It was raining. No, this was not the calm, pattering rain from the old books. Here the sky vomited bile, and the wipers, like two hysterical preachers, waved desperately in front of their eyes, trying to clean the world, but only smearing it into blurry spots of light. The road, glistening like a freshly shed snakeskin, wound its way through the darkness, and my lights were just two timid fingers trying to grope my way to nowhere.

I ran. What a grand and deceptive phrase. I was running away from missed calls and from that thick silence that settles in the house when everything has been said but nothing has been resolved. I imagined myself as some kind of movie hero running into the heart of the storm, but the truth was much worse: I was just a man in a tin box that smelled faintly of gasoline and yesterday's apple. Sticky steering wheel. Instrument panel light that illuminates the dust. All my heroism.

Thunder struck somewhere so close that the entire body of the car vibrated as if it had received a slap. The radio, which had been trying to catch some sort of sad tune until now, finally gave up and started playing only white, angry noise.

I turned it off.

Suddenly everything became very simple.

I stopped on the side of the road. I turned off the engine.

The wipers froze in the strangest pose. The pattering of the rain on the roof turned from a stormy march into the calm, monotonous rhythm of a lullaby. In the dark, behind the dirty glass, there was nothing. No path, no destination. Just drops running slowly down the glass, merging, creating fleeting, meaningless streams.

Through the side window, on the frosted glass, slowly, incredibly slowly, a snail crawled. She was going somewhere.

And I'm not anymore.