MargenI drive the back road at night, the shortcut people used before they built the motorway. Nobody uses it now. Fifty kilometres of bends without a single light, a village or a petrol station.
Since kilometre forty there have been headlights in my mirror. At first it reassured me to have company in all that emptiness. Then I noticed they were following at the exact same distance, bend after bend, neither closing nor falling back.
I accelerated. The headlights accelerated. I braked almost to a stop. The headlights braked with me. As if tied to me by an invisible rope.
I haven't touched the accelerator for half an hour. The car is coasting in neutral down a hill that ended twenty kilometres ago. And the headlights behind are still there, at the same distance, lighting the empty seat beside me with a light that casts no shadow, because it comes out of my own eyes in the mirror.