"What are you thinking?"

"What are you thinking?" He asked.

  "Nothing" She said.

***

"You know i recently read about the way Virginia woolf died.  It is strangely fascinating." 

She said while looking straight with a blank face.  It was raining heavily and the window shield was drenching every minute even with the wipers On.  

"Go ahead i am listening."  He said, highly focused due to the blurry visions not enabling him to ride the car comfortably.  His eyes are tensed and his hands are tightly gripping the steering wheel.  He knew her and he knew what will this conversation going to be.

"She drowned herself to death.  She filled her heavy overcoat with pocket full of stones and walked straight into the lake."

"Hmm.." 

"And she wrote a suicide note and it some what horrifies me."

"Why?"

"Why?! I don't know. I don't have an answer for that."

"Then why you decided to bring this topic now?"

"What happened to you? Did that annoy you to the nerve?  If it did then i didn't mean to.  I am sorry.  I just felt like talking about it you know, like why some one would choose to die that way?"  

Fidgeting.

There was a pause from him.  She continued.

"I was wondering whether the weight of the stones pulled her down or her own paranoia?  What would have been her thoughts before walking into something that will be taking her own life?  The lake?  Why the lake?  Of all the other means, why the lake?"

Suddenly her energy rose up and her body started to react more eagerly than the two hour drive that tied her to her car seat which kept her lethargic. This quick shift in the energy did bother him with a tinge of panic.

"She wanted to die and probably preferred a lake.  That's all."

" You just simplify it like it is nothing.  Don't you see a poetic tragedy in it? 

Surely he didn't see it a as a poetic tragedy but he did feel a strange sinister wave silently roaring from his passenger seat in the form a volatile minded woman, an already crumbling marriage and the gravity of the fact that every wrong turn fascinates her more than every right turn.  He was shaken but kept his calm and stayed focused to the driving.

She leaned her head onto the window, slowly breathing and her eyes wandering through the wet streets.

There was a long silence.  No more extensions of talking.  Just the sound of wipers vigorously wiping the big chunks of rain drops, distinct noise of horns blaring around the streets, people holding black umbrellas, neon lights featuring cafes, soft thunderous clouds above and in the car were two people not knowing how to process a conversation.

She was looking outside with her bespectacled eyes, capturing every essence of this sombre weather.  she always preferred to remain quiet during car rides.  But this time the silence felt profound and the gravity of it was constantly pulling him like the stones in the cardigan, dragging him down into the lake, the weight crushing him into pieces and he was not able to speak about it.  It was like time froze and so was his thoughts that sealed his lips. 

The uncomfortable silence and moving images acted perfectly for her future prospects of writing whereas he was juggling with his thoughts about her, just her.

 He wore a face of bravery and asked again.

"What are you thinking?" 

 She said nothing.

Maybe this was just a simple silence.  

Or maybe this was the calmness that later brings a devastating catastrophe usually named after women...a terrifying dark phenomenon.

STORM.

The calmness before the storm.

His chest elevated with heavy breathing but the air was dense and it was crushing him from inside.

The car stopped but the rain didn't.  

She looked at him with a sad smile, opened the car door, abandoned the seat and despite of the rain, stepped outside. His heart skipped a beat but he didn't stop her nor did he said anything.

The only thing that was lingering with him was the fear.

Ready to leave, before starting the car he kept on looking at her.  Just her and the overcoat she was holding in her hand.

***