Cheater

Just a short story I'm writing. It'll only be another chapter or two longer. ^^ Hope you enjoy!

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"Show me love, show me love, show me love, show me love, show me love 'til I'm screaming for more."

Underneath the passenger seat, I can hear the persistent cry of my cellular phone in my purse. I give the road a quick glance only to find myself the lone pilot among the gravel-covered plane, and then I reach down and rummage through the receipts, credit cards, dollar bills, and other personal items to find the roaring device. My eyes narrow at the bright blue screen and the bolded name. Flipping the phone open, I moan, "Kell, it's not my fault that you live way the hell out in the middle of nowhere."

There's a boisterous chuckle from my sister's mouth that I've somehow gained the power to not cringe at its sound. "It's not even that hard to find!" she retorts through the phone. "What road are you on?"

I glance around at the open road with cornfields to my sides and a few silos and farmhouses north of me. No road signs, though. "Um... I think I'm still on County B, but it's been going on forever."

"That's good!" she cries. "You should be on that for, like, 20 miles or so."

"Pretty sure I've been on it for 100 miles," I mutter, rolling up the windows of my car and turning on the air conditioning as the humid air outside starts to annoy me.

I can hear the teasing smile in her voice as she replies, "Oh, cry me a river. I told you that Elliot's let you take his room, right?"

I groan inwardly. "Yes..." Elliot is Kelly's nine-year-old that sleeps on Transformers sheets and sometimes wets them. You can understand my enthusiasm, yeah?

As if she can read my thoughts, like she always seems to do, Kelly says, "Don't worry. I've cleaned his sheets twice just for you, you germophobe."

"'Germophobe' my ass," I scoff. "You wouldn't sleep on them either, farm lady."

Another obnoxious laugh that even gets me to loosen my straight mouth into a slight curve. "Sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm no longer a city girl," she muses, bringing on a short silence after her words.

Kelly moved out at 18 to go get married to her current-hubby Josh and moved into some hut out in the suburbs somewhere in Iowa. Kelly, pregnant right out of wedlock, did a lot of gardening and sewing while Josh worked with some older gentleman handling his dairy farm. When the older gentleman passed, Josh and another worker decided to continue the farm and soon became pretty wealthy, and the timing was practically perfect because Kelly was near her due date with Elliot James.

Anyway, with a new mouth to feed and body to cover, Kell and Josh needed to get a bigger house. Therefore, they did. We just wanted it to be, you know, near us. In the city. But not them. They liked it out in God-knows-where.

Josh still takes care of the dairy farm with his buddy and makes a pretty good living. Kell is a stay-at-home mom but continues to knit and sew clothes that she sends off the Salvation Army and gets a small amount of cash for it. They seem to like it out there.

I just wish it wasn't so damn far away.

So, I guess you're wondering why I'm even going to this spot in nowhere, hm? To be blunt, I'm not sure either. After a certain, erm... incident back in the city and a long, tearful phone call to my dear sister, whom I'm surprised even carries a phone and has a signal out there, Kell encouraged me to stay with her family for a few days just to get away. "It's not as bad as you will probably think," she said, "and, after a few days of city-freeness, you'll be as good as new!"

I didn't realize she was good at convincing me to do things. She should have gone into business.

"Is there still more road ahead?" Kell asks presently from the other line.

"Yep," I reply. "All I can see is road ahead of me and a huge gray-and-black sky. Is it supposed to storm?"

"Uh..." There's a scuffling of noises on her end that worries me. "I think so," Kell finally says amongst the choppy sounds, "but you should get here before it hits."

"Should," I echo with a snort. Not the way this road looks. I'll be out here for another two hours based on my current view.

I hear more glitching on my phone and peer upward at the clouds that are suddenly getting much darker -- almost jet black.

"Fuck," I hiss to myself, turning the radio all the way down. "Kell, are you there?"

Between the crackles, I can hear her voice in the distance, but not enough to understand what she's saying. I groan and up my speed a little more, my nerves tingling inside. Finally, somehow, I hear Kelly say, "...take the first turn--"

"Wait, Kell!" I cry, my heart in my throat after making out something she actually said. "Turn where?!"

"J-ju-- --fter the fork... --op sign, turn--"

My phone beeped.

Gasping, I put the phone in front of me and see those two dreaded words:

Signal lost.

"Goddamn it!" I throw my phone onto the passenger seat and grip the wheel. I knew this would be a bad idea. Beyond the freaky clouds, though, I can see a few farmhouses, so, if absolutely necessary, there had to be some place to go in case I did need some sort of help or shelter until the storm blew over.

My foot pushes against the accelerator as a few raindrops splatter onto the windshield. Big raindrops, too. Not those itty-bitty ones. Fat ones. I keep one eye on the sky and another on the road, still surprised that there's no one else driving behind me or toward me. I guess that's good if I get into an accid--

Thunder claps above. I gasp aloud and see the flash of a bolt of lightning that splits the black sky into two halves. Another one slashes through the haze a second later while another clash of thunder sounds around me. The rain starts to become heavier, if it's even possible, and comes down harder and faster.

I'm never calm in these types of situations. My stress meter sky-rockets and I get sick to my stomach as my body shivers and sweat builds up. The grip I have on the wheel is ever-so tight that my knuckles are bleached. I just want to make it there in one piece with my car and luggage safely intact. Is that so much to ask for?

