The Notch

He knew if he logged any more freeway miles, it would go badly for him in his semi-somnolent state, so he got onto the two-lane highway, 223, still about 100 miles from home. There were more distractions, more things to look at, fewer minutes to spend in his head instead of on the road. In theory.

It was probably bad juju to pick this road, though. Ten years earlier, while he was in the process of washing out of college, he often just got in his car and drove, for miles and miles, for two or three day trips out and back to his college town, charging all the gas to his credit card, sowing the seeds for current bankruptcy. On this spot right......wait for it.....look for the sign......here, someone turned left into him while he was tootling about 60. T-boned him but good, wrapped his car around him. No feeling in the world like an accident. Time stretches, elongates, becomes viscous with false possibility as you watch events unfold with a clinical detachment, then TWANG reality snaps back into place and there's metal grinding on metal and air whooshing and the acrid smell of burned oil and a horn going insane with urgent concern. He walked away with a few minor abrasions to legs and arms, and a notch in his left ear. He was strangely resistant to drugs of any kind, so he remembered they had to numb the ear three times before they could get it stitched up. The car was totaled. His scholarship was revoked two months later. The end of the road. But tonight....he rolled on past, and the world shrugged. Big deal, kid, things are tough all over.