What happens when you walk in the middle of a bare road, past midnight?
Nothing, nothing at all.
She walks in the middle of the barren street, illuminated by the street lights at uneven gaps. She walks freely amidst the dark stretches, and then cowers when the unbroken light bulbs continue to illuminate her path. There’s nothing around except the silhouette of overhanging trees and houses suspended in seemingly peaceful silence. To her, though, it’s haunting. The silence, the lights; it makes fear claw at her spine, raising the hair on her neck and bare arms; the fear of being visible in a setting so vulnerable, the fear of an incoming car; the dread that so often stops her in her tracks and shift her head from side to side to evade the feeling of being looked at. Fear haunts her but it keeps her walking, through the unlit and lit patches, through the eerie surroundings and through the distress that doesn't show.
What happens when the lights of an incoming car suddenly, harshly, enters your vision.
Everything unexpected happens, all at once.
Her illuminated form doesn’t pause in its track, but fear leaves, slipping past the hold of her mind so quickly, replaced by something else. It wraps it’s tendrils around her, wounding around her legs and moving them forward so she doesn’t stands still. Escape. It pushes her forward, towards the car. Her life doesn’t flashes before her eyes. There is nothing besides the bright lights blurring as they come nearer and nearer. Her feet pick up pace and she grins in the face of freedom.
Nobody clutches her soiled body soaked in blood. Nothing stops, not the silence nor the night. She lies there frozen, dark shadows hugging her form, a fire burning in her lifeless eyes.
-Momina.
