Michael

The world around me blurs as I push my feet forward, and behind the wheel.

“Are you okay to drive?” She asks.

Not okay, but I have no other choice. I pull out of the lot, blinking out the pain from my head together with the hardest psychological toll I’ve experienced in my life. “Get down.”

She bends down in her seat as we drive past two thugs I don’t recognize. “Fuck.” Some amateurs tracked me after I had visited the passport counterfeiter.

The men sprint to their car and pull out of the lot after us.

“What are we gonna do?” Freckles asks.

I take a few deep breaths, searching for solutions. “Gotta lose them. Somehow.” The car follows ours at a steady pace and I speed up so I can take a bunch of quick turns through the weaving streets, yet in the night there’s plenty of open roads and I’m not gonna lose them unless we start a full on chase.

“Check the map for the closest and biggest city,” I tell freckles as I shove her the map, then turn on the overhead light. “And stay low.” In the rear view mirror the men follow.

“Think we’ll be able to lose them there?” She asks, then instructs me the direction in which to drive. “But it’s across the border.”

I glance at the map and hope we’ll be able to cut it through the fields and approach the city from the other angle. I aimed specifically at this area to cross as it’s heavy with forests and unguarded, or so I heard it to be.

Once we leave the town I focus on the road and shut all the lights, blending us with the dark road as we keep a fixed speed for another half an hour, heading straight into a growing mass of clouds periodically carved by a silent lightning, highlighting a patch of sky and earth around it. We’re headed into a storm. The men follow, a good distance apart in their old gray sedan, and since they didn’t look like professionals I figure they’re not sure when to attack. Still, this situation is nothing good.

I make a swift turn into a field. Hanna gasps. “Why the field?”

“Border,” is all I say as I drive.

“Okay.”

I glance the pursuit vehicle turn into the field after us, it’s headlights fixed on our rear. For amateurs they’re persistent.

“How’s your aim?” I try to think fast over the pain at the back of my head.

“All right? I don’t know. I haven’t spent my life shooting.”

“Your reverse drive?”

“Ugh…”

A bang hits the car and we both duck. “Shit.” Three more bangs and the back of the car dips, slowing us. They blew our tires before we did theirs or came up with any better idea at what to do. Our speed decreases, naked wheels dragging across the bumpy earth, until we come to a stop. I duck. “Give me the gun!” The engine roars as they drive up, halting further away from us, headlights illuminating the field around our vehicle.

“No!” Before I grab her she opens the door and leaps out, ducking behind the car. I scramble out after her and we fall silent, crouched in the shadows and in the rain that starts to drop from the sky.

I hear doors slam. “We know you’re behind it!” One shot hits our car and we crouch lower.

I pull my silver knife and tap freckles on the shoulder to get her attention, then lean into her ear. “Go into the field, they won’t see you in the darkness. And just get out of here, okay?”

She blinks at me. “You mean like get out get out? Like go?”

“Yes.”

Without wasting time she flops on her belly and quickly dives into the short grass, her small body blending with the ground and the car’s shadow. It’s not until she crawls away and into a small ditch in my fuzzy mind do I recall that she has the gun. Fuck.

“Well, well.” One of the men rounds my car, his gun extended at my head. Other one shines his flashlight at some snow-soaked papers in his hands, then at me. “That’s him. Michael Sherman.” He pivots around. “They said he might have a girl with him.” He directs his light into the fog of the approaching storm.

“Well, she’s probably gone.” Another one points his gun at my head closer, a cocky smile on his amateur mug. “They pay less for you dead, but it’s still a lot—”

His head jerks from a shot and he hits the car, blood splattering all over the door. The other guy swivels, throwing away the papers with my face. I leap up and grasp him in a head lock. “Don’t shoot, freckles!” I call out as I ram him into the car, knife under his neck.

Hanna’s frame appears from the fog, and she instantly throws up at the sight of a first man, his mutilated head scrunched against the car.

“Did Jared send you?” I growl at the man, holding him in a firm grip, straining my muscles past their limits.

“What?”

“How did you learn of the bounty?”

“Some thugs are willing to pay for you, say it’s revenge. More if we take you alive, but dead is also okay,” he whimpers. “Listen, we’re not professionals okay, we’re trying to make a living.”

“Where was that thug from? Have you heard anything about him?”

“I don’t know, word goes he’s from New York, probably of a gang that got busted by Feds recently.” He tries to twist his head to plead into my face. “Please, just don’t kill me, okay? I’ll leave you alone.”

I pull out his gun from the waistband of his pants and shove him to his knees.

“Are you going to kill him?” Hanna’s voice makes my hand halt. The thought that I can let him go didn’t even cross my mind.

“No, no please! I have a family, a three-month old daughter!” The man raises his hands, his head low.

“You should let him go,” freckles whispers at my side.

“Look away.” I lift the barrel to his head.

“No! Don’t—” a shot echoes through the silence and the man succumbs to the wet ground.

