The Accident

11:43 pm

And the stuffed moon's obnoxious light whistles mockingly in the approaching twilight wind. And the night's noxious gases billow into the toxic air, gyrating, performing their tribal dance for every witness to see. And the inert cars echo their demise, the orgy of metal fornicating in an atrabilious, somewhat tasteless fashion. And a group of teenagers is gasping, then silent, and a driver is resting and another is bleeding, and a boy is crying, and a dog is howling at the tragedy of it all...then nothing.

Five Minutes Earlier

A portly, somewhat clumsy man leaves the convenient store with two bags of potato chips—salt and vinegar and barbeque—and a thirty-two ounce drink of some lemon-lime variation. He enters his black on black on black hearse, sits his bags on the passenger side seat, puts the key into the ignition and turns on his death chariot. The radio blasts something loud and obnoxious—a tune he hums and drums to in solitude; the ubiquitous world is not watching him. He drives in reverse; and Time envies the machine for this very ability.

And there is a group of four teenagers sitting on some distant park bench, watching the convenient store vaguely and smoking a marijuana cigarette, puff, puff, pass, never breaking the cipher; they hide the joint every time a car passes. One of the girls, a brunette wearing a hooded sweatshirt of some ivy league college she will never attend and sweatpants that swallow her legs, is smoking a Marlboro Light menthol cigarette to mask the smell, hide the truth. And the longhaired boy says to the disheveled haired boy, "When do you leave?"

And every time a car passes, his gargantuan dog tries to chase it; but each time, the disheveled haired boy holds it by the neck collar in an attempt to save its life, or prevent from drawing attention to the fact they are smoking weed. "Two days."

"Why did you join the Marines anyway?"
"Ya'll are going to college at the end of the summer. You've got that; I got nothing."
"I'm sorry," the brunette girl says.
"Ain't your fault I screwed up in high school."
"Well, I'm sorry anyway. Why don't you join the police academy or sumthin'?"
"It's too late."
"Fire department?"
"It's too late."
"Well, what about a community college for like a year or two?"
"It's too late; I made the oath."
"I'm sorry."
"I don't want to think about it...lets just smoke; I want to forget about it."
"Are you scared?" the blonde girl asks.
"Scared?"
"You're in the Marines now; you're the first ones in battle. You ever seen Jarhead?"
"Yeah."
"Well, are you scared?"
"I don't think it matters."
"Why?"
"Cause I made the oath, already."
Puff. Puff. Pass.
"Well, you can still be scared. Every man is scared at some point," the blonde says, "especially when going to war."
"This war is BS," says the brunette.
"Yeah, that's exactly what I want to hear before going to war."
"I'm sorry."
"Why don't you go to Canada?" says the disheveled haired boy.
"Then what?"
"Then wait till the war is over...that's what my uncle did."
"Then what?"
"Then come back."
"If it was that easy now, then I'd do it."

And there is a woman in her late thirties steadily driving as a light rain begins to drip from the clouded sky. The liquid moonlight pings against her panoramic view as she turns on her windshield wipers. She sits in a loud silence as her thoughts meander from ear to ear, in a chaotic fashion, without any direction, like hot atoms in a vacuumed glass box. And she thinks about the first time she took her son to the hospital. She remembers constantly telling the then four-year-old child to never touch the stove: "It is dangerous; you could get really, really hurt." She remembers how loudly he cried, staring at his burned hand in utter disbelief. She remembers unconsciously and embarrassingly thinking about whether his crying was magnified by the bitter reality that the choice he decided to make was the wrong one. She wipes conscious tears from her dewy eyes. She turns on the radio hoping to silence her mind, or at least restrain it; but she does so in vain. Her thoughts begin to scream over "A Young Man is Gone" by the Beach Boys as the relentless clouds birth a thousand tiny collisions per second that crash against her windshield with such unprecedented ambition. Her cell phone rings. Her rampant mind comes to a screeching halt. The music no longer screams, but hums.

