Paradise Forbidden

by Natalie E. Wrye

  Inexplicable, hot anger burns into my chest, and I am squeezing my fists so hard that my fingertips start to tingle. I am not prepared for what happens next. I black out.

  Somewhere in the blurry haze of my consciousness, I realize that I’ve actually gotten up, headed down the aisle - past the other curious passengers, over the head of the brown-haired girl - and planted myself right next to the heckler’s seat.

  I don’t realize what’s happening until I’m standing directly in front of the slimy perp, my hands wrapped around his collar, hoisting him eye-level with my 6’2’’ frame. His face turns as red as his shabby suit.

  “If you don’t leave the lady alone, I’m going to knock your head clean off of your fucking shoulders, got it? Now, enough is enough. Beat it.”

  I release the velour-covered jackass with as much force as I’ve grabbed him, and he stumbles backward, blinking rapidly as he catches his balance.

  My adrenaline is pumping, and I breathe heavily as the guy tucks his tail between his legs and scampers to the front of the bus.

  If the girl wasn’t here, I might’ve taken a swing at this guy, but he’s had enough (for now), and I don’t want to frighten her with all the unreleased frustration that I’ve been feeling since I left Tampa.

  Oh, right. The girl.

  I’d almost forgotten her in my haze of rage at the now-retreating creep. I turn to look at her. She is already looking back at me.

  Her eyes are open with wonder: curiosity. Her pink lips are parted. She barely blinks.

  I know she is going to say something, but before she can utter a word, the driver pipes up over an intercom. “Everybody, take your seats, please. We’re still in motion.” I glance toward his voice, but by the time my gaze returns to her side, she is facing the other direction: her attention momentarily distracted by a fellow passenger asking to borrow her pen.

  The moment is lost.

  I watch the icy girl hand over a black-point pen from her fingers into another young woman’s hands. She’s been writing in a little blue agenda in her lap. I take a peek at it before making my way to my seat.

  I have no choice. The driver is throwing daggers in my line of sight from his rearview mirror.

  I sit back in my seat, plopping down with a thud. The icy girl glances back at me. I catch her eyes… and then they’re gone.

  ***

  Kat

  We’re just arriving in front of some towering skyscrapers when my eyes flicker open. I’ve fallen asleep. I see the signs outside that show the city’s name.

  Finally, we’re in Atlanta. But we’ve still got a way to go.

  That offensive weirdo is gone: scuttled, like the rat he is, just south of the city’s limits. A bunch of people exit the bus downtown. Only ten of us are still here.

  Guess no one wants to head in this direction, which further affirms that I’ve picked the right place to go.

  Zeus is still back there. I haven’t heard a peep from him since he sat down after saving me from that creep. I wanted to say “thank you,” but I didn’t manage to make out the words.

  He looks almost lonely back there, away from everyone else. I wonder where he’s heading. I wonder if he’s as uncomfortable as I am in these seats. I wonder what he smells like.

  I get squirmy in my seat as I feel the heat touch my cheeks. It isn’t from the April sun outside.

  It’s the flush of blood running through them. I’m thinking about blondie back there. I don’t want to think about him. Well, that’s not true… I don’t need to think about him.

  I need a distraction.

  I gaze back out at the passing road, and then back at my watch. It’s 2:36PM now. I sigh. Shouldn’t be too much longer now.

  ***

  Him

  We stop at another rest-stop area (Jesus Christ, how many will we hit?) somewhere north of the city border, where we can stretch our cooped-up limbs, get some snacks and hit the restrooms.

  The few passengers that are left sprint from the bus: happy to be free from their temporary imprisonment.

  Me? I plod drudgingly behind them, leaving my bag behind. I don’t quite share in their enthusiasm. I just want to reach the end of my trip.

  I trudge past a bundled figure in the seats. Its presence startles me. I thought I was the last.

  I turn and see the icy girl. She’s still in her chair with her forehead leaning against the window. If she could, I think she’d put her head through that window. She’s enshrouded with this sense of “gloom and doom.”