I shuffle through the men’s pockets and take the money, then wipe the fingerprints inside my car before I turn to their gray sedan. Freckles follows me. “I don’t have anywhere else to go now.” She hugs herself, her tone bleak and her hair dripping water onto her clothing. I don’t say anything as I start the vehicle. She takes the passenger seat, wiping her face from the vomit. I drive across the field, rounding the town and the border patrol in a decent radius.

For the first time my mind swims with guilt. I didn’t have to kill him? Why wouldn’t I? He was a threat, a pleading victim just like the rest of them.

And then I just robbed a girl of her father, in the same way I robbed Freckles of her sister and of all the good she might’ve experienced with her. In the real world too. It’s not like all they ever did together was dream up unrealistic expectations. No matter how hard it was they tried to make the real world better too, and they might’ve succeeded, despite everything in me screeching they’re bound for a failure.

Why is it so hard for me to believe that some people can succeed? After all, freckles is right, all I see around me was built by achievers.

But the pain my mom went through, how on earth she could’ve done it? If only she didn’t reject the reality so bad, if only she was there with me and dad—

“Watch out!” I’m snapped into awareness by her shriek and I slam the brakes right in front of a creak that runs along the road. Heavy rain pelts the roof and the windows, it’s drumming soothing me into my thoughts and out of so needed alertness. I let out a breath and lower my forehead onto the wheel. “We got to change cars.” I take a minute, waiting for the dizziness to pass, then drive along the groove until I find the ground flat enough to cross.

“You need to rest,” she says, her voice strict. “We can stop for a while.”

I ignore her.

…

When we enter the first Canadian city I don’t bother leaving her in a motel as I stop to buy a map at a kiosk five minutes before it closes, then leave the sedan in an inconspicuous place and through the dark, rain-pelted streets, set off to steal another vehicle.

“Hurry.” She stomps around as I’m removing the ignition covers to hotwire the cheapest looking garbage of a car I picked, yet I struggle to distinguish the wires and my hands move so slow they might as well be half-paralyzed. My ears ring in the background and my lungs fail to expand for a proper breath of air.

“Come on,” she urges.

An alarm breaks out and we stiffen. “Fuck. Run.”

We set off into a sprint down the street, then turn between the taller buildings and run some more. When I decide we’re far enough I slow, propping my hand on the wall in an alley, heaving. I don’t know what’s wrong with me because it’s not just fatigue that’s plaguing my body. I’m going insane. My mind keeps rerunning the memories of a man I killed a few hours ago and a suffocating feeling pads the insides of my chest. “What is this?” I whisper to myself.

But freckles notices. “Probably a panic attack.” She nears me. “Breathe.”

“What? I haven’t had those in ages.” Fear overtakes me and I growl, “it’s your damn fault.” She backs away and I catch myself before I lash out, and with it follows the blooming feeling of guilt, guilt for being who I am, guilt for existing. The load in my chest grows so heavy I all but feel my legs buckle, the wound in my thigh throbbing.

“How far is the motel?” She hefts the duffel bag from my shoulder, finds the map and walks to the closest street light, squinting at it in the rain.

I lift my head at the light, trying to breathe evenly. My eyes blur from the rain or my own sweat, and all I see in my mind’s eye are people I killed; the fear on their faces as they plead at me.

Please, please, don’t…

I’m begging you.

“Here. Come on. Let’s catch a night bus.”

I shuffle over to her. She grabs my hand, pulling me until we board the bus. Clutching my hands into tight fists, I drop into the seat. My entire body vibrates as if it were poked by needles from inside out. “Freckles, you deal with this, what do I do?”

“Nothing, there’s nothing you can do.” That’s reassuring. “It’s okay. I know realizing what you did and waking up from those beliefs of yours is painful.” Her words thwack me on the head.

“Shut up.” I slacken in the chair, wetness and cold penetrating my muscles.

She shakes me awake some time later and I jerk my head up from her shoulder. “We’re getting out.”

We stalk to the motel and check in. I list to the bathroom, dragging myself as if I were dragging a bag of boulders and wash my face. Just go sleep it off, I tell myself. It’s going to end, but it doesn’t feel like it will.

Her sister…

I see her in my mind, laying on concrete, her blond hair slick with her own blood—

I give my head a violent shake and it only makes my vision darken.

“You should rest,” she says when I walk out.

“I tried to rest! But you… you couldn’t help yourself,” erupts out of me before I stop myself. “You had to tie me up and spout all that nonsense into my head!”

“Nonsense? It’s the truth. You’re rejecting the truth, Michael!”

My insides twist into a double knot. “It-it’s not the truth!” My breaths shorten.

“Yeah, whatever.” She pivots to the bathroom. “For now we’re safe, relax. I’m going to take a shower.”

I watch her go, the room around her tilting and swaying. I should lie down, but with a faltering step slow shivers settle into my limbs and my mind turns hazy. “It just… hurts so much.” My vision narrows and it feels like my body gains a hundred extra pounds, blood reducing its circulation. “Freckles—” the room winks out of existence and the last thing I hear is myself hitting the floor.