"Hey, honey, are you okay?"
"Yeah, I just...I just don't know why he'd just leave...it's all my fault."
"Don't blame yourself; he's just confused and angry. You know what it was like at that age."
"No, no, I've been too hard on him...with the school and the chores around the house and—"
"Come on," he says, "you've been a great mother."
"I've had to be hard because you are too nice; you want to be his friend so I have to be the parent."
"Come on, don't put this on me, now."
"I'm sorry."
"It's nobody's fault."
"I'm sorry."
"It's fine. Mrs. Agirnasli said he's at their house playing in Armin's room."
"I'm on my way," she says sadly, "I'm sorry."
"Call me if anything."
Click.

And there's an awkward pubescent boy, thudding around in a quilted haze, disillusioned, looking at every angle of his constrained view with profound astonishment, analyzing it like he would all those "What's Different" picture games he used to play when he was still wetting the bed. But he finds comfort in the frigid, intimate rain, appreciating its cold embrace; and a small, sylphlike smile snakes its serpentesque silhouette onto his spread, which then vanishes at the first sight of the group of teenagers. "...If it was that easy now, then I'd do it." He accidentally sneaks up on them, scaring the brunette and causing her to drop her Marlboro Light menthol cigarette onto the disheveled haired teen's lap. He releases his tight grip and the dog runs eagerly towards the street, towards the sleeping jet-black cruiser...

...And as the man in the death wagon exits the driveway of the convenient store, he turns up the volume of the radio as a song—some metalcore, indie, non-poseur, double bass cacophony—screeches through the radio waves. His drumming grows fiercer—too much for him to control—and his thirty-two ounce drink dribbles chaotically onto his jeans and cloth seats. "Dammit, not again," he bellows. And the stout man, with barbequed salt particles outlining the grooves of his fingerprints, puts his right foot on the break pedal. He licks his identity clean and grabs several pieces of tissue paper from the glove compartment, patting his soaked know somewhat methodically, the black on black on black hearse resting in piece in the middle of the road. And he turns up the radio in an attempt to quiet the sound of some dog barking in the distance coupled with the increasingly intimate tempest. And the angels are weeping...

...And the lady driving the car speeds around some corner, unconsciously running a stop sign and nearly hitting a lost rabbit whose presence goes unnoticed. Her right foot grows heavier as her thoughts come running back into her mind like a found milk carton child does into its mother's arms. And at 45 mph, her future comes crashing into her peripherals like darkness at midnight. And she notices a group of teenagers huddled together in an intimate manner, collectively smoking—puff, puff, pass—and talking to a pubescent boy. Her eyes tighten as she strains to make out the boy's face. In doing so, she notices a dog running away from its owner—one of the teenagers—and she revolves her eyes unconsciously and watches the dog's movements. He enters the somewhat desolate street and comports himself like an aging search dog, eagerly sniffing around for something peculiar, in vain, in an attempt to substantiate its purpose and convince its owner it has found what everyone has been looking for. She attempts to avoid the canine by twisting her faux-wooden wheel in an almost embarrassingly clumsy fashion. Her tires shriek and her car hits the black on black on black hearse with such screaming perpetuity. And her metallic face greets his...

...And when the boy thought about death, he thought about his elderly grandparents dying of some unknown cancer. And when he thought about death, he thought about all those departed soldiers who lost their lives on the vague Iraqi battlefields he always heard about when his father watched CNN. And when he thought about death, he thought about the Jesus he learned of while attending CCD classes his mother made him go to out of some instinctual proclivity for morality; it's just all a part of the process. But when he saw death, he thought about nothing. And he remembered that car, and how he had spent all those trips to the beach with his friends arguing about which classmate was more attractive or what they were going to do that summer, and even pettier things. And he screams into the vague, quiet, cataclysmic abyss, "Mom...Mom, wake up."

And the group of teenagers is gasping, then silent, and the stout driver is resting loudly and the mother is bleeding profusely, and the boy is crying for God, or anyone, and the dog is howling at the irony of it all...then nothing. And the selfish boy is thinking about the bitter reality that the choice he decided to make that night was the wrong one. And the stuffed moon's obnoxious light whistles mockingly in the approaching twilight wind.