text: The hitchhiker stood on a vast open countryside, nothing around her for miles except for farmland, the road she stood aside of, and the car coming to a stop beside her. Without looking in she got in the car, thankful to narrowly miss the storm that was coming.Of course she knew the dangers of what she was doing, She was used to it by now and it was more of a neccesary evil than anything. Before she got her bearings a males voice asked "Where are you trying to get to?". "I dont know." She replied. She sat motionless, eyes closed and picturing her dreams and focusing on that while waiting for the guy to make a move. Instead, He put the car in drive and slowly started driving again while she looked over at him. Immediately her stomach dropped but she couldnt place why. He was close to her age, good looking in an unusual way. He didnt respond to her for some time and kept his eyes forward. &nbsp; After a few miles of silence the rain began to fall hard, blanketing their vision. Even with the sound of the rain the girl still jumped a little bit when the guy quietly said "How do you not know where you are going??" and laughed a little bit. His laugh was so quiet she could barely hear it, and may have missed it if she didnt see him laughing. Her stomach dropped a little more. She liked his smile and felt comfortable even though she knew nothing about him.She started to think of an answer when he spoke again. "If you don't know where you're going, why would you hitchhike?", asking with a genuinely puzzled look. This question was easy enough to answer, though she normally never told anyone the honest answer for it when she was asked. This time though she was honest. "It's nice to imagine, or hope." He looked at her for the first time, as though seeing the person confusing him would clear anything up. He jokingly pulled his eyebrows low like he was suspect of her, then he smiled again and looked back at the road. Again her stomach sank further and she was feeling nervous now. Of course she couldnt tell, but he was too. "sounds kinda sketch." He said. As she started to get offended he followed up with "hitchhiking I mean, not you." "Elaborate?" he asked. She explained that she had dreams of being out in the world and doing what she wanted, so she would hitchhike with people and imagine she was going out to be in the world and do the things she dreamed of. When he asked her why she didnt do those things instead of dreaming about them she pulled back from her openness. He could tell that he had reached a sensitive area and retreated the conversation to another topic. The storm got worse and neither of them could see more than a few feet ahead so he pulled off to a rest stop to let the storm pass. They talked for hours and nighttime came with the storm going just as strong. At one point she looked over at him and as her stomach began to drop again she only thought one word: Mine. At that moment it felt like the whole world finally made sense. She felt like she knew things, like she knew he was hers. She knew she was his, and she liked that. She felt things she hadnt felt before, alien-like feelings. She asked herself "Is this happiness?" For the first time she felt content, calm, and relaxed. &nbsp; It turned out that they lived close by each other and that he was just driving around because he "was ready to go somewhere with nowhere to go.", so they agreed to head back to their city after the storm. If it ever stopped that was.... By 3am they were listening to music and talking every now and then, both of their eyelids getting heavy. Abruptly the guy announced he was going to take a nap, leaning his chair back and putting a sweater under his head like a pillow he faced her. She did the same thing and just watched him as he fell asleep. As she was drifting off to sleep she softly asked "what's your name?". The cd they were listening to had ended a while ago and now only the sound of the rain could be heard. She normally would be worried about the storm but was calm, content, and at peace in this strangers car. "The Heretic." he whispered back. In the morning the storm passed right as the sun was coming up. She woke up facing the stranger, and noticed she was holding his hand. She gently let go, embarrassedly thinking that she may have grabbed it in her sleep and didnt want to weird him out. She got out of the car to use the rest stops vending machine and clean up a bit in the bathroom. When she came back out the car was running and he was awake. They drove back to their city and when they got to her house she invited him inside, not ready to part ways. He agreed, and from that moment they spent almost every day together for the following few years. In that time she was happier than she ever felt, realizing she hadn't ever known what it was like to feel truly happy before. This led to her getting her not hitchhiking anymore, getting her own car, and more importantly, she began to look forward to her future. This was something that she usually avoided because she would think there was nothing worth looking forward too. Now she saw herself fulfilling her dreams, living a life she always wanted but never thought she could have. She felt excited looking ahead. She had always dreamed of moving away, somewhere warm, with a beach nearby. Somewhere on the west coast. The guy encouraged it so eventually they were ready to go. She was nervous as she had never been independent, in control of her own life.Neverhad been truly responsible for herself, both for her potential successes and potential failures. She didnt have something to fall back on and blame, and the thought made her uncomfortable. She knew in her heart that following her dream was what she wanted most, being with this boy was what she wanted most. It wasn't that she needed him to do anything for her, just that having him by her side she felt understood, safe, loved, free, powerful. Alive. She felt like she could do anything. Most people she knew saw her and saw that they could take advantage of her or her situation, and they would. The Heretic never did though, and instead protected her vulnerabillities and would challenge her to grow rather than put her down or try to control her. She could also tell that this was all new