Settling dues

Her hair, wild wind running through it, whips against her face. But she just smiles. The road signs whizz past by, trying to grab her attention.

Her eyes are focussed straight ahead at the diverging serpentine roads. She knows where she’s going. She’s getting out. Out from the city. Out of her past. Out of her nightmares. Any road would do.

She digs her nails into the steering wheel, surely purchased from those high-end showrooms-the ones she can only window-shop at.

She breathes in the rich smell that inhabits the car, the frangrance defies the intrusive road smells.

From the fob of the ignition key dangles a tiny locket containing two photos of marital bliss. One, a mascara-eyed, red-pout seductively smiling. The second, intense eyes framed by a gorgeous mane and deep-set dimples.

His aristocratic face flashes before her mind, smiling generously saying, “Then I guess you’re fired.” A chuckle.

His straight honest face as he brushes innocuously against her body in the extra-wide empty corridor.

Red. The splitting headaches. The tightness of her clenched fists. That choking feeling. The storms repressed within. The siren inside her head screams: “Don’t hit back”. She has to pay her bills. She needs her job.

She loathes it, that she fears him even in her nighmares. Why?

She hits the accelerator and digs her heels into the floor of his baby- his 4 years’ savings and his childhood dream.

How does it feel to have something so dear stolen away unfairly?
She should know.
He taught her that feeling when he took away her job for refusing to cater to his “needs”.

She had it all planned out. Two hours later, he would return to an empty garage with just a single note left, saying: “Just settling dues, boss.”