CW: Partner abuse.
They were on their way to El Paso when Yolanda asked Bernard to pull over.
He choked the steering wheel until his fingers turned white. “Are you fucking serious?”
“It’s okay,” she said shrinking into her seat, her hands rubbing together nervously between her thighs. “I can hold it.”
Bernard sighed, eased his grip, and pulled into the first rest stop they came across. The place—a dull beige building nestled in a small parking lot— was a drab oasis amidst the gulf of scrub and dirt and emptiness that was the Chihuahuan Desert.
“Hurry up,” he said, snatching her phone and tossing it into the glove compartment.
She got out of the station wagon. A wave of suffocating heat enveloped her, smothering her bare arms and neck. Save for a few lizards basking in the light of an oppressive sun, the place was empty. On the way to the restroom, Yolanda stepped past an empty vending machine, its rusted coils like dead rattlesnakes hanging on an oven rack. She didn’t think anyone had been out this way in some time.
Entering the restroom, she flicked the switch. A Jackson Pollock painting of grime and graffiti and piss and shit coated the walls and floor. The toilet seat was scant better. Squatting over the bowl, she emptied her bladder. It’d been hours since she’d gone and the pain had become unbearable. She’d been fortunate. Bernard had no intention of stopping until they’d gotten to El Paso. Far away enough, he’d said, to keep their past behind the rearview mirror.
As if reading her mind, he honked the horn. She washed her hands, and as she patted them dry on her jeans, she regarded the black and blue blemishes on her arms and wrists. Every day it seemed they’d spread across her body a little more. Like the bubonic plague.
Turning to leave, her eye caught something. On the wall beside the sink, the words “THEY ARE BELOW US” were scrawled in permanent marker. She scanned the floor. Directly under the sink there appeared to be a loose tile, its edges not quite aligned with the others. With the tip of an outstretched shoe, she lifted the tile and slid it to the side. Motes of dust scattered in the dead, dry air, carrying with them a fetid stench. Yolanda cupped a hand over her nose and found herself peering down an endless black abyss.
The hairs on her arms went prickly. She regarded the hole in its infinite blackness. No sound, no shuffling emanated from that void. Just a perfect stillness. Perhaps it had been an illicit cartel smuggling tunnel, where unsuspecting women were whisked away to be trafficked. Or perhaps something more heinous.
Maybe there were monsters down there. Squirming, slithering, masticating fiends.
Bernard honked again. Flinching, Yolanda again eyed the bruises marking her flesh. They were still tender. She considered, if only for a moment, giving herself wholly to whatever lurked below. Surely, she thought, anything would be better than what awaited in the station wagon.
Right?
There came a sustained honk. She slid the tile back into place and headed for Bernard, hoping that the shadows beneath the floor would mean salvation for someone braver than her.
This story is about victims of abuse and the inescapable feeling they may have in their romantic relationships. It’s set in a desert rest stop which serves to highlight the feeling of isolation and helplessness. But it is also about the unknown and a woman questioning whether escaping into a dark pit in the floor—and the secrets it houses—is a better alternative to the suffering she feels.
