IXUS

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

GEN

Pain. All I can think of is Pain. I’m thirsty. My throat is so dry and my stomach is growling. I’m hungry as well. Maybe I should’ve agreed to be taken. Maybe giving birth isn’t as bad as what I’m experiencing now.

Scratch that. No way am I going to be a queen bee for anyone.

I feel bad for leaving Crell. But he won’t get killed. He’ll most likely escape as well. If I know Crell, he’s probably looking for me now.

It’s been, what, two months now since I last saw him? Oh great. I lost track of time.

I’ve been eating anything I can find edible on my way. Which is few. I am need of a shower. Damn it.

One side of my face is sunburned because I fell asleep while walking on the side of an abandoned road. It was a really hot day that day.

I want to make the pain stop. This pain is the reminder I have of what I did. I’m not sure what came up on my mind when I decided to flee but I did.

I spot an abandoned corolla. My eyes widened at the sight of it. At least I can sleep comfortable tonight. I run towards it and see that it’s in good condition. I fumble the glove compartment in search of a key.

Nope. No key. I guess I can hotwire it. I reach for the glove compartment again. I saw a flathead screwdriver there. Bingo. I grab the flathead and jammed it to the ignition. I turned it like a key. Well, that didn’t work.

I pried off the plastic panel. Within a few moments, its open showing me the ignition and the wires. Good thing I actually paid attention to Crell when he was teaching me how to hotwire a car. The bad thing about this is that I just damaged this vehicle.

Okay, I try to remember his teachings:

“Babe, the two red wires you see here handle the cars power and these two brown wires are the starters. It might be a little complicated though if it has only one brown wire but you’ll be fine anyway.”

I use the screwdriver to gently cut the red wires. I connect the two ones and twist the wires together and the car stereo starts. I smile in my achievement. Now to start the car’s power. I do the same to the brown one although I don’t twist and knot them together. I gently have the two brown ones connect and the car starts.

I sigh and lean back against my seat.

Suddenly something cold is in my throat and a hot breath against my skin.

“Don’t move,” a female voice says. I stare ahead and see a boy emerge from the shadows. He isn’t that tall. Maybe around 5’10? He has chestnut brown shaggy hair, like Rye’s, and blue green eyes. He has a young carefree boy next door look and I remember Rye again.

“Jesus, Val, can you let her go. She’s obviously harmless,” the boy says in an easy voice. The knife in my throat slowly backs away and the boy rolls his eyes, leans towards me and takes the knife out of Val’s hand.

“Hey!” she protests but he widens his eyes at her and she shuts up. The boy smiles at me and I want to smile back but I don’t. My face hurts.

“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. My name’s Alex,” he says, extending his hand forward, the one without he knife. I only merely looked at it instead of shaking it. He retracts his hand back and smiles tightly at me. “I see you’ve hotwired my car. Although, you could’ve just asked for the keys,” he teased and patted the front pocket of his jeans.

I look down at my hands, suddenly feeling guilty for damaging his car.

“Don’t feel bad. This is the ’96 corolla model. Lots of them abandoned. Maybe you can move over to passenger side so I can drive?” he says. I nod and move to the passenger seat. He slides in after I have moved. “You can sleep if you want to. Might be a long trip.”