Escapee

She's dead. Oh, God. She's dead.

           

The night was furious and cold, its ice-dagger eyes looking down on the young woman who ran down the dark road, arms hidden underneath layers of cloth. Tucked away in the sea of swaddling white lay a body, still and unmoving and silent. Splotches of flowery-red blood stained the stark-white blanket. Yet the body lay quiet, and not a single cry did it utter, even as the woman struggled haplessly to carry the figure and gather the blankets together. Underneath the glaring street lights, the figure draped on her arms mockingly looked like a cheap, knock-off corpse.

            

She ran even faster now, adrenaline coursing through her veins the way drugs did when they were injected into soft skin. But instead of feeling the satisfaction of ecstasy or giddy euphoria, all she felt was fear. And hopeless desperation. The street was empty, much to her rising horror. There was no room filled with glowing light, nor sleepless shadows that moved behind the windows. Only worn out cars and the scent of dying cigarettes lingered on the dimly lit lane, the ghosts of a far-away morning she may never wake up to. The sound of her heels clicked into the night as she spun around several times, searching for any sign of life in this dead road. Desolate and terrified, she began going up to the houses that were lined up, and as she pounded madly on these doors, the light from a single lamppost flickered eerily to the rhythm of her desperation. She needed help. She needed to get away from him.

He killed my daughter. She’s gone. I can’t let him catch me.

            

No one answered to her knocks. She staggered away, back onto the road, her eyes glistening, petrified. She clutched the bundle closer to her chest, with an unconscious hope that her heartbeat could revive her dead baby. As the night slaved on, she willed herself to keep running. Shadows stretched infinitely everywhere, on her paralyzed face, around the cold body of her child, beneath the closed doors, on top of the houses. They followed her as she neared the sight of a bridge, lonely and ancient and looming in the distance. Unwillingly, she let out a shriek of unadulterated relief. Solace, oh sweet solace, could be found at the end of that bridge. Her feet lifted her off the ground, and wildly she dashed down the dusty pavement, clutching her daughter’s lifeless body, blinded with relief and hope and mad recklessness. She ran away and never looked back, away from him, away from the darkness, away from her inevitable doom.

            

The incoming truck didn’t see the woman.