Watching
Chase stopped his car at a fork two miles down the road from Bellafont and sighed. His GPS hadn’t been working most of the morning and currently only showed the outline of his screen with no identifying marks. He grabbed his cell phone and waved it in the air hoping to pick up some signal—nothing! Like a fool he waved it again, this time in the motion of a figure-eight, exactly how Rachel had showed him. The idea was that it should pick up a signal that would evade normal detection. Still nothing.
“Shit!” He slammed his fists on the steering wheel and tossed his phone onto the seat next to him. "You have got to be kidding me!” He grabbed the phone from the seat and tried calling Rachel again. It took him four attempts before finally, the phone began to ring against a wave of deep static. But, there was enough sound to hear her voicemail message come up again. His call was sent to voicemail after the second ring. She was sending his call to voicemail. The phone was in her hand and she was ignoring him.
Once he heard the beep he left another message, “I’m lost in this damn swamp. I’m near…” He glanced around looking for any indication of where he was. He squinted at a sign about ten yards ahead and nailed to a large weeping willow. “I’m still in Arcadia. There’s a sign pointing to the right, maybe a bar or something. I’ll probably head there and find a place to stay for the night. GPS is worth crap, and I have no clue where the interstate is. But the house, Baby, the house is everything we want. I got some ideas, and I wish you would answer so we could talk. Call me back.” He hung up and slid his finger across the screen, and Rachel’s smiling image faded from sight. He took a deep breath missing her something fierce as the memory of her skin against his the night before he left played in his mind.
He remembered their romantic dinner on the balcony of their fourth-story condo overlooking The District in Nashville. He pointed at the bright lights of the streets below, distracting her long enough to slide the engagement ring across the table. For the first time in their relationship, she was speechless as her eyes fell on the ring box. He remembered her screaming “yes,” before she dragged him inside and to the couch. There she thanked him for his proposal by sliding her mouth over his expanding bulge. As usual, she had to be careful if she wanted him to last more than a couple minutes. Her mouth and tongue were almost as pleasing as his eventual orgasm. She deftly slid her mouth off him and wrapped her hand around his girth as she slid him inside her. He could feel his cock once again filling his jeans as he sat in the car thinking that it had only been two days ago, which now seemed like weeks.
The snap of a branch woke him from his fantasizing. He twisted around but saw nothing, only the dim remnants of the setting sun casting a red glow across the edges of the road and trees. Instinctively, he locked the doors, rolled up his window, turned, and looked down at his phone.
“Still nothing,” he said. Impatience as fear plagued him with a heavy sigh, he chose to handle the decision as best he could and took a right toward the only sign of civilization he saw.
The narrow road curved and he found himself driving alongside a swiftly flowing river whose waters were a bit too high for his taste, and he drove as far from the water-line as he could.
The darkness added to his discomfort as a bright moon had now replaced the setting sun, now only a sliver hidden in the surrounding woods. He swallowed his fear and drove on wishing he stopped for gas before he got into Arcadia. The fuel gauge hung dangerously close to empty, and he hoped he’d come upon a gas station soon.
He felt his tension ease when a single post shined a pair of bright lights down on a building about a mile ahead.
“Thank you,” he said as he pressed down on the pedal.
Whatever was watching him was doing so from a distance. He could feel it almost as if the creature were peeling his skin back to look deep within him. He pressed the gas pedal harder. Whatever happened, he didn't want to be stuck on these backroad Arcadian streets any longer than need be.
The feeling dissipated for a moment and Chase took a harsh right into the parking lot.
If his fuel hadn't been so low he would've risked driving farther down the road. Though, as it was, he settled in under the only light in the lot. It stood tall like a guard tower - a prison tower, he thought. Seeing everything and unrelenting in its observation.