firebreathingfishies

That isn't actually the title... I haven't gotten around to thinking of one yet .
I haven't yet decided how long this is going to be, as it's nowhere near finished, but it's about a man who is wanted for threats to National Security by the FBI and is on the run, only can't remember anything after being on a space shuttle orbiting the earth. He is picked up by a couple of UFO enthusiasts and the hijinks begin. Sorry that was a bad synopsis but I'm a bit hungover
I welcome any kind of criticism, I'm not easily offended

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1

The rain was starting to get worse, which unsettled Ailsa a little. Despite the fact she had been driving for nearly four years with no major accidents she couldn’t prevent her hyperactive imagination showing her flashes of her car skidding in the wetness and crashing full on into one of the thick barks of the trees that surrounded the road. In these unpleasant flashes she saw her seatbelt snapping and herself being hurtled twenty feet and landing with a crunch on the forest floor. There she would lay with a broken neck until someone was as stupid as her to use these narrow back roads, and that would probably be a long time.

She eased her foot off the accelerator a little until she was trundling along at a measly twenty miles per hour. At least then if she did lose control she wouldn’t do any worse than a minor case of whiplash, and she could deal with that.

The car jerked and spluttered so she cursed it quietly. It was the first and only car she had ever driven and even before she bought it (from a dodgy looking guy in a cowboy hat) it had about two thousand miles on it. God knows how many it had on now; the meter had stopped working two months after she had purchased it. A lot of things had stopped working on it, actually. When she drove around corners the fuel gauge would empty or fill depending on which direction she was turning. The lever to adjust the driver’s seat had snapped off about a year ago so she was stuck a little further away from the wheel than what was comfortable, but she had eventually gotten used to it. Her review mirror was stuck on with tape. Only one of her window wipers worked. Yes, her car was a shambles, but she loved it too much to get rid of it.

She had decorated the interior as best she could. Orange and purple beads were secured around her review mirror with a photograph of her younger sister dangling down. She had wrapped orange ribbon around her steering wheel as the drab black of it depressed her slightly. On one side of her windshield there was a sticker reading MUFON, and another below it reading NICAP. On her back bumper she had a tail sticker reading ‘I BELIEVE’. That one resulted in a few taunts from passing cars but she ignored them. They hadn’t seen what she had.

Ailsa glanced briefly to the photograph hanging from the mirror before turning her attention back to the road. It was of her younger sister, Elsie, who was now living in New York in a nice apartment with her new husband and her 75K a year job. She rarely got in contact with her but they still sent each other the usual Christmas/Birthday cards when the time came. Ailsa was slightly jealous of her sister. Who was she kidding? She was jealous of her. She was three years younger with pretty much the same upbringing (although she had always been the favourite-she had knew it and Ailsa had knew it) but had managed to make a brilliant life for herself before she had hit twenty-two. Ailsa was twenty-five now, still living in the same, dead end town with the same dull people and driving the same crappy car.

No wonder her mother gave her nothing but grief.

She slowed down a little more when the road became windier. She used this road often and had no problems with it in usual, bright weather; in weather she could actually see a hundred yards in front of her. The rain was beginning to puddle over the glass so everything outside was becoming sketchy and distorted. She squinted to see ahead, again cursing the car for its wiper disability. The road ended soon so she wouldn’t have to put up with it for much longer. About a hundred meters or so ahead the road would widen and she would be able to pick the pace up a little. Then in no time she would be back home and out of this death trap that she didn’t have the heart to discard. She supposed she would have the heart one day, probably when her flashes of crashing came true.

The road began to widen again and she gently eased her foot down on the pedal, brining her up from twenty miles an hour to twenty-five. Kelvin Burrow’s Half-Term Hootenanny was ending on the radio and the news was due to come on. She hated the news. There were enough depressing things going on around her so she really didn’t need more of them. She reached over, careful not to take her eyes off the road and fumbled for the dial. Her fingers finally found it and she started to turn, but only after a minute turn to the left the dial dropped off and she was left with ear piercing static. She grimaced as it rang through her ears, cursed again, and looked to see where the dial had landed. It was lying in the passenger foot space, quivering slightly with the vibrations from the road. Knowing she wouldn’t be able to reach it she moved for the volume dial, returning her eyes to the road.

