The Choice

This is one I wrote a while back, from an idea that sort of formed itself.

The Choice

“You lied to me.”

Her knuckles stood out white against her dark skin, gripping the steering wheel like a last link to reality.

He chuckled, low and menacing. “You lied to yourself.”

The road was slick with midnight rain – droplets on the windscreen distorted the multiple hues of light and refracted them dully into the cab.

“You never said anyone would die.”

She kept her eyes fixed on the road, long and deserted, traffic lights winking at empty air. Anything to avoid looking at him.

He didn’t bother with her anger – perhaps he didn’t even notice.

“He got in the way. I had no choice.”

There’s always a choice.

“Jesus Greg, you didn’t have to kill him. What if the cops find out? What if they saw you? What if they saw me?”

Her voice edged towards hysterics as her fears mounted. Inwardly, she faced other questions – those she wouldn’t dare voice to Greg. What if he had a family? How will his wife find out? Is there such a thing as heaven? (because if there is, she was no longer going there)

He laughed again, the baritone plosives grinding her nerves against one another.

“Relax Indonesia. People die. The cops never find anyone.”

Indonesia. Does he call her that to distance himself?

“They never find you.”

She should have known. Nothing could be this simple. He must have done it before.

“How many others?”

He shrugged, water proof jacket crumpling against itself noisily. “More. I don’t exactly keep a running tally – 

I’m not a sick bastard like Malloy.”

Oh aren’t you?

Her mind slips into its records, the backlog of information she’s tried so hard to hide. Ndari, lifeless body bloated and fly struck, lying in the hot sun. No one stopped to move the body, save a few who checked her pockets for loose change. Ndari lived and died on the streets of Bekasi – she did not haunt that world alone.

A red light jolted her back to Sydney – the streets devoid of one more life and full of those who did not deserve to live. She tried to decide her path. They had been cruising for over an hour – keeping distance to the botched factory job without making an escape obvious.

To the left, where nothing’s right?

To the right, where nothing’s left?

She never had a home here. She worked for those who had smuggled her in, confined to a crowded apartment packaging drugs. Greg had seen potential for a slave and had taken her. He’d taught her to drive, to wait outside buildings and speed away whenever he or Malloy appeared. Until now, it had been simple. She knew it was crime but what was driving a get-away car to the horrors she had seen? Would punishing her crimes somehow punish the men who had killed Ndari?

She was too far gone now.

The last thing in the man’s eyes had been a plea. She hadn’t seen the bullet enter his skull but she had seen the desperation in his face – or what was left of it – as she had driven away. Greg had barely managed to scramble into the car – she’d left Malloy in disgust.

She turned right, smoothly sliding the wheel towards Lang’s Crossing.

Was she responsible for the man’s death? Had it been forced upon her by circumstance?

There’s always a choice.

“You’ll get used to it. It’s tough the first time, but after a while you learn to live with it.”

Learn to live with it. Funny, you didn’t give the security guard a chance to.

“Really, we’re helping them. You of all people should know that life’s a curse, not a gift…”

So that was how he rationalised it. The Greater Good. Ultimate release from the pains of the world.

Sick bastard.

She knew what she was doing. She paused on the precipice of the crossing  – the river had lifted by the winter inundation and split over the road and small concrete barriers.

She let the car begin to coast.

“You’re right,” she said breathily, looking at Greg for the first time. She tried not to physically recoil in horror at what she’d once thought was her salvation.

The car began to pick up momentum.

“I lied to myself.”

She turned back to the road as the front wheels kissed the water-line – just in time to wrench the steering wheel to the left and over the barrier.

She might have heard his screams. She might have screamed herself. But all she knew was that she was finished here.

There’s always a choice.

Finally, she had made the right one.