The first few months of being a mother were the hardest, but Bree had heard that from every parent she knew. She didn’t expect it to be easy, but she hadn’t expected it to be so difficult. The first few months were spent doing the bare minimum to keep herself and this tiny human alive.
Every time she looked in the mirror, her eyes looked hollow, her skin pallid. She was certain there was poop under her fingernails; and it seemed that all this tiny human knew was how to cry. Drew’s shrieks were frantic, and each cry seemed to stretch time, looping back on itself in a relentless cycle. But they became white noise to her. He settled, and he got better.
During the day, at least.
The same couldn’t be said for the nights.
Bree would lose herself for what felt like blissful seconds to the comforting arms of sleep, only to hear the crackle of the baby monitor with the telltale signs of a whimper, followed by a cry. The warm body of her husband next to her would turn away from the monitor with a huff and a snort. “Can you get it? I’ve got work in the morning.”
Her husband, Evan, didn’t like doing the night shift.
His excuse during the week was that he started work early. His excuse during the weekends was that he was too tired and needed to recoup from work, which would have been fine, if he helped in other ways. If he got Drew ready in the morning, fed him breakfast. Anything.
If Bree was honest — a truth she only allowed herself to admit in the sanctuary of darkness, lying in bed with Evan snoring beside her, Evan as a father was…well, perfunctory.
He did the hot dad walk, carrying the car seat out of the hospital. Those photos were posted on every social media site possible. But to say he changed a nappy more than a handful of times? He had certainly never experienced the canon event of dodging a rogue pee streak. His parenting was shallow. An iridescent glass façade that sometimes she wanted to smash into pieces so that everyone could see the repugnant surface beneath.
But Bree wouldn’t say that out loud. She didn’t say a lot of things out loud. That’s something Evan commented on, a lot. “You need to grow a spine,” he would say.
“We need to get a divorce.” She wished she would say.
Everyone had said the same thing: “Don’t mention the D-word during the baby’s first year.” No drastic decisions in those early months — they’d warned her she wouldn’t be in the right frame of mind, that exhaustion would cloud everything. Bree had believed them, at first. But as that year drew closer to an end, Bree felt more certain than ever that she needed to leave Evan.
She loved him at some point, she knows she did. She just can’t remember when. She can’t remember why.
Maybe there’s one thing Evan was right about. She needed to grow a spine.
***
Shrugging the changing bag over one shoulder, Drew snuggled into the other, Bree stepped into the brisk air. She felt Evan before she saw him, stumbling out, shoes scuffing the pavement.
“Fuck, it’s cold,” he mutters, fumbling around his blazer pockets for the car keys.
Sniffing, Bree buries Drew closer, shielding him from the cold. Her mid-length, satin blue dress didn’t help matters. Evan ran a hand through his hair, face red from alcohol. His brows furrowed in confusion.
“Any luck?” she asks, bouncing on the spot.
“You’re sure they’re not in the bag?” His eyes narrow, as if she’d hidden them on purpose.
“I’m sure. You needed your cigarettes from the car, so you had them last.”
“Why didn’t you get them back from me?”
Bree resists the urge to roll her eyes. “I didn’t see you for most of the night, Evan.”
She turns away, teeth chattering, ricocheting against each other. Finally, there’s a lilting jingle of keys. “Thank fuck.” Evan makes his way to the car’s passenger seat, opens the door for himself and clambers in. “You’re driving, right?” he asks, shutting the door before Bree could respond. He’s just drunk, just tired and drunk. That’s why he doesn’t remember that she’s breastfeeding, that she wasn’t drinking, and that’s why he never even offered to drive in the first place.
Bree drops the bag unceremoniously on the floor, shifting Drew so she can open the door and place him gently into the car seat. His little nose twitches and his long lashes graze his cheeks. Bree smiles, leaning down to brush her lips against his cheek. Lifting her gaze to the rearview mirror, she can see Evan’s tilted head, his face lit by the glow of his phone. Her throat burns, and her vision blurs.
