Short Stories And Stuff

A Relic

THE ACCIDENT

Although an accident was coming, the streets were smooth, the sky was stupid blue, the air smelled like you were the first one to breathe it. Perched up above the postcard town was a sun that had been set just right, and didn't burn.

(Because an accident was coming, and no one was going to expect it.)

Zhang ran. He ran, panting out of metal lungs, down the sidewalk and across a small road—without looking twice—and beyond a bakery—he couldn't spare a second to drool over the display made up of glorious cakes and breads and cookies—and Heather Bryton—who was always out a little early, no matter what, but had no school to go to—with feet that didn't step but smacked. Heather Bryton was a thirty-five-year-old widow, and she waved at him knowing full well he would not turn to see her or wave back.

(Quick!)

He adjusted his backpack, narrowly avoiding a collision with Dana Price, who had taken Roger out for a walk; Roger barked in his wake. Dana was a head of hair on a stick, with a lip curled in surprise.

"Sorry." He was the only one who heard his half-mumbled apology.

(Quicker!)

Zhang ran.

The intersection appeared to be dead as he pounded toward it—nobody wants detention—like a bullet made of flesh.

So he didn't stop. Crossed without looking. Didn't listen for the muffled hum of an approaching engine.

He should have, though. Because it was there.

An accident was coming.

And there would be a crash—

There was the sound of twisting, tearing metal, screaming at his ears till they burned. Airbags popped. Glass broke, scattered, and crunched, like a blanket of razor-sharp. Like fragments of cold sky.

An explosion in his skull!

All his senses were overwhelmed and confused, all at once. How could he see when his sight was a bit sour, his ears a bit blurry, his tongue filled with bright dots and lights?

And the ringing!

Everything around him had taken a deep breath. Everything held that breath in with a blue face. The pedestrians dotting the sidewalk—including Zhang, who had crossed the intersection unscathed—froze in place. Traffic slowed and stopped. The sky sipped the smoke from a straw.

(Up, up, up went the smoke.)

Two cars had collided. One a mid-sized, tan Corolla; the other a bulky, silver Sienna. Two bumpers had taken a metallic bite out of each other. Chewed. Spat. Kissed the marred skin.

Their spit was gasoline.

It looked like modern art. Parts of the sculpture were crushed inward and steaming, carved with no regard to aesthetics or smoothness or practicality, or crumpled up like paper, as if the artist worked with hammers for fingers, and coloured the borders with his pain.

Zhang did not react with a scream but rather sharper breaths, a rebellious heart, an icy head. Blood. He could imagine a thick stream of it, flowing from the Civic—the Civic was the most chewed up—and onto the road, saying hello at his feet.