This is my first week participating in the Indie Ink writing challenge. Andrea has challenged me the following: You're hiding from the law. Tell us why and/or what's happening now. Here is my story.
"Are we almost there?" my son asks for what must be the tenth time this hour.
"We've passed the halfway mark," I reply. " 250 miles down, and 163 to go."
I can almost feel a faint smile play on his lips in the dark car as he says "I can't wait to see Niagara Falls. I really needed this vacation."
My child. My man-child, who tonight is much more man than child, is trying to lighten a dark mood on a grim night. We are driving north, not stopping, technically fleeing to the Canadian border. Niagara falls is the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel leading us away from this nightmare.
It started out like any ordinary night in our somewhat ordinary lives. I was on the couch watching t.v., my son upstairs in bed. I shouldn't have answered that knock at the door, wish I hadn't answered that knock at the door. Could it have been just that simple?
"At least the lines should be short," I reply, forcing a smile across my face. "Bet you not many people travel to Niagara falls to vacation in January."
My son merely sighs in agreeance, and I wonder if he is thinking about that knock on the door.
I was not surprised to see my husband through the peep hole, looking cold and sad, on the other side of the door. Since the separation, we had all been wearing our own masks of sadness. I opened the door for him, and was immediately set on edge when he fell through the opening. The smell of booze was sharp, his eyes were glassy, and he said nothing as he regained his footing. He sat down on the couch and I approached him with apprehensive curiosity. He began to speak, looking at the floor, voice trembling, and panic hit my stomach. The divorce papers. He had received them today. How could I have not realized? The panic rose into my throat. Why had I opened the door? As he spoke, still not looking me in the face, the panic rose past my throat and I could taste it.
"I told you if you ever left me I would kill you," he had stated, and then came at me with a steadfast speed that could be fueled only by a moment of complete insanity. Why had I opened the door? I was caught off guard, off balance, and fell to the floor taking out most of the coffee table. He was twice my size, on top of me, his hands constricting my airway. As the darkness was settling into my vision I heard a noise. There were no words, only the guttural yelling of my son. As my surprised husbands hands loosened in grip I caught sight of my son wide eyed, yet still bleary and confused from sleep. My flailing arms grabbed hold of the first thing they found and struck him as hard as I could, and his movement stopped.
I pushed out from underneath him, gasping, looking wildly around my living room, trying to breathe and make sense of everything that had just happened. My son ran to me, collapsing onto the floor into my arms, and we sat for a few minutes just breathing together. Then I realized that my husband wasn't breathing. I listened and waited and watched, but there was nothing. I gingerly approached his figure, lying still on the floor, felt for a pulse, and realized that there was none to feel. I felt a strange sense of panic and relief wash over me. The abuse that had happened for years was definitively over. There would be no more.
Fight or flight..... or how about both? Adrenaline rushed through my body, I instructed my son to grab the suitcases from the basement, and feverishly cleaned myself up, we changed, and packed what we could. I went into the safe and grabbed our passports, and our entire savings which was in cash lying beside them. We got into the car, I programed Niagara falls into the nav, and we started driving.
My son questioned me for the first time. "Shouldn't we call someone, like the police?"
"We will baby, when the time is right" I answered. I had visions of me in handcuffs, my son being taken away, put into the system since we have no family. I wouldn't allow that to happen. I wouldn't even entertain the possibility of him being taken from me. So I drove, away from my husbands body, away from our home, leaving our lives behind with one question still burning in my brain. Why did I open the door?