When she finally pulls the car out of the car park, she puts the heating on full blast, her limbs beginning to thaw. She lowers her tongue from the roof of her mouth and breathes. A few more hours and they would be home. She could take off her makeup, remove the pins from her hair, and crawl into bed before Drew woke up again. Glancing to her right, Evan was still on his phone, the glow of the screen highlighting a smirk.
“Next wedding we’re going to,” her voice ventures into the silence, “I’m drinking and you’re driving.”
He doesn’t look up. “Whatever you say, honey.”
One hand on the wheel, Bree’s other hand falls to the side near the console. When they had first started dating and she was the one driving, Evan would have grasped her hand instantly if it was there lying in wait. There was never more than a five-minute window when Evan wasn’t touching her. Her hand lies there, fractured streetlights letting it glow in increments like a signal, a beacon directing Evan’s hand for somewhere to land. Put down the phone, hold her hand, be with her, talk to her. Come back to her.
As if he heard, Evan locks his phone, dropping it into the cupholder. Then. He folds his hands into his lap. Bree brings her hand back up to the wheel, gripping it tight.
“Do you remember our wedding, Bree?”
Her breath hitches. She swallows. “C-could never forget,” her voice cracking, “the zipper on my dress broke, the videographer never showed…oh god, the rain-”
“Do you remember my vows?”
Bree exhales slowly. “You talked about your parents.” She breathes. She wants to look at Evan, to see warmth in his whiskey-coloured eyes, to catch that soft, dopey smile.
“My parents never married, thank God, it just wasn’t in their nature. Love wasn’t in their nature. I didn’t think it was in mine either…not ‘til I met you. You loved all the parts of me that I couldn’t stand. All the bad parts I had inherited. No marriage in my life was going to work — unless it was with you.”
Those words hit her square in the chest. That’s why she loved him. What they’re going through — this, all of it — it’s just a blip. She had always known what he came from. And she’d wanted to fix it. Renovate his mind. Plaster over the cracks left by cold silences and shouting. Build new walls and paint them fuchsia. Leave his ghosts to rot behind them.
“The wedding was beautiful, wasn’t it?” Evan says. And it was. The bride walked down the aisle to the arms of her tearful husband, and they didn’t let go of each other all night. Always gravitating to each other, in each other’s orbit.
At their wedding, Evan had teared up when Bree walked down the aisle. She’d had to stop herself from running to him.
“They looked beautiful together, right?” She says, cautiously hopeful.
Evan chuckles dryly, whistling. “Dave’s a lucky man. That Eleanor is a stunner.”
Her smile vanishes; the warmth drains from her. “Why do you have to be like that?”
“What? Eleanor is a stunning girl. I can’t say she looks pretty? It was her wedding day.”
“Then you could have just said they looked beautiful together-”
“I should be able to comment on another woman without tiptoeing around your insecurities, Bree.”
Bree clenches her jaw, a flush rising to her cheeks. Her gut churns, twisting as something fierce coils inside her. Her hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Do you wish I looked like her?”
Evan huffs, voice hard. “You always do this, you always put words into my mouth.”
“If I had said Eleanor was a lucky woman, you would react the same way!”
“Well, yes, because you don’t have a reason to envy Eleanor.”
“But you have a reason to envy Dave?”
“Maybe I do.”
The grip on the steering wheel was hurting, the leather biting at her skin. Her foot pushes down on the gas, just a bit more than necessary. Her chest heaves, and angry tears burn the corners of her eyes. But she will not let him see her cry. He’s just drunk. He doesn’t mean it. Of course, he doesn’t. She loves everything about him, even the bad parts. She does. Bree looks in the rearview mirror at the peaceful look on Drew’s face. She unclenches and lifts her foot from the gas.
***
Evan’s snores fill the car, bouncing off the walls. Bree spared a glance at the mirror, Drew still fast asleep in his seat. Her own eyelids feel heavy as she forces her gaze to the road and the clock on the dash. 11:58.
The dual carriageway’s dark grey lanes, hemmed in by skeletal trees, is punctuated by the dim, inconstant glow of distant streetlights. Shadows dance in her periphery.
The night feels heavy. A dense pressing weight. She glanced at the clock again. 12:00 PM.
