Blood on the Highway

Chapter Three

Haunted Past

The road stretched on like a thin black ribbon unraveling beneath the wheels of the stolen Chevy, the roar of the engine the only sound cutting through the stillness of the night. I watched the world blur by in streaks of fog and shadow, the headlights casting long, ghostly shapes that flickered and danced on the edges of my vision.

We were running now. I wasn't sure from what—maybe from nothing at all. Maybe from everything.

Dorian drove with one hand on the wheel, his other arm resting on the window, his fingers drumming absently against the metal door. His gaze stayed fixed ahead, as if the endless stretch of highway had some hidden answer waiting at the end of it. His face was calm, almost serene, like this was just another night, like everything was perfectly normal.

But it wasn't. I knew it wasn't. Nothing had felt normal since the moment I met him.

My heart still pounded in my chest, not from fear, but from the adrenaline that had been coursing through my veins since we stole the car. My hands were clammy, my pulse loud in my ears. It should've scared me—the way we'd just taken something that didn't belong to us, how easy it had been to slip into that life. But instead, it felt like a relief. Like a release.

Dorian had that effect on me. With him, the rules didn't seem to matter anymore. I could step over the line, take what I wanted, and there was no one to stop me. Not even myself.

But there was something else lingering beneath the surface, something darker. It gnawed at the edges of my mind, creeping in with the fog that thickened around the car as we drove deeper into the night. Memories, like jagged pieces of glass, sharp and painful, but impossible to ignore.

I leaned back in my seat, letting my head rest against the cool window as I closed my eyes. Maybe it was the lull of the road, the rhythmic hum of the engine, or maybe it was the way the fog made the world feel like something out of a dream, but my thoughts drifted, slipping back into a past I'd long tried to bury.

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I was nine years old when I first saw death.

It was a late summer evening, the kind where the heat clung to your skin even after the sun had set. The air had been thick with the smell of cut grass and gasoline, and the faint buzz of cicadas filled the silence. I was sitting on the porch, my bare feet dangling off the edge, when I heard the shouting.

At first, I didn't move. Voices raised in anger weren't uncommon in our house. My father had a temper, and my mother knew how to set it off. But this time, something felt different. There was a note in my mother's voice that I hadn't heard before—a tremor, something fragile, like she was breaking from the inside out.

I got up, my feet silent on the wooden planks as I crept toward the open door. My father's voice was a low rumble, like distant thunder, growing louder with each step I took. I didn't understand the words, but the tone was enough to make my heart race, to make my breath quicken with the familiar fear that came whenever their fights got bad.

I stopped at the doorway, peering into the dimly lit kitchen. My mother stood by the counter, her hands gripping the edge so tightly that her knuckles had turned white. My father was pacing in front of her, his face twisted with anger, his fists clenched at his sides.

Then, it happened. It was fast—so fast I barely registered the movement. One second, my father was yelling, and the next, his hand was around my mother's throat, her body slammed back against the counter.

The sound of her head hitting the edge of the counter echoed through the room, a sickening crack that made my stomach lurch. She crumpled to the floor, and for a moment, everything went silent. Even the cicadas outside seemed to stop.