Drunk Driving For Beginners

Glass glitters on the pavement like stars in the sky and I can't help but think of glitter on the smooth curves of a stripper or the light show you get when someone punches you hard in the face. Eyes closed, pain rippling through your mind, and purple and white flashes against the screens of your eyelids.

I watched this all happen through whiskey spectacles and had to blink a thousand times to clear the noise from my mind. Metal and glass and flesh all screaming and twisting in horrible ways. A pedestrian disappearing as though they were an ant crushed by the finger of God.

One of the car doors opens and a man stumbles, legs working like a newborn deer. A blood-soaked doe crashing into a concrete meadow. He sits down and leans against the battered rear door of his ride and begins to laugh.

No one else in the crowd moves. Some people haven't even bothered to leave the bars that dot the road, just standing at the windows, drink in hand, wondering if its worth exiting to watch.

Questions rise from all around, What Happened? Did You See Anything?

Christ, I think, what a mess. Before long I'm wondering if this isn't some kind of delusion. No one seems to have seen anything.

I walk over to the man on the ground and kneel down, looking at him like a child does a frog, curious, unknowing.

-Are you ok, I ask him.

He spits blood like red mouthwash and begins laughing and I see that a few of his teeth are missing. I wonder if they are in that tidalpool of blood between his legs or if maybe he swallowed them. Maybe, I think, they are shoved up into his skull like some ghoulish teratoma.

-Hey, my calm disturbs me as I push the hair back from his eyes, my hand coming away red. Hey, man, can you hear me?

-You gotta light? he asks and pulls out a pack of fags from his pocket. You gotta light? I need a smoke something awful.

I shake my head and he fumbles a gold zippo from his pocket to strike his coffin nail alive.

Police sirens howling as wolves in the night, red and blue dancing in the distance. I stand up and look into the other car. No one in it. Driver's and passenger's side doors open. For some reason the windshield wipers are going at their fastest rate and I notice they are smearing someone's blood manicly. Children's hands playing with pasta sauce on their highchair tray.

-Fuck, I say as I lay down and look under the car and into the trembling eyes of the pedestrian. Can you hear me?

-Yes... they say in a soft whisper. I can't feel anything. Anything. I can't hear myself. They pause and then shout as loud as they can, I can't hear myself!

A man in the middle of an impact crater behind thick glass. I stand again and look at the crowd circled around me. Inextricably linked to the tragedy seemingly by my own sheer morbid curiosity. Did I think I could help these people?

At my feet the driver is coughing and I see the glass in his stomach. I could pluck it from him like a ruby from the earth. His cigarette butt is coated in blood. I think of the attractive women in the bars who pass cigarettes back and forth stained with lipstick.

Laying back down I look at the pedestrian and realize I can't tell if they are man or woman. Most of their hair has been torn off, exposing scalp and blood and bone. I wonder what forces of physics brought them under the car like that.

My own intoxication and shock makes everything seem more unreal. Oddly enough I feel no nausea. I stand just as the first cop arrives at the scene. Quickly I crouch down and look at the driver. No motion, coughing stopped, blood oozing from mouth and stomach wound. The cigarette in his lips is burning down, a length of gray ask like a dried worm ever growing. I quickly grab his gold zippo and stand up again, pocketing it as the cop approaches me.

-Hey, he says, were you involved? Did you see anything?

I saw everything. Every last damn thing. But I'm drunk and broken inside so I say, -No, sir, not a thing. I just wanted to see if I could help.

-Well get the fuck out of here, the paramedics are on their way.

-Yes, sir.

I do my best to walk away in a straight line. At my car I play with the lighter, wiping the bloody fingerprints from its smooth yellow surface. Once about seven cop cars and two ambulances are at the scene I open the door to my own car and take a deep, steadying breath before starting the engine.

I don't think about the missing driver from the other car. I was there when it all happened. They were just about to pull into the road when the now-dead driver of the other car swerved hard, cut three lanes of traffic and a median, and struck them head on.

Cheating death is an art, I think to myself. If you do something out of stupidity you'll be killed. That guy was a beginner. If you do something out of the thrill of the wrong, you'll make it ok. I'm an expert. An expert at the fuck-awful thrill that comes with risking it all for no purpose but to let fate deal you a hand. That's why I stole the lighter. That's why I stuck around and looked at everything so closely. That was my closest brush yet.

I replay the scene as I drive away from it all.

I remember when it first happened, how I had felt the seat belt tighten across my chest as my whole body slammed forward. -Jesus, I had said, turning to look at the girl who had picked me up at the bar. Did you run into something?

-No, she had said, dazed, pulling herself up from the airbag. No, I was waiting to pull out of the lot. There was that person crossing in front of us...

-What the fuck... I remember being shocked by the sight of the hood of our own car buckling into the windshield. Barely visible over it the shape of another car. Jesus Christ, I think someone ran into us.

I stepped out of the car. Glass on the pavement like stars in the sky. The brief hopeful idea that this might be a bad dream. The relief when I notice no one saw anything. No one saw me in the car.

Live to fight another day. The thrill of driving without consciousness kicking in when I make it home and have no recollection of driving beyond the parking lot.