The roads were empty, shrouded by never-ending darkness. She hadn’t passed another car for miles. Her fingers tap the steering wheel, an involuntary rhythm of impatience. Her eyes slide toward the rearview mirror again, reassured by the sheer nothingness behind her.
Turning her gaze back, she sees it.
A single car. Parked on the layby to her left.
Bree squints, lifting her foot slightly off the accelerator. The car’s headlights are off. It looks red under the fractured flow of the nearby streetlight. But it wasn’t the car that made Bree’s heart lurch, that made her tighten her grip on the steering wheel.
It was the woman.
She stood beside the car, motionless. Her face turned toward the road, toward Bree. In a dress that caught the wind in soft ripples, her figure a shadow against the dark. Her hair hung in tangled waves around her face, obscuring her features. Yet somehow, even in the fractured light, her eyes were open, staring, unblinking, fixed on Bree’s car.
For a split second, she considered stopping. Maybe the woman needed help. Maybe there had been an accident. But as she drew closer, something cold prickled up her spine, stopping her hand halfway to the indicator.
The woman didn’t move. Didn’t signal for help. She just stood, rigid and unmoving, her head cocked slightly, her eyes hollow and somehow too wide.
She could feel the woman’s gaze cutting through the night, searing through the glass and steel to reach her. The road stretched ahead, but her car seemed to slow as if caught in the gravity of that stare. It was almost — familiar.
Then, as she passed, the woman’s mouth curved — just a slight upturn at the edges. A half-smile that was somehow wrong, too sharp in the shadows.
As the car pulls away, she couldn’t shake the sensation that the woman’s eyes were still on her, tracking her through the dark, waiting for her to look back.
Bree’s breathing turns slow and shaky as she watches the figure disappear into the dark. Tightening her grip on the wheel, she tries to shake it off. It was just a strange woman, probably stranded or waiting for someone. Still, her pulse pounded in her ears, thumping faster than it should be.
A wail cuts through the silence. Bree’s heart lurches and turns the wheel, the car veering out of her lane. She tries to right herself, but the car goes too far to the left. Crying out, she turns the wheel back straight, heart pounding so hard she could hear it. Her hands felt numb, her legs full of pins and needles.
Drew was none the wiser, still crying. Evan shifts with an irritated grunt. His eyes are small and red from sleep. He reaches a hand back to Drew, patting him feebly. “There, there, mate, you’re all good.”
Evan looks back at Bree, eyes narrowed, and nostrils flared. “What the fuck happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“You could have killed us, you know that?” Evan’s voice was nasal, condescending. “You sure you didn’t drink at the party?”
“No, I didn’t!” Bree snaps, her voice only slightly louder than Drew. “You didn’t see her?”
Drew’s cries circulated the car, but it felt like they were crowding Bree’s mind. Her heart clenched; she glanced at the rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of tiny arms flailing in the dim light cast by the streetlamps. No woman or car in sight.
“See who?”
“The…the woman-”
“What woman- alright mate, that’s enough!” Evan yells at Drew. Bree’s mouth dries, but she forces herself to breathe steadily. Evan is just tired. Just tired, that’s why he is screaming at their child.
Drew’s cries grow louder, hiccupping into a panicked crescendo.
Evan shakes his head. “We need to stop somewhere and shut him up.”
Shut him up. Shut him up? The tightness in her gut was back, coiling.
“He’s a baby, Evan, he can’t help it.”
Evan’s face twisted, and he turned halfway in his seat, stretching his arm toward the back. His voice is low, hard, cold. “Quiet down, or so help me, I’m going to shake some sense into you.”
Bree went still. The air seemed to thicken, wrapping around her lungs like a vice. Time slowed as her mind raced to catch up with what she had just heard. The road ahead blurred, thin yellow lines wavering as her eyes filled with hot, helpless tears. Drew kept crying, oblivious, tiny fists waving with a fierce urgency.
“What?” She whispered. But she’d heard him.
Evan pulled back, slumping into his seat with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’m just kidding, Bree,” he snapped. Eyes fixed on the windshield. “Calm down.”
