This road didn’t lead to hell. It was hell itself. I had no memory of turning onto it, nor any way of measuring how far into its pit I had driven. There were no markings, no warnings, and only the terror of driving over ground I’d already covered keeping me from turning around to escape the eternal torture at the end of it ( that might be better than being on the road anyway at this point). I want to stop, desperately, and get a few hours of sleep. But I also want to put as much distance between me and my past as possible. Maybe not all the way on the opposite coast, but anywhere than in the same air that had become so suffocating. More than that I want to wake up in a space that doesn’t look like the beginning of some movie where the hero was stranded by his enemies and will have to fight his way back for vengeance through blood and sweat. If the rider was surprised that there was another traveler he didn’t show it. The closer I got the more he pulled to the side, apparently happy to continue at his own pace (further confirming there was nothing worth getting to at the end of this road). He only turned back once, barely taking a glance before returning to what I could only assume would be the same morbid thoughts that haunted me. What else could anyone think on such an abandoned road? I’ve never believed in the saying “The eyes are the windows to the soul”. At most times they seemed to be like marbles that might be pretty to look at, but ultimately I couldn’t see or understand what was hidden under the murky colors. For this one time, I really did look through a window. I moved past with no further incident, and forced my thoughts back on the road. Back into a reality where I was escaping one hell and the other was still a long way off, but not at the end of a road I could get to in a Chevy. Hopefully. If I had never looked up, never felt the need to watch that lone figure disappear in the twilight, maybe I would have found what was at the end of that road. Maybe it would have been a happier ending than my morose thoughts were leading me to believe. Instead, in the rearview mirror, I watched as more motorcyclists suddenly appeared behind the one I had passed. I watched the new rider hold his arm out, and the one I passed suddenly drop to the side like he’d been hit by a battering ram. I somehow survive by pretending I didn't just witness one of the worst things I'd ever seen in my life. Now I'm stuck in a small town with a man who won't let me leave, doesn't seem to want me to stay, but makes me feel safer than I have in years. Except I've learned red flags wave for a reason, and he shares a lot with the man I'm running from. How can a red flag feel safe? How can a man brought into my life on the heels of bloodshed make me feel more protected, more like I belong, than I ever had in a city full of people? And how can I convince him that even though I came into his life in curious circumstance I'm not a danger to him and his club, even as they all seem to be just as suspicious?