Outsiders

Chapter 7 - Runaways

I drive like crazy, muddled from the rapture of liberty, triumphantly, without destination nor orientation. Just away, knowing that we might be followed or at least searched for. Therefore, here we go on the highway., no matter where, just far. I don't pay attention to highway signs, they just flash by. Sometimes I change the highway. Now we are one a smaller road, no other car in sight. It is dark and I am tired – and oddly calm because there was no sign of our kidnappers following us. The next baiting-place is ours. Well, actually it is more something like a long forgotten emergency bay.

I stop the engine and jump out into the pitch-dark, silent night. It is freaking cold, I estimate it's about 0°C. I speed to the trunk. By now nothing really surprises me when I think of the assholes of our kidnappers, but I didn't expect this in the trunk:

The car is prepped to kidnap someone and keep them for at least a few days. Next to black ropes and duct tape I also see zipties and a bag made of black fabric, a knuckleduster, two blankets and spare fuel at first sight. On my left hand side there are food cans piling up and several litres of water in a cartoon box. And finally I catch sight of what I have been looking for: The first-aid-kit of the car.

I pick it up and want to return to Liv as fast as possible when I see the black combat knife under the kit. It is a japanese Tanto, The grind and the back are parallel, the tip is tilted. I take it and cut out the one side of the cartoon box to poorly seal the whole that was once covered by the window and that I broke in order to find keys.

My fingers are freezing to their certain death, still I return to the trunk and take another and closer look – there are even clothes. Black. Maybe for potential kidnappers to easily get rid of clothes that hold evidence. Now I finally close the trunk and crawl towards Liv, joining her on the backseats.

Her green eyes are sunk in, yet still awake and looking at me. They give me a warm feeling tickling down my spine. I recall my plan before I get lost in thoughts and focus on the cut on Liv's forehead. My irregularly fast heartbeat could trait me, I am just glad that she can't see me blushing in the darkness of the car as she smiles at me tiredly. Luckily it is just a small wound right above her eyebrow, it almost doesn't bleed anymore.

I stick my hand into the first-aid-kit and grub around, then I rip the plastic package of the sterile gauze pad, wet the fabric and begin to carefully wipe away the dry blood. Naturally my left hand touches Liv's jaw in order to stabilize her head. As my skin meets hers I am sure that she shudders slightly while at the same time my stomach is about to burst because it has no more capacity for more butterflies.

I stubbornly only gaze at the wound, but I feel her eyes on me the entire time. Only once she whimpers shortly, blinks and freezes again. Hot guilt crawls up my gut and I swallow the question if she is alright because I know she is not. Absolutely nothing is okay. We have been kidnapped after she fled from human traffickers and whoremongers and we have almost been raped, we've been shot at and now we are fleeing with injuries. We sit in a stolen car in the middle of nowhere. We don't have any phones, navigation, map, nothing. And I don't have anything better on my mind than to crush?! As usual and apart from the highly inappropriate situation Liv is probably straight anyway. They always are. The biggest piece of shit is this. We are screwed.

***

I am done. In the first-aid-kit there's almost everything – but no butterfly bandages. So I improvise and just but a regular plaster on her forehead, slightly under tension. Her green eyes still are on mine.

I want to take my hand away from her chin, her face, it has already been there way too long. But Liv holds it, our hands awkwardly hover in the space between us. Liv finally lowershandy knot. Her second hand closes around mine as well. They are cold. But calming. I just stare at our entwinded hands in our laps and try to supress the urge to shudder at this contact. Suddendly her hands cramps, close tighter around mine as if she just made a hard decision. My dark eyes meet her shining green ones, whatever she might say now, I know it is full of honesty.