Ailsa screamed and slammed her foot down on the brakes, spinning the wheel frantically to the left to avoid the hunched figure that stumbled out into the road. The tires squealed angrily and the vehicle skidded wildly and she spun the wheel again to the right, trying to retake control. It felt like the car had done a complete 360 turn before it actually stopped. She sat behind the wheel, breathing heavily, her hands clamped so hard on the wheel her knuckles were white. The static still buzzed but she made no effort to stop it. The indicators clicked noisily. She must have knocked the switch when she tried to stop.

She shook herself out of her terror and snapped the radio off, her heart still thudding in her chest. She sat there for a moment longer before remembering the figure in the road. Did she hit it? Holy Christ please say she didn’t hit it. The split second she had taken her eyes of the road and that had happened. It was a good job the road had widened. She definitely would have slammed into a tree if it hadn’t.

With her legs shaking and her hands trembling she climbed out of the car and into the lashing rain. Within seconds she was soaked, but that didn’t bother her. She stumbled around the car, still in a bit of a daze, and searched for the figure. She saw it about twenty feet away, only now it was a heap on the wet tarmac. She rushed over, almost slipping in the rain and then dropped beside the heap.

‘Oh my god!’ she cried, her pessimistic mind automatically convincing itself that she had hit him. She rolled the man over, aware that she shouldn’t move him but unable to think of anything else. ‘Are you okay? Mister! Can you hear me?’

The man’s eyes were closed. His clothes were torn and dirty. He lay unconscious on the tarmac, not responding at all to her voice. She leaned to his face, listening for breath. When she felt it on her cheek she breathed out a sigh of relief. Now what? She had no phone and she strongly doubted that anyone would come by here by nightfall. She had no choice but to carry him to her car, but it looked like he outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds. It was going to be more of a dragging than a carrying.

She hooked her arms beneath his armpits and began to pull him towards her car. She worried that the rough tarmac would shred the skin on his back but there was nothing she could do about it. Eventually she got back to the car and opened the door. By the time she laid him out on the backseat she was dripping with sweat as well as the rain. She wiped it away with her arm but it did no good. She slammed the door shut and jumped back behind the wheel, now not bothered about keeping a steady pace. She put her foot down and headed for the hospital.

Oh Christ she hoped he wouldn’t die. She would get manslaughter for that, and god knows how long people got for manslaughter. How was that for the cherry on the cake? She wished more than ever for her sister’s life in New York. She bet Elsie had never ran anyone over before.

Ailsa let out a scream and almost lost control again when a hand clamped around the top of her arm. She glanced back, wide eyed, to see the man half sitting up, staring at her with glassy eyes.

‘I think I hit you,’ she blurted. ‘I’m taking you to the hospital.’

‘You didn’t hit me,’ the man slurred huskily. ‘I collapsed.’

‘That’s still a damn good reason to take you to the hospital!’ she replied, her voice on the verge of hysterics.

‘You can’t take me to the hospital.’ The man replied, his voice low. His grip tightened on her arm.

‘You’re hurting me.’ She told him, her heart speeding up in her chest. She willed it to return to normal. She was going to have a heart attack at this rate.

‘You can’t take me to hospital.’ The man repeated. ‘People are looking for me.’

‘I have to!’ Ailsa cried. ‘Let go of my arm…’

She trailed off when she glanced down at his arm. It looked burned, only not the kind of burns you would associate with fire. Ailsa knew exactly what kinds of burns they were. She had them herself.

‘You can’t-’ the man began again.

‘I know.’ Ailsa cut him off, her heart slowly returning to normal. ‘I know somewhere you can stay.’

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all i need is a lobotomy and some tights