Smell Of Desire

Babe POV.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! He’s closing in!”

I wasn’t just pushing the gas pedal. I was kicking it. Stomping upon it.

With all my might.

Desperately.

And yet, the black F150 pickup kept closing in. Faster than my thoughts. Louder than my heartbeats.

Its black grille and chrome bar kept charging in like a force of nature — relentless, unstoppable, unhinged. Every second I glanced in the rearview mirror, I came face-to-face with my worst nightmare.

“It’s almost caught up with me!” I yelled at my car. “Scram, you moron! Why won’t you go faster?”

The engine groaned. Perhaps it tried to tell me that a 1978 Chevy Nova couldn’t run any faster almost fifty years after it went on the road, despite having seen better days of glory.

Or perhaps, it resented my incessant kicking and stomping on the gas pedal. There are limitations to a machine’s performance, no matter how much you push it.

And then, there was the road.

It was long. It was narrow. It had more crooked bends than a pretzel, and was totally deserted.

Even in the middle of the day.

There were dense woods on my left, and barren empty stretches of land on my right. There wasn’t a soul in sight — neither human nor beast — except the two of us.

Me. And the scary dude chasing me in the black F150.

I glanced again at the rearview mirror. He was close, close enough for me to catch a split second glimpse of him.

He had tinted glasses perched high on his nose. And was trying to snort something with his right hand as he held the steering with his left.

“Ugh! A cokehead!” I growled. “He has a faster car. He has guns. He is a dopehead. And he is after me. What a clusterfuck!”

It indeed was. Who knew it would turn into a train wreck of a date when we first met each other less than twelve hours ago.

But that’s life … My life. Fucked up beyond repair. Cursed by my own choices. Incapable of staying on track and gathering momentum — like the fucking piece of junk I was driving.

The Chevy Nova groaned again. Another crooked bend lay up ahead. This one also had a bump to add on to my misery.

I closed my eyes and thrust on the gas with everything I had, lifting my ass off the seat.

It was now or never.

Luckily, it turned out to be the former.

The car hit the bump with a mighty screech, and flew off a few yards ahead, landing back on the road with a loud thump.

He wasn’t so lucky, though.

The black pickup hit the bump at breakneck speed, and swerved to the left, losing control momentarily.

Maybe it was the substance he was snorting that made him lose control. Or perhaps, he had taken his eyes off the road. Whatever it was, it made him veer off toward the forest on the left.

I got a breather. A much-needed one.

I left him behind and charged full steam ahead. I glanced at the rearview mirror again. He had pulled over and got down from the truck.

Great! Five more minutes, and I will be out of his reach. Gone. Forever. Scot-free.

And just then, at that very moment, when I was hanging between hope and despair by a thread thinner than a strand of hair, my cursed luck struck again.

I saw movement in the rearview mirror.

He had got up on the back of his pickup.

He was standing. He was aiming.

He was aiming his fucking shotgun in my direction.

My heart leaped into my mouth. What the —

Bang!

The rear windshield of my car shattered into smithereens. My hands jerked, and my knees trembled.

This time, I lost control.

My car veered to the right, hit a pair of boulder-sized rocks, and turned turtle.

Not turtle, but sideways.

It wasn’t the bullet that did it. God knows what it hit after shattering my rear windshield. But it certainly didn’t hit me.

It was my damn fate. Once again.

It was sealed by divine powers the day I was born.

And there was no escaping it.

***

I felt dizzy.

My head was spinning. My knees felt wobbly. My legs were heavier than a box of lead. My breath came in short, ragged gasps, struggling to enter and exit my lungs.

I was covered in shards of broken glass from the shattered windshield. I could spot a few minor bruises on my arms. But there was no blood.

No trickle. No gash. No open wound.

Thank God I was wearing a seat belt. That polyester-nylon contraption saved me from a serious injury. But it won’t be able to save my life from a … crazy meth head with a shotgun in his hand and a hunting rifle lying below his rear seat.

I know, because I have witnessed this first hand. Saw them with my own eyes last night when I hopped into his truck, and …

Oh, for fuck’s sake! What was I thinking?

I unbuckled my savior — the seat belt — and somehow managed to kick the door on the driver’s side open.

And I stumbled out.

He had paused. He was still standing immobile at the back of his pickup. Still holding the gun, still locking his hawkish gaze on me, like a true hunter …

He was at least fifty yards out. And he fired a single shot that didn’t miss its target.

He must be a seriously good shot.

