The Drive Home

12: break

Muphrid wants to leave early the next morning, so we cart off all our stuff at the bumcrack of dawn and drive until the sun creeps under the sun visor and we pull off into the bush a little ways. The ranges creep along the horizon like this big impassable worm, bright red as the day sinks away.

The sky gets this colour to it tonight. The whole thing, horizon to horizon. I don't know my colours, but it's got this burnt umber look, burnt sienna, burnt something. It's like someone's taken a wet oil painting of a bushfire and smudged their fist through it. That's the colour.

I borrow some milk from Muphrid's fridge and start preparing myself a milo. Muphrid's got this question in his eyes. I can see it. He's biting the inside of his cheek, eyes glazed at the billy sitting next to the unlit fire. 

"Pavo."

"Yeah?"

"Why don't you like, have anything? For real. There's gotta be something going on. You can tell me, you know." 

I shrug, cast my eyes to the earth. "Where's this coming from?" I'd been waiting for this. Ever since I met him I'd been waiting. Waiting for my inevitable crash.

"Like, surely you don't just travel like this for fun."

"You're a city kid, you wouldn't get it."

"No, stop that. I know it's BS."

I'm scared at that point, to tell him everything. Maybe I would've the day before last, before he kissed me. Before we got all tangled up. I reckon I would've told him, slashed his tires, and fucking fled. But I don't want to do that now. I don't want to lose him. Isn't that silly?

So I shrug again. My skin is crawling with static. The smoke that's set in my clothes is only a day old but it's never smelt stronger. It reeks. I reek. He can smell it on me, surely. Knows that smoke doesn't smell this strong after just one night. It's coming from my skin, from way within me in an unscrubble place.

"I'm running," I tell the silence, "I'm running." Softly. I say it softly. Hoping maybe he'll hear the quiver in my voice and how I've never been so scared in my life, and maybe he'll drop it all.

"From what? A person?"

"I - it's complicated." It's heavy, the air tonight. Lots of effort just to suck it in and out.

"How?" Somewhere in the distance, curlews shriek hauntingly.

I can't say. I can't do it; I can't tell him. No way. Couldn't even if I wanted to. The words are locked in my chest, and I don't think either of us has the key. "I dunno, okay? I can't say."

Muphrid looks at me then, long and hard. "Alright, then. Fine." He stands, slaps the dust from his thighs. Goes to the pile of firewood and I swear he looks straight across into my soul as he strikes a match and sets the thing on fire.

He knows. He fucking knows.

It's a joke, surely. The flames spit and gurgle as they grab onto the wood, and heat fills the space between it and I. I can't swallow. I'm in the middle of fucking nowhere, no phone signal, bout to get fucking slaughtered. I can't believe he fucking knows. All this time, probably. Just dragged me out here for fun, a cat with a mouse.

I can feel my bones quivering. My heart is beating under my ribs, so fast and so desperately I'm getting kind of light headed, kind of a bit out of my body. I can feel it ticking right under my sternum, in that fleshy nook. Buzzing, too, like it did at that roadhouse. Oh, fuck me.

I can't believe he's got me; can't believe he's got me all the way out here. There's gotta be a reward on my head, cash for information. And hasn't this fucker got all the information in the world. Got me right where he wants. Can torture me all he wants; nobody'd hear.