Ransom X

  Chapter 14 Snow Angel

  Darci heard the manager rattling the keys outside the restroom door; it was time for the weekly cleaning. She’d been letting the hot water run at a trickle to warm up the frigid stall of the truck stop restroom during the night. It added a few degrees of temperature to the air, but she could still see her breath when she exhaled. She looked up at the window above the tank, judging that there was no time. She knew what he’d “ask for” in return for the night’s lodging. There was something about a man who sat all day in sweaty thick wool pants that categorized any act that led him to remove the garments as cruel and unusual punishment.

  She had a headache from the fortified wine, and her bloodshot nineteen-year-old eyes watched through the crack of the stall, waiting for the outer door to open.

  A car honked outside the building. It was cold enough for full-service to find popularity at the pumps. Darci privately thanked the driver of the car with an inner dance of devotion to those too lazy to pump their own gas, and vowed to someday repay the man or woman who had saved her from sweaty pants. Footsteps receded outside the door and she snuck out the back window.

  She hit the frozen ground and felt a wave of freedom, followed by the sudden need to throw up. There was no one there to hold her hair back as chunks of the past insisted upon being pulled up into the present. They froze to the ground like abstract art, it was a portrait, she thought, representing her life. She didn’t notice the beauty in the sickness that lay at her feet and like most of the people in her life; it pretended not to recognize her.