But she couldn’t calm down. The pulse pounding in her ears was louder than Drew’s cries. Her fingers clutched at the wheel until her knuckles shone white.
The road continued ahead, unrelenting. Bree felt the rage settle in her gut, simmering, a bright, molten thing that made her chest burn.
A petrol station appears to the left, haloed in white light.
“I’m going to stop here and sort him out.” She hears herself say, turning the wheel into the lane. She can’t hear if Evan responds. Pulling into the space, she gets out of the car, slamming the door so hard the car shakes.
She opens Drew’s door, unbuckling him out of his seat belt and pulling him to her chest. His face is wet, and he’s cried himself hoarse. Bree fusses at him, bouncing him in her arms, trying to placate him with soft words. Her heels clack as she briskly walks into the petrol station, the bell jingling as she closes the door.
The petrol station is empty, save for the woman at the counter. The lights are bright and sterile, one section in the corner flickers, but it hardly matters. She has tunnel vision as she walks to the toilets, breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of the changing table.
As she changes Drew, he gurgles slightly, his legs and arms kicking up a storm. He’s quiet now, happier, his eyes wide and alert. Evan doesn’t see this. He doesn’t see how, when Drew wakes up, there’s a brief moment when he wants to go back to sleep, so he curls up like a little warm croissant on her chest. He doesn’t see the way his head turns at the sound of Bree’s voice. All of these little things that make the tears worth it.
It felt like years ago when Bree was lying in bed, carding her hands through Evan’s hair as he lay on her chest. His hand traced gentle circles on her stomach, almost absentmindedly, until he looked up and said, “Let’s have a baby.” Bree’s vision blurs again.
Maybe loving the bad parts wasn’t enough for her anymore.
Once she’s done, she pushes the toilet seat down, unclasping her bra so she can feed Drew, and that’s when she lets herself cry.
***
Fed and changed, Drew is like a brand-new baby. His head swivels, drawn to the lights and colours of various bags of crisps, sweets and energy drinks, patting Bree’s face excitedly. She kisses his cheek and looks out the window. Evan is still sitting in the car, undoubtedly on his phone.
He didn’t come and check on them once. The rage is back in Bree’s chest, molten, heating up. She picks up a cold coffee and chewing gum, walking to the elderly woman at the front counter. Her hair was braided back and down, like a bob. She has a warm smile on her round face, crinkles by her eyes, and a small gap between her two front teeth.
“And who is this handsome young man?” She asks, ringing up Bree’s items. Bree shifts so Drew is facing the lady. A little strand of drool clings to his lip.
“This is Drew.”
The lady’s smile grows wider. “He’s gorgeous, just like his mama.” She puts the items in a bag and hands them to Bree.
“I think he looks like his dad.”
The lady tilts her head toward the window. Bree’s car is lit up like a museum exhibit. “Is that dad out there?”
Bree nods, jaw tight. Her throat pulses with the heat of everything she hasn’t said. Quiet down, or so help me, I’m going to shake some sense into you. You need to grow a spine. You need to grow a spine.
The woman hesitates, her smile softening into something else. “Then I think you already know what you need to do.”
Bree blinks. Her fingers curl around the bag like a lifeline. She nods again, slower this time.
The lady looks at the car again. “This doesn’t last forever.”
“I hope you’re right,” Bree whispers.
“You’d best get going. Get on home and get this little man tucked up in bed.”
“But I haven’t paid?”
“Don’t worry yourself none, have a good night.”
***
The road stretches on, a yawning darkness swallowing every inch of it. The drive felt endless, stretched taut between silence and Evan’s meagre attempts at conversation. Drew was sound asleep again, face warmed by the streetlights. The time on the dash. 11:58. Odd. Maybe a glitch.
Bree didn’t realise she’d let the car drift slightly over the speed limit until she noticed the glowing numbers on the dash, creeping higher. Her foot eased up, and she glanced around, nerves buzzing.
Up ahead, faint but unmistakable in the gloom. Another layby waits.
The same car.
The same woman.
