In 500... (or less)

Intersection

A blur. The hideous sounds of collapsing metal and shattering glass. Then it was silent for just a moment. The world stopped.

In that frozen moment, Jerry's friend, Mark was impaled by a shard of metal. He would die in the next fleeting moment.

Jerry's beer was in the process of spilling. Later, he'd be the only one to walk away from the crash.

At the end of Jerry's pickup truck, a red sedan was recoiling from the impact of the crash. It had started to lift off the ground. The family inside had not yet reacted to the impact. The girl in the backseat, closest to where Jerry's truck collided with her family's car after running the red light, was already dead. Her body would fling lifelessly toward her brother, Danny, in a split second.

The driver's door of the sedan had just begun to strike the driver of the car, Dan Sr. The blunt force of the impact would shatter his ribs and collapse his lung. The frame of the door would shatter his skull and kill him in a matter of moments. He was still smiling, listening to his children recount their day at the amusement park.

This was the last moment his wife, Beth, would be able to walk. It was the last moment before the sum of Danny's injuries would ruin his dreams of playing professional sports. Nearly every bone on the right side of his body would be broken or mangled when the car began to roll into a field off the road.

Two groups of people, traveling on perpendicular roads, brought to the same place at the same time from much different paths, finding their lives intersecting.

Behind Jerry was the police officer who had just turned on his lights to pull over the speeding pickup. He would have found no driver's license. Only a drunk who'd lost his license years earlier for drinking and driving too many times. Jerry and Mark were laughing and thought the cop had no chance of catching them. Laws about drinking and driving didn't matter to Jerry, and neither did the red light.

When it would come time to answer for his crime, he'd blame it on his dead friend, Mark. It was easier than the remorse of knowing he killed three people and ripped a family in half. The pain of the truth would be unbearable without booze to wash it away. In prison, this lie would be his medication.

The sounds of the aftermath would come soon enough. The sirens, the crying, the ambulance speeding to the hospital. Jerry kicking his feet in the gravel along the road as he sobered up.

Their lives were different, but the world doesn't care. The world doesn't stop.