And he was now getting back into the driver’s seat.

Shit! He had reignited the engine. He was again charging ahead, driving like a maniac.

I shuddered in terror as the F150 roared and zoomed off, making a dash at me like a rocket, while I stood stunned and frozen in shock right in the middle of the narrow road.

“Move, for fuck’s sake!” my brain shouted an order to fire up my reflexes. “He is going to run you over. Move away. Step the hell aside!”

That’s what I did. Just in the nick of time. A nanosecond late, and I would have turned into mincemeat.

A quick pivot of the feet helped me escape a collision with the massive black grille and the protruding chrome bar of the truck.

It swerved and swayed, and screeched to a halt after overtaking me by twenty-odd yards.

Enough time for me to scoot and dive straight into the dense woods, but not enough to escape being hunted down.

That man … whatever he was — psycho, neurotic, juicehead — was a hunter. He knew how to pursue and stalk.

And he just didn’t know how to give up.

***

I ran for my life into the deep thick forest. He ran after me with the shotgun in his hands and the hunting rifle strapped to his back.

I ran blind. I ran without a pause or a break. Even when I tripped over a broken branch or a piece of rock jutting from the soil, I crawled up and stumbled forward.

I wasn’t going to die here. Not in this godforsaken deserted place that was miles away from civilization. Not today. And not at the hands of that crazy maniac hot on my tail with nothing to lose and … well, only-he-knows-what to gain.

Gasping, panting, hurting all over, I must have covered a mile or two on foot before I finally paused to catch my breath.

I hid myself behind the massive trunk of a gigantic tree, and took a peep.

I couldn’t see him, but I could hear the rustle of leaves at a distance, his boots stomping the ground, and his frenzied search scaring the birds away.

And I knew there wouldn’t be any respite from him. No escape from his clutches. No way to dupe him or outrun him.

He was a hunter and I was his prey. And unless my cursed luck did a sudden U-turn, this forest would become my final resting place.

That's when my gaze fell on the other side of the enormous trunk I had hidden behind. And a couple of objects lying scattered caught my attention.

I crawled forward silently to take a close look.

A half-empty bottle of vodka!

A small pocket knife.

A half-empty pack of cigarettes.

And a tiny plastic lighter.

All three lay strewn about at the base of the trunk, probably left behind by a traveler or a hiker not too long ago.

I threw up my arms in despair. That’s it? Just when I needed some divine help, this is what I got?

I slumped on the ground, leaned back on the mighty trunk, stretched my legs out, and took a sip of the vodka.

It tasted good. It began to unclog my head.

I took a giant swig. Then another. Followed by another.

I had nothing to lose. And I needed to take a breather anyway.

Ah! Relief! My frayed nerves began to calm down at supersonic speed.

The thumping inside my rib cage quietened, my pulse slowed down, and my brain began to work again.

And a spark ignited there.

An idea … a last-ditch attempt to get out of this nightmare alive … began to take shape.

I flipped open the pocket knife, doused it in the vodka, and took a deep breath.

I pulled up my tee and stuffed it inside my mouth, biting hard on it.

I had to muffle my voice. I couldn’t be heard screaming when I —

I slashed my left ear with the knife.

Oww, fuck! It hurt … it hurt like crazy!

What was I thinking?

Blood trickled down my left cheek, jaw and throat, running all the way down to stain my tee.

I groaned as quietly as I could. Fuck, it hurt so bad! It burned, it …

Biting hard on the tee still stuffed inside my mouth, I brought the bottle close to my wounded left ear.

And I poured vodka on it.

Hell, it set my open wound on fire. I thrashed my arms and legs, and tried desperately to swallow my pain and all the screams erupting from it.

I took three more swigs of the vodka and then lit a cigarette.

I could hear faint noises coming from behind. He had probably sniffed out the smell.

A good hunter always does. Especially if the smell is that of tobacco.

Good! You aren’t the only one with hunting skills, my friend.

If I am destined to go down, I will take you with me.

Three more puffs of the cigarette, and then I was done.

I put it out, left behind the bottle, the lighter and the knife, and started running again.

But this time, I wasn’t running blindfolded.

This time, I was running to turn the tables on my damn luck and my shitty fate.

I was running toward the vast, flat, barren stretch of wild grass to my left. Because, right at its edge, stood a barbed wire fence.

A fence meant civilization. Barbed wire implied the presence of humans nearby.

And my open wound and bloodstained clothes would do the rest to get those humans on my side.

Come on, you dickhead! Come and get me!