Standing in the same position, facing the road with her head tilted, her dress stirring slightly in the breeze. Her face was partially obscured by that long, tangled hair — but her eyes were wide, fixed on the oncoming car, on her. The same hollow gaze, locked onto her like she’d been waiting. But something’s different now. Her arms, they’re curved, as if they’re cradling-
A chill swept down her spine, tightening her chest, and squeezing her lungs. This was impossible — she hadn’t veered off, hadn’t made a single turn, hadn’t gone back. And yet here it was. The same scene, like the road was looping — maybe she was.
Without realizing it, she was slowing down, her foot heavy on the brake, eyes refusing to pull away from the woman. She could see Evan’s mouth moving in the peripheral, but she couldn’t hear him. The woman’s mouth had that slight, sharp smile again, frozen in something too close to a grin. It was like she was expecting her to stop. Waiting for it. Beckoning.
“No,” she whispered, snapping herself back. She shook her head, hands slick on the steering wheel.
She forced herself to look forward again, shoving down the urge to keep glancing in the rearview mirror, to make sure the woman was still back there. She pressed harder on the accelerator this time, speeding up until the strange figure was swallowed by distance. She felt her hands trembling, her jaw clenched tight.
“Bree, you alright?”
“What do you care?” She snaps, teeth gritted.
Evan doesn’t respond, or maybe he does. His voice fades into the background as a buzzing fills her head.
A minute passes. Bree glances at the clock: 12:00 PM.
And there it is again. Bree sees a layby reappear up ahead. Splintered under the flickering streetlights.
The woman standing exactly as before. Only this time, she wasn’t staring at her car. She was staring at the road.
Her head lowered. Body taut with an unnatural stillness.
And then, as the car drew near, her head snapped up, eyes locking onto hers. Somehow closer, the hollow gaze somehow darker. The smile was gone, replaced by a vacant stare, almost sad. Almost… angry. And in her arms a-
Panic seized Bree, and she slammed her foot down, feeling the car lurch as it surged forward. The woman grew smaller in her mirror, but that stare, that terrible presence clung to her like a shadow, making her skin crawl as though something was still watching, still following.
But she didn’t dare look back again.
“Bree. Bree. Bree!” Evan’s voice breaks through the static in her head. She doesn’t turn to him, focusing on her pulse, which is a frantic thrum in her chest. A strange fog seemed to settle over her mind, a murky feeling that thickens with each mile Bree put between them and the layby. She didn’t want to look in the mirror again, didn’t want to search for that haunting figure by the roadside.
Evan’s voice cut through the fog “-will you fucking listen to me.”
“What Evan, what the fuck do you want from me now?” Bree’s voice was cutting.
“If you had taken the left ages ago when I suggested, we would have been home by now.” He snapped, his voice heavy with exasperation. His fingers drummed against his thigh, a movement she suddenly couldn’t stand.
“You’re complaining about the fucking route? Are you not seeing what I’m seeing?”
“I’m seeing someone drive like a fucking maniac with my son in the car-”
“Oh, now he’s your son?” Bree feels a laugh begin to bubble in her throat.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
The static is back. Grow a spine. “What sort of dad have you been to Drew? You haven’t even changed a nappy, let alone fed him. I’m the one with him twenty-four-seven.”
“It’s not my fault you’re such a control freak that you don’t let me have five minutes alone with him.”
The static is back. The rage in her gut flared into an inferno, coursing through her veins and making her limbs taut and restless. Coiling deep in her abdomen, tightening until it felt like she might shatter from the pressure. The steering wheel feels like a lifeline, something solid to keep her from veering into the chaos swirling inside her.
“If I left him alone with you, I’m scared about what you would do to him.” Bree turns away from the road. Her vision was distorted, not from tears now, but from the sheer, blinding heat of her fury. The highway lights flashed by in rhythmic intervals, illuminating the hollows of Evan’s sullen profile, making her hate that indifferent look even more.
Evan laughs. His chuckles are loud in the static. “Look who finally grew a fucking spine-”
The woman was on the road.
In the middle of the road and facing their car.
She was wearing a mid-length, satin blue dress. Her face, half hidden behind strands of hair, her mouth slack. Her face is inexplicably familiar. Her arms, holding a bundle.