Apparently it is.

As the storm grows more intense and threatening, I come to a fork in the road, telling me that I have to go this way or that way. "Fuck," I mutter again, staring down the two equally drawn paths and trying to remember what Kelly just said on the phone.

I come to a complete stop, though there is no stop sign on my side, only for oncoming vehicles from the two other paths, and try to decipher which direction I'm supposed to head towards. My knowledge in direction is shit, so I don't know whether Kelly's house is north, south, east or west, and I don't know which way that path will lead to or that one will lead to.

In a word, I'm fucked.

I grab my phone from the other seat, glancing at my rearview mirror for a moment to make sure no one's behind me, and see that the signal is still undetected. Which means I can't get any help from anyone.

My windshield wipers sound like they're having a stroke, and I don't want them dying out on me, so I throw the phone back in its spot and put my foot back on the accelerator, deciding to go down one of the two paths.

The wind is pushing my car towards the curbless side of the road at such force that I have to drive my car at an angle to stay on. The rain coats the gravel beneath me and the pit in my stomach hardens when I realize that I could hydroplane into oblivion. And then there's the damn thunder and lightning, too.

God must hate me. Or Mother Nature, or whoever the fuck deals with this shit. Meteorologists? Yeah, all of you can stop laughing at my anxiousness and stop this attack right now.

Of course they wouldn't listen and would make things worse.

A light goes on between my gas gage and the arrow pointing at how fast I'm going. "Check engine" it reads in block letters with a small yellow symbol of the thing running my car underneath it. Now I don't know much about cars either, but if there's any illumination on my dashboard during a storm indicating that I could blow up into a thousand pieces and die, I'm getting the fuck out.

I allow the wind to sweep me over to the right and I turn off my lights, wipers, and engine. The sound of the pounding rain and the view of darkness beyond the murky windshield are both overwhelming. I'm lost.

I unstrap myself from the seatbelt. Wait, what do I plan on doing? Getting out? Nuh-uh. Not in this monster. I'm staying safe inside this car -- with a fucked up engine that could combust. Okay... Maybe I should go. Go where?!

"Ugh!" I cry, rubbing my temples. I squint past the waterfall of precipitation flooding the window and see a light in the distance. It's not too far away, actually. A block or so if this was in the city. It must be a house or farm -- something that has living inhabitants there. And people that live in the country are one of two kinds: cannibals or kind, good-hearted souls. I just had to pray for the latter.

Yanking the key out of the ignition, I leave everything in my car -- luggage, purse, cell phone, all of it -- and grab my jacket. Taking a deep breath, I open the door, hit hard by the rush of humid wind and flying rain, and I scramble to the other side of the road. My feet carry me slowly across the growing puddles but the light down the road keeps me moving. It's my finish line. I'll make it there. I will.

After a few minutes of trudging through the rocky swamp, I reach the driveway of the lit home and stand there, trying to make out if the home looks approachable or not. From what I can see, it's nice-looking -- flowers out front, decorative lawn ornaments against the porch, classy-shaped numbers for the address next to the wooden door. Even the car doesn't look beat-up at all and I don't see any tractors or fields or ditches.

Yeah, definitely approachable.

I continue my journey after another crack of thunder booms behind me. The wooden steps of the porch creak as I climb my way up them to the door. Under the, by the sound of the panging of rain, tin roof of the porch, I place my fist against the door and knock loudly.

It isn't long that I have to wait before the door opens and I'm greeted by a beautiful woman that I hope is the house-keeper. Her skin is milky white; her eyes a forest green; her hair as dark and rich as chocolate. Concern immediately colors her face at the sight of me drenched in rain.

"H-Hi, I'm..." It's hard to speak when your teeth are dancing.

"Oh no," she says, a hint of an accent in her soft voice. "The storm has gotten you stranded, hasn't it?"

I swallow, shiver, and nod simultaneously.

She gasps. "Oh, please, come in!" She comes out onto the porch and braces her hands onto my shoulders, ushering me forward.

I gasp, too, but at the feel of her hands upon me. "I-I-I don't want t-to intrude..."

"Hush!" she says immediately, still pushing me forward into her warm home. "I will not have you catch your death on my porch, and you are not intruding so don't think it."

We move past her entrance into her living room where she tells me to take a seat before she jogs to a different room. I look around at the assorted photographs hanging on the walls in fancy pictureframes and the TV and the wool blankets thrown over furniture. It's so warm in the home, but it's a comfortable warmth. Certainly better than the humid air outside.

The woman returns from wherever she had gone with another wool blanket slung over her arm. "Here," she says, unfolding it so she can drape it across my back and shoulders. As I gaze up at her into those forest-green eyes, I open my mouth to thank her, but she smiles and hushes me. "Relax for a moment, honey," she murmurs, her eyes even softer than before. "I'll take care of you, alright? Do you like apple cider?"

Swallowing, I nod. She leaves with the same warm smile and walks away again. I find myself looking at the shape of her in her jeans and avert my eyes back to the room right away. This wasn't the time to check out another woman after...

But I had to smile to myself. This was suddenly starting to feel like a much more appealing evening.

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Song/Ringtone credit goes to t.A.T.u. and their song "Show Me Love".