by Pelzer,Lissa
Davis dragged her into the amber light of the turn signal. Maybe she wanted to see her face, to see if she was telling the truth. Between the blinks, Lilly could see hers. She could see them tired and wet and angry and confused.
‘You can just let go of me…Davis.’ She wondered for a moment what her first name was. It would be easier if she knew. ‘I’m leaving town. I’ll be a new person. I won’t do it again.’
‘How many times did I try to help you? But you never wanted it.’
‘So you can help me now.’
Davis stared into her. ‘Not like this. The only way I can help you now is to take you in. Don’t add fleeing felon to the list.’
‘Just let me go.’ She came closer to her, relaxed her arm into her grip. ‘You always want to help the girls who get used by these guys. Well, this is how you do it. Didn’t someone help you get away when you were with that man out west?’
Lilly saw a shard of light flicker in Davis’s eye like the amber earrings Bobby had given her last year, but it made them just as worthless. Davis held her tightly.
‘They didn’t make you stay married to him because you’d made a mistake. They didn’t take your girls away…’
‘It took a long time and a lot of hard work for me to get to where I am now. I knew it would and you should know it too. You won’t be in there forever. You’re so young. …Mitigating circumstances…’ She said the phrase like it was a magical formula, but Lilly knew they were just words. She heard the hiss of the trucks moving off behind her and the line and her ride edging out into the highway.
‘Let go of me, Davis.’ She was glad now she didn’t know her real name. ‘Let me go.’
Davis didn’t and Lilly leaned in.
She felt the shot in her own chest, the force of the tiny gun pressing back against her breast like a punch from a child.
Davis grabbed her arm in both hands, but she didn’t say a word. She spun her and Lilly fell against the truck as Davis pressed her weight on her. She had one more bullet. That’s what she was thinking. She had missed, but she had one more. Bobby was dead right. If you pulled out that gun, you better make sure that person died.
Then Davis stopped, her grip loosened. She was standing there behind her, but she wasn’t putting the cuffs on. Lilly turned. Her hands were free.
Davis was on the ground, slumped to her knees, her mouth and eyes wide-open, life falling out of her stomach onto the dirt. She was heaving forward and Lilly turned and ran before she had even hit the floor. The truck with no trailers was moving and she ran up beside it and banged on the door. It shuddered as the gears changed and then the truck stopped.
‘Well Missy what happened to you?’ the guy with the tired eyes and the pale beard asked her. Her reached out and helped her up and now she was in the cab and the door was closed.
‘No need to cry about it,’ he said. ‘I was just pulling up to the other side.’
But Lilly was crying and she couldn’t stop to breathe. She was sobbing and heaving and shaking so hard she could hardly speak.
The trucker went into his compartment for tissues and handed them over to her.
‘Just drive,’ she murmured.
‘Now, what is it?’
‘Just drive!’
But he reached up for the light. The cab light was dim but bright enough to see the expression on his face.
‘Well now,’ he said in earnest looking at the front of her blood-stained white t-shirt. ‘What on earth happened to you?’
And she pointed the pug at him, the toy gun with one bullet left. ‘Drive,’ she said. ‘Just drive and don’t stop until I tell you to.’
About Lissa Pelzer
Lissa Pelzer lives in Germany with her husband and son. And that’s about it.
If you’d like to tell her what you think of the book, please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads or where ever you hang out. She’s also on Twitter @LissaPelzer and on Facebook at /AuthorLissaPelzer
About No More Birthdays
This story is an attempt to write a modern day noir-ish piece of pulp in the style of the American classics. The city in the story is fictional but heavily inspired by Dayton, Ohio.