Writing Prompt

My car had broken down out in the middle of nowhere. It was a random thing I never anticipated when I set out for Barry’s cabin up in the Adirondacks. My plan was to get some alone time and finish my thesis without a bunch of distractions. My plan did not include hitting a monstrous pot hole and breaking an axle on some random country road. It also didn’t include no phone service and morphing into a hitchhiker with little hope of a car passing. But here I was.

I had locked the car, grabbed my phone, and contemplated which way to go. I knew behind me was a small town about ten miles back, but my map also showed another village in my general direction about five miles ahead so I opted for the unknown and started walking. It was the middle of the afternoon and a balmy 70 degrees, so I decided to just enjoy the walk.

The car crept up on me. I was lost in my thoughts and never heard it behind me until it pulled up and a guy stuck his head out the window.

“That your car back there? You need a lift to town?”

I looked at him, and he looked pretty much okay. He was driving a late model BMW and had on a shirt and tie so I figured him for some kind of desk worker. I paused, then decided ‘what the heck’ and went around to the passenger door.

“Thanks! I appreciate this. I just need to arrange for a tow at the next town.”

“You won’t find that in Mountain View, but I’m headed to Carrolton. They have a good garage there and the guy has a tow truck.”

“Works for me. This saves me a lot of hassle.”

He smiled and we chatted as we made our way along the deserted country road. We passed Mountain View pretty quickly and on we went. It seemed we had been driving for a while when I finally said, “How much farther to Carrolton?”

“Not far now. I just have to make one stop on my way. I have something I need to drop off.”

“Oh. Okay. Where?”

He stopped on an old bridge over a narrow river and turned off the engine.

“Right here.”

Then he got out and went to the truck and dragged out what looked like a piece of rolled up carpet and tossed it over the side and into the water. I stared at him when he got back in the car.

“Do you always toss your discards into the river like that?”

He smiled.

“Only the dead bodies.”

And we headed off to Carrolton.

Lewis ran towards the main road, heart beating so fast that he thought it was about to burst right out of his chest. He couldn’t escape what he had just walked in on. She was there, right in front of him. The street lights were few and far between now as he made his way closer to the edge of the village. A few more minutes and he would be right out on the country lane and in the pitch blackness of the night. He didn’t no much of what had happened that evening, but he did know this, he needed to get as far away from the village as possible. Reaching the end of the footpaths he finally allowed his body to stop with the running and slow down to a walk, allowing him a few quiet moments to get his thoughts in order.

She had been screaming at him, he remembered that. As soon as he had walked through the door that evening she had been on at him. Something stupid about how he should have made more of an effort to celebrate there five years together. He had told her that work had been tough and that they wouldn’t be able to go out and celebrate they way he would have liked, but to him spending time on the sofa with a film in the background was enough. She had mentioned something about what her friends had said, something about “you don’t need money to show someone you still care.” And he had cared, he really had. Ok, he thought that he might have maybe been able to show it a little more over the past months but work had really been slow. Weeks now it had been since money was seen coming into his bank and he knew that it would be many weeks more till another bit did.

He slowed his walk to a stop giving himself more of a change to work out where it had really all gone wrong that evening. Alone with his thoughts, not a car insight he sat down on the verge. Placing his head in his hand he thought about the evening and what happened after she kept screaming at him.

“It’s all your fault you know.” Sarah said as she stepped back into the living room that she left a few moments before to grab another bottle of wine. “What’s my fault now?” Lewis said placing his head on the back of the sofa and closing his eyes, doing anything to block out the voice of his partner. She was getting to him now, it had been over two hours, the same things being said over and over. And he noticed the more wine she was drinking the longer this was going on, she seemed to be finding more things to throw at him. “The reason why your building company is failing, you lack ambition, always have, everyone says so.” He opened his eyes and sat forward on the sofa. He knew that he shouldn’t be taking any notice of what she was saying, if the slurring of her words were anything to go by, she had had far too much to drink. “I work my arse of every bloody day, how can you sit there and say that.” He said, his voice rising as he did what he knew he shouldn’t. Take the bait she was dangling. “No ambition, non. You might say that you work but do you?” She said and she was almost laughing now. Laughing at him. Without another thought he was standing up from the sofa and moving quickly towards her. “I do work hard!” He spat as he moved within a few inches of where she was sitting. She stood quickly pushing him straight in the chest. That was all it took to make Lewis snap like he had never even thought about doing before. He pushed her back, hard. Giving the amount Sarah had drank it hadn’t taken a lot for her to tumble to the ground hitting her head on the corner of the fire place. Blood began to pool within minutes as he stood over her lifeless body.

He rubbed his face now and stood up off the ground. He needed to get out of the village before anyone knew what he had done. He saw the headlight approaching and with a quick move of his arm he stuck out his thumb, he just hoped that whoever was driving would be ok with taking a hitchhiker.

We stopped for the hitchhiker The fool insulted my Smart Car Alas, it is too small to stash a body

We left him in the desert