Friday Fiction: You picked up a hitch-hiker...

...with the most astonishing hair. It isn’t as though you made a practice of picking up hitchhikers, but this one, standing by the side of the road with all of the wind in the world caught in the golden mass, making you remember Rapunzel, it was as though ropes pulled you to him.

He didn’t talk much, just saying he’d go as far as you would take him which of course sent all kind of erotic thoughts tumbling through your mind, but you didn’t voice any of them, just saying you could take him for at least the next fifty miles or so and it must be nice feeling the freedom of the road. He just sighed a reply and you got the sense that maybe the road wasn’t so free after all.

In the confines of the car his hair lay still and quiet around his face and shoulders, but sometimes a strand would rise up, as though it was looking for the wind, trying to taste something, a medusa snake still seeking its freedom. He just looked out the window as the miles unfolded, not sleeping, but resting with his eyes open, hands folded on his pack.

You ached to ask questions, but didn’t want to intrude upon his still privacy, so just drove, hands at 10 and 2, eyes fixed firmly ahead, even though in the hitchhiker you imagined countless possibilities. He could be an angel in disguise, Elijah walking the world. The devil in the form of temptation (the thought of what those hands could do filled you with a longing so deep). An escaped convict, lost soul, errant poet, or just someone trying to get home after a long day’s work. But there is something about those met on the road that commands privacy, so you didn’t ask. You didn't really want to know if he was something ordinary.

You wondered what he thought of you, your middle class car, evidence of your middle class life. Did he wonder why you stopped to pick him up? These days, so few people hitchhiked, it must be hard to even get a ride. And what color were his eyes anyway?

You were getting close to 50 miles now, 50 miles of silence, of the windows open enough for air but not so much that you could hear only noise and you asked where he wanted to be left off. Anywhere he said. Anywhere I can look for my next ride. You wonder why you're dropping him off now, when you have miles to go, but you don't stop stopping.

You pull over to a likely spot, enough shade that he might be comfortable, but clear enough that oncoming drivers will see him, enough dappled light that the sun might catch in his hair. You want to say but wait, I don’t know who you are as the door closes and you faintly thanks.

As you drive away you glance in the rear view mirror to see him walking towards the road’s edge, hand outstretched, his hair fanning out behind him, like wings, and you wonder why he doesn’t just fly.

(c)2010 Laura S. Packer
(Note: This prompt and many other wonderful prompts can be found in A Writer's Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life)