Fiction: 'Car Crash' by Jeremy Void

Car Crash

Fiction by Jeremy Void

I pulled the van around on the patch of grass, lined myself up with the short fern, and floored it; the van shot forward. Rumbling. I hit the short hill, went up up up, and———the fern cut the bumper in half. I surged forward, the airbags released, my waist bent and my face met the airbag head-on. Then I opened the door and stepped out dizzy. The ground was seesawing and the anger was gone and I found a dry spot in between the tire tracks to lie down and take a nap….

Earlier today I was in court. I was in court for Possession of Cocaine.

After the hearing, me and Samantha got into a fight—what we fought about I cannot remember.

I was already in my van. I was steaming.

I soared out of the courthouse parking lot.

From behind where I lay, I heard a man’s voice: “Are you okay?”

I sat up and saw a man hurrying straight toward me.

On the highway now I traversed in and out of cars.

The man reached me and said: “I thought you were ejected from your car!”

I cut into the breakdown lane and onto the shoulder of the highway and pushed through sign after sign. With a clunk the bars holding up the signs broke and the metal plaques smacked the roof of my van.

“I’m fine,” I told him. “Really, I am.”

I was hotdogging in and out of cars. Horns wailed but I didn’t care at all, I just kept on going. I hit the off-ramp in a flurry of speed and pushed over the medium onto the on-ramp but kept going off, but then spun right and descended the off-ramp, and then right and hurried up the on-ramp and around & around I went.

“I called the cops,” the man said. “I thought you were ejected.”

I spun right and hit the grass and did donuts until I straightened the van and tried to jump a fern.

But it was really a short tree, it turned out, and the wheels barely left the ground.

“Fuck!” I spat, as the man hurried back to his car and got in and drove off. “I’m so fucked.”