THE BOOK OF DAN
by
Timothy W. Long
Dan stared at the blood on the tire iron, then at the body, all to aware of how the head was caved in, one eye socket vacant and empty. The other just a mangled mess. Stuff leaked onto the ground; stuff he didn't want to think about.
He looked up as a car rocketed past, pasting him with a sheen of dirty water but he let that one go. His rage meter had peaked, crossed the red line, and then flat lined.
“What did I do? What did I do? What did I do!?” he keened. The corpse didn’t grant him an answer.
Dan dropped the metal bar like it’d sprouted electrodes. It clattered to the hard pavement and landed next to the body. Oops, he thought. Watch out for falling tire irons dirty water, and mushed eyeballs Mr. Corpse. He wanted to giggle at the absurdity. Then he wanted to puke.
Another car roared by; this time there was a long honk as it sped into the distance.
It was early morning, and the sun was doing battle with rain soaked clouds but losing miserably. The road was damp where his car had stopped at an angle to the median. It wasn’t much of a parking job, more of a slam on your breaks and slide off the road kind of job.
Dan really had tried to keep his cool. He’d done all the tricks in the book, breathed in and out, counted to ten, slammed his palm against the steering wheel until it stung, but none had worked, and there was a damn good reason for that. It was because, if there was on thing that Dan hated, it was a fucking tailgater.
As far as Dan was concerned there was only one cure. You had to rattle the other driver, make them pay attention to your brake light. So he’d slammed on his, just to get the other drivers attention, to say back off jerk-weed, do you really want to explain to your insurance company why you hit me? Show him that riding his bumper was unacceptable in the Book of Dan.
The other car had sent a satisfying screech of tires his way but instead of backing off and obeying the Book of Dan; the car had sped up and proceeded to sit on his bumper for the next mile and a half. In retaliation, Dan had slowed to the exact speed limit and set his cruise control for fuck you.
The car had nosed into the oncoming traffic lane, like it wanted to pass him. Let him, Dan thought, I'll just speed up if he tries it.
He realized that he hadn’t even heard the last few minutes of the early morning talk radio show. Instead, a commercial had come on and proclaimed that it could help him grow hair in record time. He hated commercials, hated them almost as much as tailgaters.
He flipped through the car stereo channels looking for an angry song to feed his mood. Dan felt like he was angrier every day. Maybe it was the constant rain that always made him late. Often times he would arrive at work, out of breath, shirt soaked with sweat, water running down his face. He’d stomp to his desk, throw his jacket and briefcase down then sulk for fifteen minutes, snapping at anyone that dared to utter a kind word or offer a morning greeting.
Dan glanced in his rear view mirror, but in a surreptitious manner, with just his eyes. He didn’t swivel his head because he didn’t want the other driver to think he was even paying attention. Then he saw the twin lights just a few feet from his bumper and his temper exploded like a ripe melon dropped on the pavement.
SPLAT!
Dan didn’t have a middle ground; he went from cool as a cucumber to fucking pissed in the blink of an eye.
