Coincidence

((Fuck you all, it’s still yesterday. Here’s a story.))

It was a freak accident.
Everything was moving very, very slowly. With a sort of lazy terror, Wesley watched himself, inside his venerable Ford, drift across the packed snow on the side of the highway. The air tasted like car heating and sweat, and the blood pounding in Wesley’s ears was almost enough to drown out the Neil Diamond he’d popped in the tape player.
It was the tape that had killed him, he realized. If he hadn’t put the tape in at that exact moment, he would have been paying more attention to the road. He would have made the curve. He felt a boiling hatred for Neil Diamond rise up in his chest like heartburn, but that was ridiculous. Neil Diamond hadn’t killed him; Wesley had killed himself.
There was, naturally, a tree on the side of the road. And, naturally, he was headed straight for it. Apparently it wasn’t alright for him to spin out and get back on the road; he had to die in a flaming crash.
His terror morphed into disinterested disembodiment as the the car got closer and closer to the tree, its wheels losing grip on the slick ground, wet with the first thaw of the season, and then, just as it was about to impact, he realized that it was about to get really bad.
The car hit the tree, and then everything was crunch, crash, get out, get out now before the gas tank goes up, and oh god no, his arm was caught between the seats and he was going to die. He was definitely going to die.
But then there were hands. Hands, pulling him free from the wreck, stretching the seats apart and yanking him out of the twisted ex-car.
“Jesus Christ,” said the hands. “I just saved your life.”
“Yeah, thanks. Run,” said Wesley.
“What?” asked the hands. Then, “Oh, right. The gas tank.”
Wesley picked himself up and sprinted. White heat plowed into the back of his neck, and the shockwave lifted him slowly off his feet and dropped him at the edge of the highway.
“Jesus Christ,” said the hands. “I just saved your life.”
Wesley sat up, slowly. His arm was alright, just twisted. It didn’t look he had any injuries but a few cuts on his face from the windshield.
He looked back at the wreck.
“Do you think it’s still a car?” he asked, his voice slurring a bit.
The hands didn’t say anything.
“I mean, by its definition a car is something that gets us places. If it can’t move, it isn’t a car. But it’s also got a shape associated with it, which that piece of metal still loosely fits. So what is it? I guess you could say it’s in a state of duality. Maybe that’s what makes it so dangerous. Not the shrapnel or the oil, but the fact that it’s both a car and a lump of metal at the same time.”
The hands still didn’t say anything. Wesley realized the snow was eating through his jeans, so he stood up.
“No, don’t. You’re in shock,” said the hands hastily.
“Bullshit. My name’s Wesley Tanner Norris and I’m 58. I’m driving from Portland to Vancouver to meet a girl I met on the internet. Her name’s Haley, she’s 19, and she likes Sonic Youth.”
The hands didn’t say anything.
“Stop not saying anything,” said Wesley. “It’s freaking me out.”
“You’re welcome,” said the hands. Wesley grinned.”
“Sarcasm. That’s better. Thank you for saving my life, hands.”
“Hands?”
“That’s all I ever saw of you. I’ll probably just think of you as hands until I look at you.”
“Look at me,” said the hands.
“Okay,” said Wesley. He turned to face the scruffy twentysomething on the ground behind him. “And now I can see you’re a scruffy twentysomething. But for a second, while my brain was replacing your hands with your whole body, you were two things at once.”
“Did you hit your head in the crash?” asked the scruffy twentysomething.
“I usually talk like this,” said Wesley. “Thank you for saving my life, scruffy twentysomething. What’s your name?”
“Eric Topley. But people usually call me Junior.”
A red flag went up in Wesley’s head.
“Why Junior?” he asked hesitantly.
“My dad was Eric Topley Senior. He died in Vietnam.”
“I’m sorry.”
I don’t mind being Junior,” said Eric, a little indignant.
“I mean your dad. Sorry to hear about that.”
“It was twenty years ago. Doesn’t really bother me,” said Eric. “He’s historic, though. One of the most high-profile fragging cases.”
“Oh, shit,” muttered Wesley.
“Sorry, what?” asked Eric.
“That was me. I killed your dad.”
“What? No way. It must have been some other–”
“Some other Staff Sergeant Eric Topley, 132nd Infantry, 1950-1972?” asked Wesley, burying his face in his hands.

The snow fell, muffling the dead silence with more dead silence.

“I’ll give you a ride to the closest hotel. After that I’m going to forget about you completely,” said Eric.
“Yes, sir,” said Wesley.

~ by pieboy on February 25, 2008.