//------------------------------//
// Couldn't 
// Story: How to Disappear Completely 
// by shortskirtsandexplosions 
//------------------------------//

"Please, won't you help us?" she mewled.  She was all whimpers and trembles.  Her bag swayed like a pendulum in the starlight.  "Our vehicle won't start and we can't afford any of the hotels out in this awful place..."

"I..."  Flash Sentry exhaled.  He was suddenly and inescapably aware of his own stomach.  The condensation from the microwave dinners still tingled on his fingers.  He remembered all of the junk he had left in the two backseats and his mind started stacking that—among other things—against this sudden situation.  "I... uh..."

Two four-letter words boomed across the parking lot.  Flash's eyes tore from the woman's pregnant belly for the first time.  He saw the man on the phone punching at the air again.  The other stranger dug his arms deeper into the damnable four-wheeled machine.  The night was sweating, writhing, and the only thing making a soft connection through it all was the woman's pleading eyes.

"I'm eight months pregnant and we've got nowhere to go," she stammered between tears.  It was a very succinct speech, and part of Flash suspected he wasn't the first person she told this to that evening.  But the forward boldness and desperation of the act proved otherwise.  He could have been a scarred serial killer driving a beat-up open jeep, and still she would have approached him at this point.  While the man on the phone grew angrier and angrier, the woman's voice grew softer and softer.  "Please... can... can you help us?"

Flash stopped trembling before he realize he was shaking at all.  Confidence rolled into his throat, and he made eye contact with her to solidify what came next.  "I... I can't."

She sniffled.  "You can't?"

"No."  He shook his head.  Steady.  Unbreaking.  "I'm sorry.  I can't help you."

Flash half-expected her to scream at him.  In many ways, it would have been far more relieving than what came next.

She simply... retreated.  Backing up as if gliding on invisible ice.  "Oh.  Okay"  A resolute nod.  "Okay."  The tears were still flowing, but somehow they were less reflective.  Her eyes drifted to the wheels beneath him.  "I understand."

Maybe she said those last few words.  Maybe she didn't.  Either way, it flickered between them all the same, even as the fabric of night swallowed her and her belly into a fleeting memory.

"I'm sorry," Flash breathed, but his window was already halfway up, leaving him naked with the echoes of the moment.  He pressed gently into the accelerator, and the parking lot oozed past him.  He chose a limp path—exiting behind the plaza, going the long way around if only it meant he wouldn't have to see this scene again—and they wouldn't see him.  Her drifting eyes and loose tears and looser voice lingered, scratching his ear drums.  So he turned the music back up to drown it out.  He couldn't make out the words.  He couldn't make out anything.  He couldn't feel.

And he went with that... rolled with that... just as his wheels rolled him towards someplace far away from twenty seconds ago.