After the news and weather, I reach out and mute the radio, one of my foibles, I can’t drive in the rain with music on, why? I don’t know, it’s just part of me I suppose.
The rain fall increases and I have to slow down, on the unlit country road visibility is down to about 25 feet and these turns seem to come out of nowhere.
The water is like a carwash and now, after almost running up on the grass verge on the wrong side of the road twice I am crawling along.
I am beginning to wish I had not agreed to meet Dave, but how could I not? After brushing past him in the pub after work last Thursday and feeling the lump between his thighs move against me. No, not an erection, not anything visual but the weight of the flesh that I felt as I moved past him in the crowded pub, it was like a rolled beef brisket had been pushed against me. I was beginning to rethink my choice to go and enjoy that brisket, but remembering the feel builds my curiosity and excitement, and I feel myself moistening.
Shit! I hit the brakes as I turn a sharp bend and see a woman in the middle of the road. She looks at me with fear in her eyes as I come to a standstill just before hitting her. The fear turns to relief and then a imploring look appears in those eyes and spreads over her face.
I understand her unspoken request, how could I refuse? No one, and I mean no one would put a dog out on a night like this and with a jerk of my head toward the passenger seat I reach over and open the passenger door. I look back up towards her and see she hasn’t moved, I lean over again and push the door so it opens more, “Come on, get in,” I call out to her.
The woman walks around to the side of the car and opens the door fully and gets in, I get the impression that if you wrung out her clothes you could fill a bath with the water. I adjust the heating controls to warm her side of the car.
She whispers a thank you after sitting, she tries to clip the seat belt catch, but I see her hands are two cold to manage, so I take the end and push it closed as I introduce myself, “Hi, my names Mandy, I can’t take you far, but at least you’re out of the rain for now.” She does not reply but wraps her arms around herself.
“Do you need to ring someone to fetch you, you can use my phone if you want?
“N’ no… theres no one to call, my dad, he just died.”
“Oh, I am sorry to hear that?” I reply feeling bad for her. The shhh of the wheels through the wet roads punctuated with the whirr of the wipers is the only sound for some time, I can’t abide the silence, but I cannot think of anything to say except to ask about her father, how he died.
“He died from a broken heart, my mum, she was a cheating slag and the last bloke she went with, killed her.”
“Oh my god I am so sorry for being so indelicate, to lose both your parents in such a short time you must feel terrible.”
“I feel sad my dad has gone, but I think I expected it some how. My mum, good riddance and no it wasn’t a short time between them, they found her body twelve years ago a year after she disappeared.”
“I…” I begin to speak, but she carries on, “The bitch got what she deserved though, the post mortem revealed she had been tortured for months, the sick bastard had eaten her, cut pieces off of her but kept her alive as long as he could. He even cut extra holes in her to fuck, I bet she wished she had kept her legs closed long before he removed them.”
I am shocked, I mean how can that happen, how does anybody deserve that to happen to them? The rain has slowed and I am able to speed up.
“You probably are thinking nobody deserves that, but you imagine coming home from a hard days work, expecting a nice romantic evening on a special day, for them it was the anniversary of his proposal to find that she hadn’t come home from work and when he checked the email he finds a short note telling him she just has to try this huge cock and she is convinced his love for her would allow him to allow her this one discretion and she would see him the next day, but of course she never did. I honestly think that if he had not had me he would have ended it there and then, he tried and I know he tried hard, but he was never the same again.”
Jesus, I had done that, just before I left work, I look at her and am struck at how much she looks like my own daughter, you could even say she looks like an older version of my little Sophie, shit, even the proposal anniversary, I had forgotten, October the 31st he proposed to me at Joe and Di’s Halloween party.
Sorry I have to go back, I’ll drop you here at least the rain seems to have stopped for you.” I see a place to turn around and as I head toward it I turn my head to look at the woman.
I gasp, there is nobody there.
I turn the car around, intent on getting home before Colin so I can delete that email before he reads it, not even wondering how she got out before I stopped the car. Thankfully the road is clear, dry and straight, by the time I pull up outside our house, I have decided the woman was just a figment of my imagination, a delusion caused by my guilty conscience.
That is, until I open the door and the interior light comes on and I see the wet shape of a woman’s buttocks, thighs and back on the seat and the seatbelt clipped in place.