Word Count: 393
The silence is so deafening with its drumming. The day is so dark with its night. The world is so small with its oceans and forests and the horizon is littered with trees.
Something, a small noise, like the cheep! of a sparrow, makes him look up. He stops, listens, waits for the nothing that is no longer there. Daniel is edgy, tic-nervous, absorbing everything in through his eyes, ears, and skin where it all finds his way to his mind, tumbles in a jumble that feels like an unscratchable itch.
Daniel is in a strange town, a small town two hundred miles further than he should be at this time of Friday afternoon. He is looking ahead even as he looks far behind him, at a trail that leads to escape and winds away from his life as he leaves it to the distance he’s trying to make.
Last night, Daniel made all the last preparations for what he completed this morning. As senior accountant he had all the right keys, all the right passwords, all the complete access he needed to empty the company’s tills. And he did.
The temptation had been there for years, luring him; neck-deep in the water of Tantalus, fruit just out of reach overhead. Resistance became thin with rust when his wife threatened to leave him. The holes widened and met when she did.
That was four months ago. Now he had money to go buy her back. He could buy her the much bigger house, the car that wasn’t a station wagon, the fine wine and pearls that she craved.
At the diner the waitress was big-smiled and friendly. She winked at him each time she refilled his coffee. She handled the whole counter herself and all of the booths. She worked hard and quick, efficient, kept her patience and poise through the grumpier crowd.
He asked her her name, then said, “Arlene, would you like to come along for a ride?”
“Where to?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said.
“Right now?”
“Now.”
The silence was riddled with short bursts of laughter between conversation. As they went through the last light of day and into the purpling sunset, the trees flew by the windows, stuck by their roots to the sides of the road, waving their branches, cheering them on and away.
