A box of Chocolates

A Trip Down The Rabbit Hole - Part 2

Bela had no experience of being dead before.

Could you still hear ... smell... or feel after you died?

Because she could.

Bela was too scared to open her eyes. No ambulance bellowing a siren in the background. Even the fucking horn that less than a minute ago, had started it all, had gone limp. The only thing she could hear was a loud thumping inside her head like a double bass Rap beat minus the melody. If this was her heart beating this insanely, Bela thought, it sure as hell had jumped out of her rib cage and exploded in mid-air.

A stale pain was fast spreading across her torso, but she wasn't chocking or burning, didn't feel the air bag pressed against her cheeks or anything that smelt like blood ooze out and crawl down her skin.

"WHAT DO YA THINK YOU ARE DOING YOU MOTHERFUCCKER...DRIVING ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD YOU BITCH". The words cut in first, followed by the desperate bangs on the car's door. No this wasn't afterlife - which was the good news, but then the bad news was.. she'd now have to deal with shit she hadn't accounted for.

Bela held her breath for just a second longer, her palpitating heart in her throat, before opening her eyes, one at a time.

The Porsche was standing bang in the middle of the road and a guy was towering over her side of the car. Through the half opened window by her side, Bela saw this giant of a man scowling at her, his thick brown hair pulled into a manbun; and a pair of moustache and beard so bushy, it made him look like a medieval butcher. But just as her eyes made contact with his, his frown turned into a lecherous smirk sending chills down her spine.

He showed her his middle finger and then started sucking it while still giving her that sick perverted smile "MAMMA DIDN'T TEACH YOU HOW TO DRIVE...BABY..YOU WANT ME TO SHOW YOU...?" Bela couldn't breathe..or move. She froze.

Just when she began to feel sick with a sinking feeling, like something ominous was about to happen, she saw a woman approach them. She stood next to the man and started speaking to him, in a language Bela didn't understand interspersed with a word here and a word there of English. The man didn't seem to take her seriously, he was shrugging her off, but then the woman grew confrontational; grabbed the man by his collar and started yelling at him. Bela - anxiously witnessing them argue, heard the woman mention 'Cops' and "DL' more than once.

Soon, the man gave in and threw another lustful sneer at Bela, before turning away and being dragged by the woman. As Bela sat paralysed in the driver's seat, gulping in air after having held her breath all this long, a rickety old car in shabby grey zoomed past her, the man driving while sticking his other hand out to show her a middle finger and the woman who had just saved Bela from God knows what or may be had saved herself of a straying partner was sitting next to the man.

Bela clutched the steering wheel with both hands and slouched her shoulders to take a few deep sighs. She was sitting there trying to calm her erratic heartbeat when a drop of tear plopped on her right thigh. She rubbed it with her thumb into her thick fleece pants, even though the drop had already soaked through, leaving behind just a tiny wet spot, and wiped off her eyes with the back of her hand in one quick swipe of her arm, as if crying was as shameful as stealing.. like someone had caught her stealing.

Bela pulled her shoulders back as she sat upright and turned on the ignition. She rolled down her windows to take a good look on either side, and when she saw the road was clear, she took a quick turn to pull into the correct lane.

.....

"Must have been one of those stupid Trump supporters.. pissed off that his hero lost the elections and taking his frustration out on random people on the road. Bet he didn't have a valid Driver's License, that could be why his girlfriend dragged him away. If he had called the police, he would have been in deeper shit than me. I would have made some excuse to wiggled my way out – like I wasn't feeling well or something.

Stupid asshole will soon cause his own death !!" Bela cursed out loud.

Bela didn't like wallowing in self-pity. She loathed people who slumped in a corner crying, when bad things happened to them - playing the victim card. Instead she shrugged things off, played them down, talked them over in her head again and again and again till they stopped stinging her any more. Like she was doing this pep talk to make her-self believe that the man, however frightening he might have had seemed in that moment when he was leering at Bela, was no better than a dumb headed Trump supporter without a valid Driving license. And this is how she kept herself together, even in crappy situations.

'Now if I share this incident with folks, they'd start freaking out and giving me these unsolicited lectures – how can you rent a car and plan a trip to a place that far when you have just gotten a license and don't even have 20 hours of driving experience. It's risky man.. Imagine what could have happened.' Bela felt amused imagining the reactions her mostly Indian colleagues. 'And Sangeetha my God, knowing her, she'd launch a full-fledged rant – how could you be so careless, why did you go alone..and a million other questions ending with her trademark 'Don't be a rebel without a cause Bela, pick and choose your battles' '

Bela never really understood what Sangeetha meant by it, not that she cared though. Sangeetha was otherwise a nice roommate – hardworking, calm, tidy, a great cook and caring.. caring to the point of being overbearing, and Bela liked her for who she was, but she wouldn't let Sangeetha patronize her into living her life in any other way but her own terms. Ditto for her colleagues or friends.. They would not understand her ways, because they had not lived her life, they hadn't come from where she did, they hadn't faced the battles she had, they hadn't built this life for her. She had to keep breaking through and keep moving on, by hook or by crook and she wasn't obliged to explain it to anyone. As long as she could clean after herself, she could make as much mess as she liked.

All the thinking had helped make the journey feel shorter than it was. It was late afternoon now, and Bela was almost there.. In the picturesque valley of Rohrersville. 

To be continued..