The Drive - Part One

The trees alongside the road blended together into a tall dark wall, long branches heavy with ice blocked out the pale moon that would have illuminated the thick white snow covering the shoulder of the highway. 

“Alaric, maybe you should slow down, the roads getting icier by the minute.” Elizabeth tried to frame this as nothing more then a casual suggestion. 

“I know how to drive, don’t start.” He snapped and continued to sped down the empty road, nothing in front of them but a starless sky, and asphalt dotted with black varnished patches of ice. 

“Ric, I really think you need to slow down, please!” She gripped the shoulder strap of her seatbelt, as the car lost traction but then regained it. 

“Now I told you not to start with me! I just wanna get home and you nagging is just making a long drive longer!” Alarics eyebrows were so scrunched together they were forming one long bushy caterpillar across his forehead.

“It's just, I know you had those last two beers and with the roads so bad I’m just worried. I can take over, we can pull over.” Liz worked to keep the panic out of her voice. His voice dropped to soft growls; “I am a grown man and I know when I’ve had too much.” Alaric’s tone was barely audible. 

She looked straight ahead and seeing them pass an exit sign relaxed her shoulders, the next exit was theirs. She was watching the white strips race beneath them when she was momentarily distracted by something out of her peripheral vision. A darting dark mass, made obvious by its contrasting color to the snow covered trees and ground. In the same flash she has seen it; it was gone. As she turned to ask Alraric if he had seen it too, she saw that he was looking out his window also, his eyes entirely off the road. 

Thump. 

The tires squealed in the same falsetto as Elizabeths scream as he slammed on the brake, vice grip on the wheel to steady the car as it slid to a stop on the shoulder, the tail still sticking out on the road. 

“Alaric! Did you hit something?!” Liz had not come down from her falsetto and her voice pinged across the car. 

Alaric didn’t respond, his hands gripping the stirring wheel and his face a puckered and constipated mask of anger and oddly, confusion. 

“Goddamnit Elizabeth !, look what you made me do!” He seemed to have regained his coordination and reached for the door handle. She grabbed his forearm and squeezed, “Maybe you shouldn’t go out there, I saw something. I think I saw something big in the trees.”

They both stared intensely out the windows, willing their eyes to see what was not there. Outside the snow blowing off the tree branches was swirling around them like the inside a snow globe. Unwilling to leave the false safety of the car they sat in silence, and barely breathed.

**I wrote this originally over the summer for an assignment in a creative writing course I was taking. I plan on continuing the story, so this is really just part one.**