The word being the only thing that can break our trance.
“Murder.” I whisper. I’m sure my eyes are so wide it looks like my eyeballs are going to fall out. “I just needed some air. I got into a fight with my boy—” I pause, immediately correcting myself. “Most likely ex-boyfriend, and I… I… I just got turned around, is all. I swear.” Raising my hands in front of me as if I were surrendering. “Whatever it is you think I did, I swear I didn’t.”
I’ve never wished to be Dorthy and ‘no place like home’ my way out of this situation more. My life is still in his hands, even if the gun is no longer aimed at my forehead. He leans into me this time, trapping me between his body and the tree until he’s speaking straight into my ear. “Now you know. This is private property. Don’t be so reckless. Next time, whoever is here probably won’t be as nice as me.”
“Yeah, okay, nice.” I can’t help but roll my eyes, not realizing that the words are coming out of my mouth until it’s too late.
He ignores the stifled chuckle that comes from behind him as he pulls back, still caging me against the tree, and looks at me. “What?”
“I’m just saying, real nice… you just pointed a gun at me, with full intent of shooting me.” Sometimes I wonder if I had a stick, would I poke a snake… perhaps?
“My point exactly. I should have pulled the fucking trigger.” He pushes away from me.
His words ring in my head as I realize he’s saying if I wander back on here again, he won’t hesitate next time. Would they kill me? Who knows… I mean, I don’t even know who they are.
Before I can register exactly all that is happening, I see him, as well as the couple that was out here with him, walking away from where I’m standing. “Wait!” I call out, rushing up behind them. “Can you point me in the right direction?”
“Where are you going?”
“North side.”
“Shit.” He scoffs. “I’ll take you where you need to go.” And just as abruptly, he turns around and starts walking away again. I hesitate, not really sure what it is I should do. The woman who has been standing off to the side this whole time smirks at me before nodding her head towards where they are walking, telling me to follow him.
“Remind you of anything?” I hear the other man asking her as I pass him. The woman just giggles from behind me.
I’m even more surprised when we come into a clearing and I see the house sitting next to the cliff, overlooking the water. The couple behind us walks in an opposite direction. So I follow behind the complete stranger, who told me he’d give me a ride home, yet also told me he’d shoot me next time he catches me on his property.
Pretty sure this is exactly how at least one true crime documentary starts.
He is paces in front of me when he walks around to the side and as I round the corner; I see him punching in a code into a garage keypad and the garage quickly opens. I’m trying not to seem as shocked as I am when I see inside it to the BMW, the truck, and three motorcycles inside. One of them catches my attention more than the other two and it causes me to tilt my head, squinting at it, seeing the scraps and bent metal as it sits in the corner.
“It’s older than I am.” He says from behind me.
“And you’re fixing it up?”
“Nope.” He pops the ‘p’, shakes his head, sighing, just looking at the bike with a weight that I can’t even tell what it is.
“Then why is it still here?”
“My dad kept it all this time. He brought it back and put the pieces back together. Straightened it out just enough to be one piece.”
“That looks like a pretty serious accident.” I can’t help but gasp as I say it.
“It was. He always said it was the best and worst thing that ever happened to him.”
“How could it have been good?” As I walk closer to it, I can’t help but run my hands along the imperfect metal. Seeing the words that cover the painted, and the scraped metal, telling they added it after the accident. “Memento mori?” I turn, looking at him, and he nods.
“Means remember death.”
“That’s kind of fucked up.”
“No, it sounds worse. It really just means, ‘remember we will all die’.” He sighs as he shakes his head, walking up to where I’m standing with the bike. He stands right next to me and, as on edge as I should feel at the moment, I somehow feel totally comfortable. “My parents had broken up when it happened. Mom was on the phone with my aunts when they heard he had wrecked. All she remembered was hearing there was so much blood, and how my uncle was hoping he wouldn’t die. She was engaged to someone else, but she dropped everything as soon as she heard. She said she wasn’t even aware of what she was doing until she was here, but she got on the next flight and came out here. Said her excuse was that since she was a physical therapist, she wanted to make sure that he was in good hands, but she never left.”
“That’s really sweet.”
“Yeah. He kept it for the rough times, when they would fight, whatever, I would find him out here, just staring at it.”
I can hear his voice tremble before I look over and see the hurt written on his face. I want to ask him, but remember the hard shell I witnessed outside just a few moments ago. I know that whatever vulnerability that he’s displaying, he’s not meaning to.
