Quo Vadis, Baby 3 |
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flaps and flutters in the wind as he guides the bike carefully to the side of the road, and clumsily, and as gently as he can, gets off the bike and finally can lift her with care and lay her softly down in the dust.
It’s then that he notices the small faint stain of blood at her groin. Girls don’t usually faint from their period, so far as he knows. He rouses her, and she sits up and apologizes. Nothing to be sorry for, he tells her, and adds that they can stop off for tampons in the next town, if she doesn’t have any, and she blushes and turns away and says no. He tells her it’s just part of life and she’s becoming a woman and if this is the first time she should celebrate, and she stands up and turns and steps away from him and says it’s not that, and begins walking down the highway, and Max is annoyed for a second and then realizes, in a vague and brutal way, what’s happened to her.
He rides up besides Ellen and smiles and asks her if she needs a lift, like they’d just met, and she shakes her head and there’s a tear glistening on the side of her nose, and she keeps walking and he waits and rides up beside her and falls back and rides up again.
He asks her what she’s walking toward, and she doesn’t look at him, and then she stops walking and gets back on the cycle, and with a voice inside him screaming obscene objections, he decided he has to take her to the police. No, they’ll think he did something to her. To the hospital, yeah. He can leave her there. Maybe he can come back later and pretend he knows her -- no they’ll think…. He doesn’t want to desert the chick, she deserves more, but what can he do, even if she tells them the truth, he’ll probably get blamed for something.
It’s freaky, as if she’s reading his thoughts word for unspoken word, she tells him she doesn’t want to go to the police, or to a hospital. It doesn’t hurt that much, she says, and she doesn’t think it’s bleeding that badly.
He can’t force her to go to either place, and he tells her that. She thanks him, and they ride on, slowly, he tries to think of how he can make it more comfortable for her. Of course that would ruin his freaking blanket, but hey, it’s a good cause, he can’t be a greedy shit, some guy owes her somewhere, and it looks like karma volunteered him. So be it. He asks her if she’d like to maybe find a stream and wash up, and assures her quickly he won’t look.
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All work within this periodical is copyrighted by the authors and Big Pond Rumour, January 2008. No part is to be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the authors and Big Pond Rumour Press. |