Wrong Turn Part 2

At the same time I knew there was no way the man could be looking at me, I knew that's exactly what he was doing. Don't go any farther, his stiff ashen face seemed to say. Leave. The urine soaking into my seat steamed up the windshield, and I jammed my foot on the brake as I switched gears. Then it was on the gas, and my head jerked forward again. I was accelerating backwards, eyes still on the man in front of me. He didn't blink. As soon as I could, I wrenched the wheel to the right and did the quickest three point turn ever executed. Ten seconds later I was going ninety miles an hour down that dark road, back toward the bigger one that would lead me home.

I took a shower and scrubbed my body raw. I turned the knob to scalding, and I sat on the fiberglass floor with my head between my knees for about an hour. The rhythm you don't notice usually, the slight pulses of stronger water through the showerhead, put me in a trance as they beat their predictable notes into the back of my skull. I don't know what I was thinking about, but there was something about the shower, of being there, that felt safe. When I stepped out, a little dizzy from the dehydration and muscles weak from their boiling massage, my skin was crimson. For five minutes, I was the first member of a new race, a red race. I stumbled into my bedroom and felt in the dark for my bed. It was there, and I fell into it, naked and steaming. For ten hours I slept, positioned the way I landed when I fell.