The road

The road wasn’t any different from the last time they had travelled it. They travelled this way often, and each time the woman would strive to find new markings to measure the journey by, yearning for something novel to pass the time. Sometimes she felt that each day was measured by the journeys taken along the road. They travelled this way so often that sometimes she dreamt of it; in her dreams they would take the last turning and drive along a path filled with trees dripping with emeralds, gilded summer air filling her lungs.

Today though, the road was dark, and all that was to be seen were cat’s eyes glaring up, accusing her from rain streaked tarmac. She kept her attention on the eyes as much as she could, only once every few minutes finding the courage to look up and gauge the mood of her driver. There was no doubt in her mind that they this would be the final time they drove together. Funny, she thought, the things you miss when someone is lost to you. She had never much enjoyed these trips, but knowing that she would never pass hours counting down miles til home again brought her close to tears.

She couldn’t be sure of the exact time of his loss. There are no certificates to mark the end of these things; deaths such as these are not recorded. But the man she had once known was gone completely, of that much she was sure. Looking back, there had been sign after sign, each so imperceptible that they could not be recognised alone. There was no earthquake, no sudden shattering of rock and tumbling of age-old structures. Instead, he had gradually worn away below the surface, a lapping tide of grief edging away at his foundations, so that with time, nothing could sustain the weight above, and it crumbled away, part by part.

The woman realised now how naïve it had been to think she could be any kind of saviour. He had told her stories when they met of the child he had loved, his pequeño buho, a little owl kept hidden in a nest of filtered airways from a world that could harm her with any passing breath. She knew how he dreamed of her, and how he lingered whilst passing school gateways, how he would double take when he saw a girl of a similar age. So it was no surprise now that his eyes were glazed when the woman spoke to him. She knew that it was not her he saw when he spoke, but the shadow of those that had come before.

The woman sat in the passenger seat and counted down streetlights as they came nearer to home. As she allowed her mind to drift from thoughts of the inevitable, a shadow passed over the light closest to them. The words left her mouth before she could think to stop them – “Fuck! Is that-“ The man looked away from the road, first, at the silent bird in their path, then, with complete conviction, straight into her eyes. “Keep straight! You won’t hit i-“ – but the wheel had turned already. The rain from the last hours slipped across the tyres, and they pirouetted into the night beside them.

The conclusion was that of a momentary distraction; there were no post-humous sentences passed for dangerous driving or purposeful mishandling of a vehicle. The woman herself could not give evidence at the trial - her memory of the event, and some weeks preceding, was left somewhere between scraps of metal at the side of the road. The other driver, however, recalled a brief flash of tawny feathers, a sudden acceleration, and two screeches into darkness.