to him as well, and he had told her that she inspired him in similar ways during one of their many talks. He wasn't a bum before they met but he was...directionless. Ready to go with nowhere to go. Now that he had goals he had changed a lot, in good ways. He still retained his boyish charm but she had seen him grow into being a man in the past few years. He credited her for pushing him to grow, even though she never did. He said just by being herself it made him always want to grow and be a better person. She understood that feeling as she felt the same way. She understood everything he said though(as he did for her too), no matter how abstract it was or how vague or bad he was at describing something. Sometimes they could just look at each other and have full conversations, or be apart and sense how the other one was feeling. If someone had told her that 5 years ago, she would think that person was crazy, an idiot. She thought love in general and people in love were weak, naive fools missing out on life in their boring monogomy. Now she saw that she was the one that was naive. &nbsp; She was ready to move and get away from all of the toxic things that haunted her past, excise them from her like removing the tentacles of an octopus trying to drown her. It was was the only way she would be happy, she thought. So they began their drive to a new world. The nervous uncomfortable feeling remained with her though, and began to grow. They took the same path that theyd taken all those years before but in reverse. She would normally be hapy to see the spot they had met and she felt her stomach dropping like it did on that day, but this time it wasnt in a good way though. She began to doubt herself, her dreams, her ability to succeed and be happy. "What If I failed?" "What if...I am not enough?" That thought led her to The Heretic, and she began to doubt him too. He could sense something was wrong since they had left, and asked her a couple times what was wrong but she gave a curt "nothing." His face seemed pained, like he was watching someone in pain and couldnt do anything to help them. They had driven for some time and were passing the rest stop from the night they met. She looked at him and he was smiling, looking from the rest stop to her. In that moment they looked at each other and all the bad washed away in her, and she felt excited. She was so close to escaping all of the bad. That was the only moment of the ride that she felt "okay" though, and as soon as they broke eye contact the feeling washed away. No more than a mile later They pulled up to a massive metal gate. The gateway was attached to a wall on either side, solid, shining metal extending as far as the eye could see. As he pulled closer to it she said "stop!" and he did. She quickly got out of the car so he followed, confused. "Whats wrong" he asked, genuinely concerned. Her mind was clouded with a hundred voices all saying different things at once. It was overwhelming and too much. She looked at him and thought "I must look crazy." and pained to think what he must be thinking of her right then. The voices in her head got louder and she felt like she was in the middle of a crowd of people all talking at once. He could see her discontent on her face and stepped towards her to comfort her. He was speaking but she couldnt hear him over the voices, then she said "I cant go". Her eyes began to tear up. The voices were all familiar, all people from the old world, and they were all saying bad things. About her, about him, about her dreams. they warned her about failing, acting as though they were looking out for her. they also warned her about him, saying that he was just like the rest. that he was trying to keep her for himself, thats why he was reaching for her right now. She pulled back and looked at him accusingly. The voices soothingly said that she was safe here, on this side of the gate. This was where she belonged. "Whats wrong? do you not want to go? You dont have to-" he started to say when she cut him off. "I cant go any further." then looked back at the gate looming over them. "What do you mean? Like you physically cant? Im confused." He softly grabbed her hand and led her to the gate. As they approached it the massive metal gate began to lift up. She got more nervous than she had ever been, standing a foot away from the other side of the gate. Everything out there was so alien, so unknown, and it terrified her. He could see what she was thinking on her face and only said two words. "I love you. You CAN." The voices in her head began buzzing again, saying he was pressuring her, he was lying, he was bad. They told her to tell him again, so she did. "I can't." He took one step and was on the other side of the gate, then said "See. Nothing happened. It's no different here than it-" he was saying when the gate slammed down, shutting with a loud boom. He began to bang on the gate, and she began to panic and tried to open it. Looking back and forth she saw no way to open it, no number to call for assistance, nothing that could help. &nbsp; Now they were apart. She fell against the gate and cried. The voices got louder, some began to laugh and mock, some began to comfort her in her panic, some said she was better off without him. She screamed at them to stop, to go away. They didnt though. After a couple of days of going back to the gate she waited for it to open but it never did. She knew he was still on the other side because he would knock when she would. She looked for a way to slip notes under the gate or communicate with him somehow but couldnt. Eventually she went home. She would go back to the gate every day for weeks, never seeing it open. Never seeing him. She went offroad and followed the gate in one direction and after a couple of days was back at the gate, having gone full circle without finding a way out. The voices in her head assured her this was for the best, that he had left her. He had failed her. That he was why she hurt. She fought with them at first. Years would pass and she stopped going to the gate, hating The Heretic for hurting her. She started hitchhiking again, and almost immediately she had met someone else and he was different. He didnt care about her dreams, or what made her happy, from