A Tempest

They traveled in silence. He could not wheedle out from her a conversation except the occasional yes and nays. Sometimes his egging for a conversation was met with stony silence and tight lips. He gave up. They drove in silence. It was deafening!

He thought, “Damn this is hell and uneasy”. The tenacity with which women can bleed impatience in you is amazing, excruciating and has no latitude. Couldn't there be a conversation? The asphalt sped towards them as they continued the journey in silence. He wished he traveled alone rather than have someone you have been with for all years and the person slides all sudden  into strangeness and a kind of asphyxiating alienation. He disliked travelling with strangers by his side and it is suffocating when the strangeness is feigned and artificial. He saw that he was becoming distrait and consciously lessened the pressure on the gas pedal to choose to drive tardily. Her silence was oxymoron and the noise of the silence was tortuously painful to the ears and the mind.

She closed her eyes and wished she could sleep. He drove fast as usual and when he braked a couple of times swearing at the traffic ahead, she kept her eyes shut tight and tried to be not in the car. She took care not to glance his way since they left home.She barely wanted to respond even when he persistently began talking about trivial matters seeking to develop a conversation. She wished she was not with him in the car today. She would have wanted to avoid this journey and proximity to him. She felt sudden intense dislike for him. While watching him lie in bed and sleep with nonchalance the previous night, she wondered if this was the same person she loved, she wanted to live with forever. Instinctively, she touched his shoulders,repulsively pulled back and with a shudder. He betrayed her faith. Didn't he?

She confronted him at the dinner table and his defiant and seemingly outraged innocence could not assuage her. He exited the table in huff. And, that alternated her judgment - his behavior when openly confronted about his adulterous liaison, between desperate protestations and acknowledgment of promiscuity. 

“You are enjoying the luxury of perverse imagination.” he said in disgust.

She was furious and dabbing her tears with her palm, screamed “Perverse, imaginary, is that what you call?  I’m at the receiving end of infidelity and do you know how much it hurts? She faced him direct and said. “I should have known, I should have, but what a fool I’ve been, I could not notice her apparent overtures; your betrayal. I mistook sly for something not. And now you shamelessly deny that you did not cheat upon me? “She cried inconsolably.

“Now, this is getting far. And I beg you desist from fantasising wildly.” he pleaded.

The banter and the music on the stereo that accompanied in all their travels was absent. She tried not to think further and stubbornly tried to sleep. The car sped forward and there was nothing but silence within. She slid down the rabbit hole and deep down into sleep. Sleep, she longed would embrace her. The previous night was sleepless tussle with anguish and desperation. And she was tired emotionally, it was sopor.

He glanced at her reclining in the passenger seat by his side. She was asleep. He felt his fingers tighten the grip on the wheel. He sensed constriction in his chest. He glanced at her again and placed his hand on her palm. She was not aware of his touch she was dreaming.

And in the rabbit hole into where she slid into, while she slept, she dream t. She dreamed the life she wished and prayed would not forsake her. Could it be true that she has imagined a mountain to bring forth this tempest?