The Dangers of Falling (in Love)

Chapter 1-

Derek shifts his truck into the next gear as he cruises down the dirt road heading anywhere but where he came from.

The old man at the gas station knew his mother and recognised him as her oldest son. The man had given his condolences for what happened to his family and Derek nodded his thanks in return before getting the hell out of town.

He originally planned to go to the towns local bar tonight in hope to find anyone with jobs he could do for a bit of cash. He was running low on money and knew he could only fill his Toyota up a few more times before he would be stranded. But, after his incident with the old man, he was willing to risk running out of fuel before reaching the next town.

He pushes the clutch in as he changes gears again, glancing in his revision mirror and sighs realising nobody is following him.

The last time someone had recognised him was nearly a year ago when his sister, Laura, was with him and within a day afterwards she was gone.

So yes, right now he is really paranoid.

He glances to his revision mirror again to find nothing but the dirt behind him. He knew he was over reacting, the old man seemed harmless, although he thought that about certain people before and look where that got him.

He shakes his head, stopping himself from entering those memories and instead turns the radio up so the country songs can distract him from the thoughts.

The sun begins to set eight hours later, the cool night breeze flowing through his open window.

He gazes at the horizon, taking in the scenery of the sunsetting behind tall paddocks of wheat and corn and whatever else is growing out this side of the country. He turns his attention to the right spying a few lonely brumbies in the open plains.

His heart aches remembering his families farm where his sisters would try feed the wild horses. He smiles at the memory remembering Laura and Cora's squeal of excitement when one of the Brumbies took the apple. But, then his mind jumps from Laura's happy squeal to hearing her dying scream.

He tries focusing on the music through the radio, looking away from the wild horses and back to the road ahead of him. But all he could see was his sisters lifeless body fall to the ground in a pile of blood, over and over again.

He hits the breaks and grips the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles turning white as he counts to ten. The memory slowly disappearing as he reaches ten and lets out a deep breath that he didn't realise he was holding in.

After a few minutes he takes his foot off the brakes and continues driving, leaning his elbow on the open window as he takes a few deep breaths.

As the hours pass on, he knows he needs to pull over soon to sleep if he wants to be up and driving again before sunrise.

He passed what looked to be a large cattle farm about 40km back, so he decides to drive another 40km before he was happy with the distance between him and whoever lived on the farm before pulling over to the side of the road.

Just like he always does, he reverses the truck slightly behind a few trees in case a vehicle passes during the night. He pulls the keys out of the ignition placing them in the cup holder as he eats a few of his left over stale biscuits before calling it a night and sleeping on the back seats.