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Dreamworks21
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Name: Sean
Country: United States
State: Virginia
Birthday: 10/21/1987
Gender: Male
Interests: Movies (watching and making), Bruce Springsteen, my brother, staying in shape, writing stuff
Expertise: Movies
Occupation: Student, TA
Industry: Other
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  JebZestyBmw03
Member Since:
12/12/2004
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| so this is how a marriage ends
not with a bang but a whimper
june 8, 2009 | | |
| One
When Robbie arrived at his car ten inches of snow had already fallen. His umbrella was starting to sag from the weight of wandering flakes, having endured a 30 minute walk. He closed it, shaking the snow of vigorously. As he did, flakes fell down his partially exposed back and onto his hair. Winter storm warning indeed - if the forecasts were any indication, this was just the beginning. He shuffled for his keys, unlocked the car, and opened the door.
Bad move.
Snow from the window and the roof of the car poured into the driverʼs seat, giving the inside of the car a look analogous to an avalanche. “Let it snow,” he said, shaking his head and throwing his bag into the passenger seat. A thud hinted at what he would never get a chance to confirm: his laptop was in the bag, and would need a new screen.
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Two
Driving down Oceanic Road, Robert - he hated Robbie - was going a cautionary 15 miles per hour. Save for the car on his tail, he was enjoying the drive home. He was halfway there, and quite proud of himself; heʼd yet to slip or slide on this slushy mix of ice and snow. Heʼd passed an accident a few miles back: two cars, fenders crushed but otherwise boring. The roads were spotty at best: clear one moment, completely covered the next.
Atlantic City was playing on the radio. “Everything dies, baby that’s fact..." He wished he could remember the singer. As he reached down to change the radio station, he heard a horn blare behind him. In his rearview mirror, he could see the car - actually an SUV, Chevy by the looks of it - swerving. It continued for a few seconds. Then a signal turned on, the SUV moved in the left lane, and started accelerating. This was notable to Robert for two reasons, the first of which was that this was a double-yellow-lined section of road; the SUV was passing in a no-pass zone. The other reason he found this interesting was that beyond the upcoming hill, he saw two beams of light emerging from the opposite direction: there was a car careening toward the SUV.
For a mere second, he imagined a vicious collision followed by a fiery explosion. It was beautiful in his mindʼs eye: an amalgam of orange flames, mangled metal, and a gradually growing puddle of blood. It was like a Robert Frost poem brought to cinematic life by Quentin Tarantino. “Wow,” he said aloud, shaking his head and smiling. When this vision passed, Robert seemingly jolted back into consciousness, slamming on the brakes as he did. He slid fifty feet, but it allowed the SUV to pass him on the left without incident, missing the car that was coming opposite of them.
As the SUV went past, he caught a fleeting glance from the passenger. He never forgot that face until has last breath: a teenage girl, banging her window with two fists, her hair a jumbled mess and her cheek smeared with blood. How he could see so much in conditions so confusing would later enter his mind; for now he could think of only one thing. He grabbed his cell phone and immediately dialed 911. The line was busy. “No!” he said, pounding the end key and redialing. Two times. Three. Finally, an operator came on the line. Before he could say a word, though, a flash in front of him caught his eye: a brief burst of light within the SUV. Another, then another.
Gun shots. He witnessed a silhouetted struggle inside the SUV, and more flashes. It was as if a lightning storm was occurring between two shadowed combatants. Faintly he heard the 911 emergency response voice in the background. A woman. “Sir,” she said. “Sir, are you there?” Outside the winter mix had subsided, but its ominous presence remained.
And as Robert grasped for his nonexistent voice, the SUV - seemingly without provocation - suddenly sped up, veered to the left, turned too fast, and barrel rolled five times on the slick, unpaved snow. From within his car, all four windows rolled tightly up, the muffled sound of metal crashing against snow-padded pavement reminded Robert more of a boxer pummeling a punching bag than a vehicle flipping end-over-end. As it came to a halt, the SUV slid on its driver side for what seemed like a hundred feet, coming to rest at the bottom of the hilly road.
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Three
As he approached the ghostly silent wreckage - the lone SUV with no one else around - Robert was holding his breath. It took him a while to realize this. Heʼd been holding it for almost a minute, ever since the SUV stopped barreling. Unbeknownst to him, it had taken Robert a good thirty seconds to summon the strength to exit his car once he had stopped a few feet from the overturned vehicle.
The smell of gasoline was in the air, and it immediately lead him to inhale. One foot in front of the other, Robert walked toward what he realized was actually not a Chevy, but a Ford. “Built tough,” he quipped under his breath. The storm had reawaken, so much so that precipitation was beginning to accumulate on the exposed passengerʼs side. Save for one giant hole in that window - he assumed it was the result of a gunshot - the side of the SUV was completely white.
He looked behind him, party out of habit (he was, after all, in the middle of a road), but also out of curiosity: his thoughts were verified when he saw a long, eerily straight trail of snow leading where the SUV had slid to its current position. It had the appearance of a monstrous T: a dirty, white, protracted stem with an SUV stretched across the top. When he peered through the blown-open passenger window, he saw a searing sight: blood. Everywhere.
It was amazing none of it had spilled onto the snow. A pool had gathered on the driverʼs side window, and as he gently opened the passengerʼs door, the partially shattered glass fell into the vehicle, allowing glass and snow to sprinkle into the SUV in a sickeningly beautiful combination.
The driver was dead. From the look of things, he had been shot three times. His head was missing several vital parts - among them a nose, an ear, and large chunks of brain and skull. Robert could now see the windshield had been shot once, as had the driverʼs side window. He assumed what he would unfortunately never be able to confirm: the driver had kidnapped a teenage girl, she had gotten hold of a gun, and hit her assailant several times before he lost control and flipped the vehicle.
“Jesus,” he said. “Did the whole clip go off?”
When he said this, the girl - heʼd momentarily forgotten her - jerked awake and let out a shriek. It scared Robert so terribly that he launched backward, bumping the door and causing it to fall back shut, releasing the remaining shards of glass into the SUV. The screaming continued and he quickly ran back over to the vehicle, opening the door and attempting to calm the girl. “Hey, hey look, the police are on the way,” he heard himself saying, using his hands to try to show that everything was OK. “Hey,” he said. “Iʼm going to unbuckle your seatbelt.” She stopped screaming and looked up at Robert. Her breathing calmed. Even covered in blood, her hair a mess, she was striking. “I’m Robbie” he said. “We need to get you out of here, we canʼt sit in the middle of the road.”
No sooner had he said this than a car came flying over the hill opposite of him. The last thing he heard was the futile effort of brakes skidding against pavement, where the road had been exposed from the sliding SUV.
And the last thing he saw was Frost mixed with Tarantino.
Snow mixed with blood. | | |
| What TV character do you relate to most, and why?
I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!
I'm not quite as harsh, but I'd say House mainly because of the way I tend to look at things logically, as opposed to emotionally. | | |
| Someday girl, I don't know when
We're gonna get to that place
Where we really wanna go
We'll walk in the sun
I was in church Sunday talking to a guy who's been teaching at VCU for over 25 years. He asked me about the classes I'm taking and my majors. The conversation eventually led to my expressing the fact that I wanted to go to film school in L.A. He just had two words: "Do it." He just kept saying it over and over again. I'm not one to be inspired by one conversation, but it left me with a feeling just short of euphoria. | | |
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