arm, slender fingers punching into his jacket.

She notices too, and the hand falls away.

'Babe'

She's looking at him, and he looks at her again, his previous anger suddenly disconnected by adrenaline and panic. Her eyes are wide in the semi-darkness of the car, and he thinks he sees something in them he doesn't recognise.

'I didn't think you'd care'

He doesn't know what to say. He has, in fact, completely forgotten what he was going to say before the sudden carnage on the road a second ago, so he just takes his hand from the gearbox and takes hers, the one that, seconds ago, held his arm, and squeezes it. He nods to the cigarette that she's still holding, previously forgotten but still burning. She leans towards him, pushing against her seatbelt, and holds the cigarette to his mouth so he doesn't have to distract himself from the road, awkwardly trying to take it. Her hands are light against his lips, and, despite himself, he smiles against them.

The car races along a neon highway, a wide streak of amber through the wild night, towards the lights of the city ahead.