Run

I.

The motorcycle rumbled between her leather clad thighs as she roared down the pavement, trying to ignore the gnawing ache in her heart and putting as many miles as she could between her and the man that caused that ache.  The warm wind that rushed across her face began to dry the tears, tears that had started to fall days and miles ago.  If only the wind could dry out that pain in her heart as easy as it did those tears.

She twisted the throttle and sped on, the bike’s chrome flashed and glistened against the cars as she rode passed them, faces peered after her anonymously as she rode on.  She had always considered herself a strong woman, but that did not mean she was oblivious to hurt, and he, this man that hurt her, was prone to weakness when it came to hookers, a weakness that she could not abide by. 

“It is just as easy to buy love as it is to earn it”, he had said as she had mounted that cherry red hog, the very one that carried her onward into the unknown. 

She replied to him,

“I need to clear my head, I need to take a ride and work some things out inside of me” 

And she had very well meant it, but that had been three days ago, and she realized those things inside of her that needed straightened out had much less to do with her and a whole lot to do with him.

A few miles up the road, she had decided it was time to satisfy her thirst.  She stopped the bike in front of a small highway bar, she didn’t know what town she was in, and as the gravel crunched beneath her boots, she realized she didn’t know what state she was in either, none of which bothered her.



II.

         The leather clad woman sat in the dark, smoky bar, the hum of conversations blurred around her, drowning out the sound of the juke box.  She drank whiskey, savoring the warmth that slid down her throat and rested in her stomach before it spread as a tingle to her toes. 

         Her eyes had hardly adjusted to the darkness when a man sat beside her at the bar.  He sat there beside for many minutes, taking long slow draws from his beer.  She watched the condensation slide down the brown bottle and puddle below it on the dirty bar.  The drips were rhythmic and almost hypnotic, so much so that she was startled when he spoke,

         “Long day?”  He asked

         “Helluva long day” she replied simply

         “You travelin’?” 

         “No, I’m runnin’”

         He laughed,

         “Runnin’” from what?

         “The smell of hooker sweat”

         This man was shocked by her response and paused momentarily before inquiring further,

         “Hooker sweat?”

         “I had a man once, and he smelled of shame and lust and cheap perfume, he smelled of hooker sweat.  Even now I smell it, like my nostrils have been stained by it”

         There was another few moments of silence, save for the soft swallowing of booze, before he spoke once more,

         “You wanna kill him?”

         The woman in leather, felt her lips slide over her teeth, almost unconsciously she was smiling.  It had been the first time she had smiled in days.