  The tip of her nose is just touching the beam of sunlight that shines through the glass.

  Contrary to her prickly demeanor, her nose is as cute as a button, with this straight bridge leading down to a slightly, rounded tip. It’s the kind of nose you’d love to kiss. If you did that sort of thing.

  Suddenly, I’m thinking about Caroline, the date I had Saturday night. While on our date, I remember looking intently at her face. Carol was beautiful… but something about her face was… off.

  It was her nose: long, straight and narrow with a turned up edge. She didn’t have to stick her nose in the air; it did it on its own. It was just like her. Rigid, structured… pompous.

  I shake the memory off as I keep moving towards the exit. I don’t know why I’m comparing my date with this girl. I don’t know why I’m thinking about this girl at all.

  You know why. She’s fucking breathtaking, that’s why.

  I give my libido a swift kick, exit the bus, and use the restroom before my thoughts get me into any more trouble.

  When I return with the rest of the travelers trickling out of the rest stop, I see the girl again.

  This time, she’s outside of the bus, leaning against it. Her eyes are low and her head is hung as her hair floats softly on a passing breeze. One at a time, the passengers pass her quickly on their way inside the vehicle.

  Everyone except me.

  I almost pause at her side, lingering as I catch a whiff of her dark strands. She smells like flowers. Fresh. Floral.

  I keep walking before she sees me. I head directly to my seat. When the bus driver turns the ignition, she finally embarks.

  She did that on purpose. She wanted to be the last person to leave and the last person to return.

  She sets herself apart on purpose. Already, I can see that this girl has amazingly high walls. And why am I analyzing her? Why do I even care?

  What is wrong with me?

  ***

  Kat

  I swear time stretches like silly putty out here on the road.

  For hours, I scanned the faces of the other passengers as we rolled. Maybe it’s just me. My usually hyperactive brain has slowed down with each passing mile.

  Can’t deny that I haven’t exactly been Little Miss Sunshine on this trip. I was in a pretty shitty mood until the weather started to change.

  What was a sunny day has now turned excessively grey. Storm clouds rolled in fast as we neared a city called Calhoun. The rain falls heavily now. It’s a steady drumbeat upon which my mind drifts away. It’s calming to me, as always.

  I absolutely love the rain.

  I’d been using my hair as a pillow all day as I slept. It worked for a little while, but I think I need to grab a real one soon. My back is stiffening up.

  The sound of the bus doors opening makes me jump. I push off of the window, sitting straighter. I look towards the front doors, and I see what I believe is the last passenger, getting off.

  He’s holding his hands above his head, trying to shield himself against the rain. It’s no use. The afternoon shower is too heavy. It’s beating down too hard. He’s getting soaked.

  I’m now the last rider left.

  I glance around the bus, taking in my surroundings. I catch movement in the back. Shit. He’s still here.

  Blonde Zeus is still camped out in the far corner of the bus. He’s starting to sit up now. He blinks rapidly, trying to clear his vision, I guess. It looks like he just woke up, too.

>   He’s stretching in his seat, slowly rolling his shoulders. I can almost feel the kinks in his body unfurling one by one.

  His hoodie is off and I can see the black shirt that lies beneath. The shirt hides nothing. I see the entire outline of his body.

  His muscles bunch as he moves, his arms and shoulders tightening and relaxing as he swings them overhead. His own eyes are closed, squeezed shut: his expression pained and distressed.

  I find something pleasurable in his slight scowl. He looks almost… aroused… and I’m somehow completely captivated. There’s a hint of eroticism in his face: this sense of simultaneous pleasure and pain from the loosening of his joints.

  I know what he’s experiencing. I can feel what he feels.

  He unnerves me: this guy. Something about him is unsettling: jarring. He almost commands my attention. I’ve been thinking about him more than I care to admit.

  He opens his eyes.

  I’m staring… and he’s caught me.

