The silent motor of the muscle car pushed us along through the surrounding traffic. We overtook cars that got in our way and bullied others that didn’t get the hint. Soft sounds of instrumental chill music whispered through the speakers putting me slightly at ease, I looked out the window at the passing lights, which looked like fireflies caught in a jar, and wondered how my life had gotten to where it currently was.

  Things like this didn’t happen to people like me. I had already mapped my life out. My life…

  I shook my head and took in the surroundings of the borough. So far I hadn’t seen any natural vegetation or any signs of wildlife, it had just been one crumpled tower block after another, one half-finished apartment block, or a hotel with scantily clad women leaning against its walls waving halfheartedly at any car which passed by.

  As the car did its best to smooth out the bumps and potholes in the road, I leaned my head back against the headrest and allowed a yawn to escape my lips.

  “It’s the adrenaline dump,” Poppy whispered in my ear.

  “Huh?”

  “The adrenaline from the gunfight you have just been in—it affects each one in different ways, but one of the main things it does is make you tired, weary. Your body and mind have just been through a major trauma so are trying to cope with it as best as it can. Some of us,” she said, nodding to Willis and José, who were snoring, “sleep it off, others like me just replay the events again and again in our minds, wondering what we could have done differently.”

  I nodded my head and tried to fight the mouth-stretching yawn that escaped me.

  “Just let your body relax, it knows what to do.”

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  I snorted and shook my head. “This may be normal to you,” I whispered back at her, “but this to me, is, is…” I sighed as words failed me.

  “I can’t believe you imagined your life turning out how it has.”

  “No. I didn’t imagine being kidnapped against my will and—”

  “No, I’m not talking about that. I’ve watched you, Quinton, it’s our duty to watch every one of our jobs before we do them, casing the joint so to speak, and I’ve watched you from afar, I’ve watched your life. It’s one of misery. Any blind fool can see you go to a job you hate, you are in a loveless marriage to a woman who doesn’t respect you, even your own children hate you, and through it all, I wonder why.”

  “Why what?” I said breathlessly.

  “Why would someone put themselves through that?”

  “Because of duty, because it’s the right thing to do, because it’s what a man does for his family.”

  She said nothing but only got closer to me, wrapping her arms around me and burying her face in my neck with a sigh. Even though the words had left my mouth and I knew they were the right thing to say, they still felt like a lie to me. A lie I had told myself repeatedly time and time again.

  Whenever the bills came in late and I was the only one holding a job.

  Whenever I would get home to a cold empty house.

  Whenever I would get home to a cold empty bed.

  Those words, that line, had kept me going because if I didn’t repeat them to myself daily then I would go mad. I would blow my brains out and embrace death with a smile on my face.

  Did that make me selfish?

  Did that make me less of a man?

  I just wanted to be happy.

  “There must have been some dream you wanted when you were growing up, some vision or life plan you had for yourself that didn’t involve a nine to five and a retirement plan,” she said softly in my ear, making the hair on the side of my neck stand up.

  “There was once… but the dream has long since died a horrible death,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Being in a life or death situation for anyone isn’t normal, no matter how many times you encounter it; you may think it gets easy but it never does.”

  The car kept on eating up the miles and I returned to staring out the mirror, my thoughts muddy like a puddle splashed in by a child. Poppy’s soft breathing on my neck deepened as sleep slowly took her. “I wanted to dance and soar like a graceful bird-of-paradise,” she said, each word getting softer and softer, “just dance and dance, until my worries and troubles went away.”

  And with that sleep quickly took us both.