"Aamir, are you awake?"

There was no answer. Mariam chuckled and turned her eyes back to the road. They had been late getting away from Uluru but neither of them had wanted to leave. It had been an eventful day. She smiled at her husband, Aamir, who was sound asleep in the seat next to her.

A flashing light on the dashboard caught her attention. The fuel tank was dangerously close to empty. Thankfully, she saw a rundown petrol station. She parked in the empty lot and decided not to wake her tired husband.

Ernie was restless. Now that the sun had fallen and the customers had left, he had nothing to do except mull over his thoughts.

A small, black box screeched from the corner of the store. It had been left on a news program and the reporter's voice was an unpleasant buzz in his ears, but he didn't turn it off. Just a glance at the reporter on screen helped fuel the bitter thoughts in his head. The desire to avenge everything those barbarous whites had done to his virtuous ancestors burned hotly in his chest; from the Stolen Generations to their attempts at making his people "civilised". What really made him tick was how the same white people that tried to cage them up, were now just letting anybody into the country.

He hated what Australia had become.

The ringing of the bell above the door made him look up. Ernie saw the Muslim woman enter the shop. 'People like her,' he thought savagely. The sight of her, wearing a red, blue and white hijab—reminiscent of the Australian flag, pushed him over the edge. His fingers twitched to do something.

Mariam was cold. The store's air-conditioning made her draw her hijab closer to her body. She wandered the aisles, feeling the man's dark eyes burning holes into her back. 'If looks could kill,' she mused. For some reason, the Aboriginal man put her on edge. Deciding she didn't want to buy anything else, she approached the counter to pay for the fuel.

"Hello," she greeted politely. The man looked at her silently and accepted her money. When he gave her the change, their hands brushed, and before she could blink, the man's fingers quickly went around her wrist, tightening around it.

She screamed when he wrenched her behind the counter.

Aamir's eyes snapped open. Something had woken him up from his sleep, but the reason wasn't apparent until he saw that he was sitting in the parked car at a small fuel station. Alone.

That was when he heard it—a scream. The tone of the voice made him shoot up. It was an inhumane, desperate sound that sounded like it was ripped out of someone's chest. Instantly fear gripped his heart. Mariam!

Quickly, he exited the car and sprinted towards the store. Adrenaline pumping through him, he picked up a metal pole leaning against the wall of the store, before desperately bursting through the doors.

The sight he was met with made his heart stop.

Mariam was trying to curl up into a protective ball, her hijab discarded on the floor and her body struggling weakly against the man pinning her down. Blood pooled at the slashes made at her chest, soaking through fabric. Her face was bruised from the flurry of punches hitting her. Mariam's eyes immediately snapped to his. She instantly stopped struggling, smiling tiredly now that he was there to save her. Aarim met his wife's eyes and the look in them—resignation, acceptance that this was happening—broke something in him.

That was it. In a rage, he lunged toward the monster on top of Mariam. The knife slipped out of the man's hand, metal screeching against tile. Startled, crazed dark eyes snapped to the sudden intruder. The man seemed out of it, not fully aware of what was happening.

Aamir slogged him.

Aamir couldn't even remember how many times he hit the man over the head with the pole before the man was unconscious, and all was still. Out there in the middle of nowhere, the dead silence began to creep into the store. The realisation of what had happened started to sink in. He could feel the blood on his hands. The pole promptly clattered to the ground, unnoticed. It all brought him crawling on his knees to his wife. He felt numb, like someone had ripped his heart out of his chest and left a painful, jagged hole behind. "Mariam," he choked, stinging tears slipping out of his eyes. Every breath hurt. Using the last shred of hope he had left, he desperately picked up her wrist, checking her pulse.

But there was nothing.