Crash

I reached down to my right thigh and dug the heel of my hand as deeply into the muscle as I could. Pushing the ache toward my toes, I watched the approaching truck veer into my lane and out again. "He must be just as tired as I am," I thought.  I put both hands on the wheel and watched as the truck weaved into my lane again. He was slow to correct his path. I turned the wheel further to the right. The truck veered away again and I tried to wrestle the wheels back onto the pavement.


Silently, I watched as the chaffs of tall grasses brushed over the window. When the car stopped, I undid my seatbelt, keeping my hand on the ceiling to protect myself from falling too hard on my head. Somewhere, I knew my fish lay dying. As I crawled out of the car window I had rolled down earlier, I was greeted by the astonished gasps of witnesses. No one believed I could have survived.


The nurse attended to my small cuts and bruises. The pastor said a prayer. The police officer called in the license plate of the truck that had continued it's dangerous dance down the highway. The comedian said I was lucky a funeral director had not been in the line of cars behind me. I started to cry. He'd stepped on my fish.


*** One Minute Writer ***