Slices by Michael Montoure

Author:Michael Montoure
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Michael Montoure
Published: 2013-12-18T23:00:00+00:00

Sarah, driving again. Sarah, nearly asleep. The broken centerline of the road in her headlights just an endless pulsing ribbon. Her car would start to drift, and the thrum-thrum of her wheels hitting the bumps of the divider line would jerk her awake again.

“Mom, I’m tired,” Josh said. “We should stop soon.”

“I know, baby.” She reached over and patted his leg. He wasn’t complaining, just pointing out, without saying it, how tired she was, too.

Dangerous to drive like this. You could flip the car if you’re not careful. Then what? What will you trade away this time?

Stop it. “Stop it,” she said out loud.

“Mom?”

“It’s nothing, baby.” She glanced at him, and her eyes flicked to her rear-view mirror, looking at Kyle passed out asleep in the back. “We’ll stop soon, I promise. We just need to find a motel.”

Josh tried to smile.

She went back to watching the road.

At night, all roads are the same road, black and nameless and endless. This was the same road, this trip the same road trip, the one her friends were never coming back from —

No. Enough. Let it go.

She shook herself fiercely.

Somewhere, she could hear laughter. Somewhere on this same road.

Her eyes drifted half-closed, snapped open, closed again.

Almost time it’s almost time they’re almost twelve you’re almost there almost twelve it’s almost midnight and the road is humming a lullaby under your tires under you’re tired you’re just eighteen and it’s almost midnight —

You tell your friend Jerry, he’s the one who’s driving, you told your parents you’d be home hours ago and are we lost or what?

And he just laughs and you laugh and he throws another beer can out the window.

Three days, three whole days on the Oregon Coast with Jerry and Susan and Brendan and Matt and high school is finally done and you’ll be friends forever and your whole future stretches out ahead black and nameless and —

Sarah’s eyes almost open. She’s going too fast —

You’re going too fast, she tells Jerry, and they both laugh and then he doesn’t make the turn and the guardrail doesn’t hold and the world ends.

The new world is upside down and the blood rushes to her head and the world is red and the blood is everywhere, everything is blood and metal and safety glass like diamonds and screaming and when she can’t scream anymore, when her lungs feel like they’ll burst, there is only silence, silence and her ragged breathing and then footsteps, quiet footsteps and a tap at the window and a voice that says, soft and gentle and understanding:

“Well, now. Looks like you’ve found yourself in a world of hurt.”

She said something. Screamed something. Wasn’t sure which.

“Calm down. Calm down, now. You gotta think a minute, you’ve got to think real clearly. You need to make a decision, here, an important decision. Could be the most important one you’ll ever make. All right? I’m gonna ask you something. All right?”

She nodded.

He pulled what was left of her window out of its frame in showers of glass.

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