what she gathered he just saw her as a trophy. It was a relief. She wouldnt have to repeat what had happened and it was "safe". The voices liked him a lot. One day she realized that she was pregnant. The voices were pleased, despite that she wasn't exactly happy. Her new partner was happy as well. He had her on a leash now, in his mind. She thought of The Heretic, and even though she hated him she missed him. That didnt happen often but sometimes she would strangely miss him then feel ashamed for missing someone who was so cruel. In the following weeks the guy proposed to her and she said yes, knowing the voices expected it of her. She didnt want to dissapoint them. "One day they will be pleased" she said to herself, more of a hope than a thought. She didnt know of course that they never would be though. They had grown more arrogant after she said yes to the guy, taunting her even. One night she was sad and couldnt place why, laying in her bed in the dark. It was right at the edge of her mind what bothered her so much, almost in reach but just out of grasp. Among the chatter of the other voices a new one softly spoke up. The Heretics voice said "Go to the gate." It startled her for she wasnt used to hearing his voice anymore, and she never heard it with the other voices. Immediately the other voices began speaking, saying he was trying to hurt her, and not to listen to him. "He is bad". She felt like she had to go though, she had to know why she heard him. She got in her car in her pajamas and took off, fighting the voices the whole drive. They kept saying "your pregnant, this is irresponsible." "turn back." "Youre getting married soon, your husband wouldnt like this would he?" She knew the voices were right, as she had decided they always were. They looked out for her, she would think. Still, she pressed on, and saw the rest stop from those many years ago. Immediately she started to hurt, her mind too clouded to pinpoint why except for what the voices told her. "He hurt you!" She couldnt even recall anything about the night at the rest stop,just vaguely that it had to do with Heretic. She pulled up to the massive gate, not knowing what to expect. It was exactly the same as it had always been, except for a post sticking out on the side of the road. IT had a piece of paper stuck to it at the top so she put the car in park and walked over to it. It was folded up and had a heart on the outside of it with the words "I believe in you" written inside of the heart. The heretic used to write her little notes alot and she recognized his handwriting. The voices said "It's a trick!" "He's trying to hurt you again." "he's lying." "Dont open it." She opened it anyways, and all that was inside were a couple brief sentences. "It's all in your head. There is no gate... I'll be on the west coast, the place we were headed in case you change your mind about staying here. It's never too late to do what makes you happy. I love you, H" Suspicious of his obvious lie she looked up and gasped. There was no gate. Her mind was unusually silent for the first time in years. The voices had dissapeared along with the gate... There, by herself, everything now clear to her, she cried. She felt sick at the thought of all that had happened. The thought of the voices betraying her. Of hating Heretic just because it made her decision easier. The thought of being pregnant by this guy she didnt really love, would have a family that she would hurt every time she looked at, and sick by the thought that she had settled in every way. Sick with the realization that she gave her happiness away because it was unknown to her, scared her even. Sick with the thought that she let her darkness prevail over her light. Let her fear prevail over her courage. With dread she then thought "this is my life." and quickly pushing aside what the Heretic said, she accepted her fate. Then the voices came back, once again filling her mind with noise as usual. They comforted her, reassured her she was making the right choice, as they were so good at doing, she had forgotten most of this event by time she was married, and didnt think of it anymore by time she had her child, and she went on to lead the life they charted out for her. She was never happy, but she was somewhere she was comfortable, somewhere she knew. Not content, but comfortable. She felt alone, incomplete, nervous most of the time but couldnt place why. She didnt search for reasons either, knowing that would only cause pain. It wasn't enough for her, but it was her life. It was the fate she chose. &nbsp; &nbsp; Many, many years later there was an old man on the west coast, overlooking the ocean from his home. He had no kids, no grandkids. Not that anything was wrong with him or because women didnt like him, he just never let anyone close to him because he was always preoccupied, both in his heart and his mind. On this particular night he was moving slowly, breathing shallow, weak breaths. He knew his time was near. He'd known it for some time, and in a way he felt like he was failing her by succumbing to it. Speaking to her, but to nobody, he said "I'm sorry." His heart pained him, not from old age but from loss. Not his own loss as much as he was pained for her. "You deserved so much more. You deserved better." He held a picture in his hand, old and battered like him. It showed a youthful portayal of him and the girl together and smiling. Big, goofy, genuine smiles. Every time he looked at it he felt a bit of the warmth and happiness he had felt when it was taken all those years ago. He never forgot those days. His mind and heart wouldnt let him even if he tried. That was where he was meant to be. Not any specific place, but just by her side. He slowly walked inside to his bed, his whole body protesting and creaking with every movement. He knew this was the last time he would make this walk, and wanted to welcome it if it werent for the feeling of failure. He wanted to invite the end of pain, but knew it was selfish and so refused. He had fought off the end and staved it off for many years, but the fight ended that night. Laying in his bed, warm but also cold, he held the picture to his chest and said "I love you." The Heretics breathing slowed as he fell asleep.