  He glares back at me, his stare fixed: hot. I’m surprised but not put-off. I glare back. I’m no coward. Well, not anymore, I hope.

  Intensity builds in that long moment, and the staring contest stretches out.

  I see his eyes squint slightly and then his eyebrows lift slowly. He’s assessing me, I can tell. But his pupils don’t waver. They drill a hole right through me.

  The door to the bus closes, and the driver pulls off from the stop. It breaks my concentration. I am the first to look away. I lose the contest.

  I see him smile slyly out of the corner of my eye, but I am already turning in my seat, facing forward towards the road so that he doesn’t see the pink in my cheeks.

  The next half-hour rolls by slowly. I stare blankly out of the windshield. I’m avoiding the smirk that I know is sitting on his face.

  I’m borderline angry, kind of embarrassed and undoubtedly frustrated. I’ve only looked at his face twice and already, I am more riled up than I have ever been at the sight of someone.

  What is wrong with me?

  ***

  Him

  I’m barely able to keep the grin off of my face before it reappears.

  I woke up from an uncomfortable but hard-earned nap thirty minutes ago, and when I did, I opened my eyes to find the icy girl glaring at me.

  No, she wasn’t quite glaring at me. More like gazing.

  Her eyes were more open this time, softer: inquisitive. She has been eyeing me from her seat without my knowledge.

  I was shocked as hell to see her face when I woke up: to see her looking at me so shamelessly, so… brazen. This girl is really something else; I don’t know what to make of her. The only thing I know now is that she intrigues me.

  I think of spring now when I look at her: the blue hydrangea from my mother’s garden.

  They’re beautiful, and they must be cultivated just right. Or the color won’t be perfect: won’t be that immaculate hue. The hue of an early morning sky. The hue of this girl’s eyes.

  And even when I caught her red-handed, she didn’t falter. She’s tough. She wants me to know it.

  I stared back at her because I was incapable of doing anything else. Whenever I look at this girl, I sink right into her blue depths.

  I just kept on falling… until she looked away. Her expression never changed, but I watched a shift take place, nonetheless.

  Those eyes… they conveyed ten different emotions in a matter of seconds.

  First, they flashed in surprise… then they hardened with rebellion… and finally they withered in acquiescence.

  Something she saw, something in my eyes, had her spooked. She withdrew pretty quickly, looking away before I could even find the courage to speak.

  Somehow, we’ve been communicating with each other in this tiny space… for the entire ride. And we still haven’t uttered a single word to each other.

  I sneak glances in her direction until she finally dozes off into a nap, her body moving gently up and down from the evenness of her breathing.

  Seeing her sleeping kind of soothes me. I fall asleep soon after.

  Him

  My head slams against leather before I wake up, my eyes flying, without hesitation, into full-on defensive mode. I’m still in my bus seat (barely), but the scene lying in front of me is completely different than it was an hour (maybe two?) ago.

  The bus is jumping up and down as if it’s in a moon-bounce, its wheels leaving the earth and falling back down as it traverses across a muddy path.

  A path. Not a road. A path. The through-route is hardly wide enough to hold the gigantic trailer in which we sit.

  It takes me several seconds before I figure out what is happening.

  We are off of the highway… or any main roads. I see no street signs or landmarks. Not a bus stop. Or even a cow pasture. What the fuck…

  Our driver has gone rogue.

  I scream at him when the realization hits me.

  “Hey! What the hell is this?! Where are we?”

  The overweight chauffeur looks at me through the rearview mirror, waving a quick hand. “We’re taking a shortcut that’s not on the map. I’ve been down this way before. Trust me!” he yells across the expanse.

  Not like this, you haven’t. This path, if you could even call it that, is a small strip of dirt winding around the base of a rocky, green mountain. We are surrounded by water: above us… beside us.

  There is a lake that sits directly to our left, nearly twenty feet below. The downpour continues to pelt us with large, sweeping sheets of rain.

