Broken Reel

"What the fuck? Where am..."

Andy Solomon cut his own question off as his body jolted into an upright position. He felt as though he had been asleep only to wake up with his hands on the steering wheel of his beat up old Volvo. Andy inadvertently jerked the car left, almost entirely off of the far shoulder, before settling back into his own lane. The tires screeched in direct protest. He could feel his pulse pounding in his neck and throbbing at his temples.

Thank God the road's dry he thought to himself.

He had been lucky that no one was coming towards him. Damned lucky. The thought raced through his mind that if he woke up just in time to be creamed by a log truck that he'd spend eternity wandering around in limbo, not knowing if he was alive or dead. This cheery thought was forced from Andy's mind and replaced with his original question:

Where WAS he?

He had no recollection of leaving the house. No matter how hard he tried to focus, he couldn't remember anything prior to waking up in the car. Andy found that no matter what he did, he couldn't really remember anything. There seemed to be some idea far off, like an unreachable itch deep down in his brain. He ran his left thumb and forefinger under his eyes and then down his face and over the scruff of a fledgling beard.

Ahead of him, the road winded through a seemingly never-ending greenbelt, around curves and over hills. One of these hills gave way to a sharp, banked curve. Something caught Andy's eye on the roadside. There was a wreath, the kind that you so often see to commemorate an event that Andy thought most people would rather forget. There was something else. Attached to the main wreath was a second, much smaller wreath.

Andy put the makeshift memorial out of mind. His mind was still racing but the pace seemed to be slowing down gradually. Coffee. There had to be somewhere to stop around here, a coffee shop or truck stop. Christ, the road seemed so monotonous. Maybe it was only due to the exhaustion that seemed to be soaked into his bones. Pulling one hand off of the steering wheel, he slapped himself across the face, hoping to knock off some of the grogginess.

No good.

He scoured the dash, console and passenger seat for his cell phone. If he had signal he could find out where the hell he was. No phone. He checked his pockets, then the cup holders. Nothing. His pulse was picking up again, this time due to anger more than anxiety.

"What the fuck? What the fuck? WHAT THE FU....."

The last word slowed and stuck in Andy's throat. He switched his foot from the accelerator to the brake and gently guided the car onto the shoulder, his eyes wide and disbelieving. For a moment, he sat in the idling car, his breathing heavy and fast. He looked into his rearview mirror, the wreaths grotesquely illuminated by the Volvo's brake lights.

Andy looked at the console clock.

10:01.

A vicious attack of anxiety swept over him like a village being consumed by a tsunami. He reached for the shifter only to realize that he had never taken the car out of drive. His right foot slammed down on the accelerator, throwing up plumes of dirt and gravel. Behind him, the wash of brake lights slowly evaporated, and the wreaths faded back into darkness.

A blanket of dead leaves was illuminated briefly before being blown off of the road. Despite his increasing speed, Andy was still casting long looks behind him, as if some haunted tree was going to uproot itself and come lurching after him. This all-encompassing fear was wholly irrational. Andy knew this, but knowing it did not lessen the quality of it. It seemed to fill the car like a dense fog. The fear did have the benefit of keeping Andy alert. He seemed to know each curve of the road before he got there, every hill, every...