She didn’t think before she wrenched the steering wheel hard to the right. The tyres screeched, the car shuddering as it careened off the road and into the gravelly embrace of the layby. Dust and debris exploded around them, a cloud of chaos, until the vehicle shuddered to a halt, angled sharply and trembling like a living thing.
For a moment, silence reigned, broken only by the pounding of her heartbeat and the soft hiss of the engine.
“Holy shit, holy fuck. Bree, what the fuck?” His voice was hoarse, stripped of the argument, replaced by raw fear. Bree’s throat was too tight to speak, fingers still locked around the wheel. Drew came to the forefront of her mind, and she turned quickly, nearly giving herself whiplash to check on him. He was awake, eyes wide, mouth open in what was almost comedic shock. Relief came to her in a hysterical wave until she remembered — the woman.
She turned to look through the side window, but the woman was gone. There wasn’t even a sign that she was there in the first place. No figure walking in the distance, no face with eyes glowing in the dark.
“Please tell me you saw that?” She whispered.
“Saw what? The asphalt as you nearly killed us?” Evan snapped, his voice hot and sharp as he struggled with his seat belt, grasping for the button aggressively.
“The…the woman-”
“Woman? There was no-” he managed to unclip the belt “-fucking woman-” he opened his door, “-you stupid fuc-” he slammed his door shut.
Evan walked towards the back, right past Drew’s door. Bree could see him in the rear window, pacing. Running his hands through his hair chaotically. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was calling someone, his gestures manic through the air as he swore, a long involved swear, potentially in compound form. Spit hitting the asphalt.
Bree didn’t even think when she turned the engine back on. She didn’t even question putting her car into reverse. Didn’t even realise when she took the handbrake off, foot down on the gas. Didn’t even need to turn her neck to watch as she reversed into her husband.
Bree didn’t hear his screams and the litany of vulgar language as he fell. Didn’t acknowledge the crunch of his body as she went over him once. It was like an argumentative speed bump that just needed a bit more force. Suddenly she realized she had to go over him forwards, so she stuck the car into drive and did just so. Over, and over and over again. The speedbump was getting smaller, lower, quieter, as she felt the car go over his bones and limbs.
Drew’s giggling was all she could hear. She looked at him in the reflection and cooed at him.
There was an especially vivid crunch that made her wince slightly. “Oh Drew, I think that was your daddy’s spine.”
Bree didn’t know when she stopped. Probably when the speed bump felt flat. That is when she stopped the car and switched off the engine. Relief bubbled up for a moment, and she breathed out a shaky laugh.
And then she felt it, creeping up her spine, pooling in her stomach: the unmistakable sensation of being watched. It was like ice water down her back, a cold certainty that settled deep and terrible.
With a trembling hand, she reached up to adjust the rearview mirror, leaning closer, her vision narrowing as she stared into the dim reflection of her face — her own eyes, wide with fear and something else she couldn’t name. Her breath hitched as she waited for something to reveal itself.
The face in the mirror stared back, familiar but… wrong. Her own eyes, but emptied, fixed with a hollow gaze she’d seen before. The edges of her vision grew dark as a memory, sharp and chilling, uncoiling in her mind like a dormant serpent.
Letting go of the mirror, she got out of the car. She stepped over a discarded finger as she got Drew out of his car seat. Clasping him to her chest, she walked to the end of the layby. Cold wind brushed against her skin as her dress billowed. Gravel crunched beneath her heels as she turned, staring at the headlights of a car approaching. Her hair fell in limp, tangled waves around her face.
Drew patted at her face, and she looked down at his eyes and kissed his furrowed brow, as the next car came along, headlights fading into the black.
Davina Kirpal Kaur is an English graduate from the University of Lincoln and a dedicated writer. She focuses on crafting fictional short stories, many of which have found a home in various literary magazines. You’ll find her researching true crime and paranormal stories. Davina watches a lot of horror films ‘just to feel something,’ and usually doesn’t stop talking about them. Her debut in non-fiction literature is marked by the release of How to Solve True Crime: Occam’s Razor and the Limitations of Simplicity in Investigations.
ELEVENTH HOUR LITERARY 