  What was once, at some junction in time perhaps, a winding slither of dirt is now a sea of mud and rock. And the wheels of our bus hit every jagged edge, every sunken hole. We bobble up and down like a corkscrew.

  I glance over at the icy girl to share in this unsettling surprise when it dawns on me that she is still fast asleep, her head tucked safely in the corner where her seat meets the window.

  How anyone can sleep amidst this is beyond me, but I think little of it very quickly.

  We are in very real trouble.

  Our fearless leader seems oblivious to the danger. He heads through the “unbeaten” path at a speed that is much too fast… and way too careless.

  The terrain is too rough to take at this velocity, and yet he is plowing ahead with little regard: not for the rain or this impossibly tiny spit of land on which we roll.

  We slide a bit on the “road” before regaining traction, and now… I am furious. I grip the seat in front of me.

  “Take it easy!”

  “I’m taking it easy!” the grease ball retorts. “It’s slick out here, slick! I’m doing my best!”

  “Well, try harder!” I bellow, shifting the bag in my seat. I start to take my grey hoodie back off when a violent bump underneath our feet almost knocks me into the aisle. My hold on the seat has saved me, though I thump loudly against the chair in front of me as my bag and I lurch forward.

  Icy eyes is now up, though if you were to judge it by the noises she makes, you would have never guessed it.

  Because she makes no noise. She is sitting there tensely, one palm pressed firmly against the back of her own seat and the other on the one in front of her. Her fingers are splayed, white-knuckled against the cushions.

  The only alarm that registers from her direction is that which emits from her eyes. They are wide: panicked. Her heart-shaped lips are closed. Her face is stone.

  But her eyes? Those eyes. They’re frenzied. Every bit of the emotion that she seems to bottle up is shining right through them. And in a matter of an instant… they’re beaming right towards me.

  I’m up and out of my seat almost immediately. God himself couldn’t have stopped me if he tried.

  I grab my bag’s straps, dragging the duffle across the floor as I make my way to her side. She is relieved; I can see it. I can hear it in her sigh. She gazes at me with questioning eyes.

  I already know the answer. I nod silently, staring intensely back at her.

&n
bsp; I’ve already surmised, without a doubt… with just one look… that I will do whatever it takes to protect this girl. And then we hit another snag in the road that hurls me roughly towards her… almost on top of her. I almost want to stay there.

  But this has gone on far too long. We’re skating on thin ice…well, actually sliding on slippery mud. I’ve reached my limit.

  “Are you fucking crazy, guy?!” I rage at the driver. “Slow the fuck…!”

  The words don’t make it past my teeth before I am flying mid-air. The bus just hit an immense divot, some unseen hole. And now it leans at an angle that no vehicle of its size should ever lean. The right side of the trailer sticks straight in the air. We hang for what seems like an infinity… and now we’re going over.

  Over the edge of the road. Over the small and ineffective guardrail.

  Tilting… plunging… plummeting… into the lake below.

  The bag, which is still slung over my shoulder, pulls me all the way to the opposite wall of the bus. It seems as if everything is running in slow motion. I see myself sail over the aisle, thudding soundly above the seats. I feel the ripping of my arm as the weight of my bag slings me across adjacent seats.

  The bus is tumbling, rolling. I watch the roof of the trailer reposition itself beneath my feet. My own legs are suspended above my head.

  The fall is almost graceful, almost poetry in motion. There is something beautiful about the scene before me. A world turned upside down. A spinning perspective.

  I think I am dying. I may already be dead.

  After what seems like an interminable amount of time, we turn upright for a split second before we crash violently into the rough waters of the lake. I’m slammed down into a chair with my green duffle still at my side.

  When I open my eyes, in what feels to be several seconds later, I find myself slumped over the seat. My grey hoodie, which I hadn’t fully removed before the crash, is half-on and half-off. I slide my free arm into the loose sleeve.

  That arm is fine. The other arm, which is still attached to the duffle… is screaming in pain. I am aware of it and yet still take little notice of it. My heart is hammering. I’ve got to get out. Get out. Get out.