Car Crash

Through the windshield the night is shattered and I better understand. Elated and horrified by moments that stretch out forever, I remember her then drip drip drip Finn’s mom opened the door. Saturday night. She said: You boys are all getting so big. But I knew she wasn’t talking about me. I was smaller than the rest of them. Short, narrow-shouldered and towheaded ghost-child. Finn was at the table, emptying chips from a bag into a plastic bowl, and Samuel was looking at his phone beside him. Hi. Hey. Finn’s mom said that dinner would be ready soon but we’d wait to eat until Dylan got there and we all groaned because Dylan was always late. I took my seat at the table and imagined him walking across town along the traintracks. The plastic bag in his hand filled with beefsticks and whatever new game we’d have to wait until Finn’s mom went away to play. That’s really what we all looked forward to. Dylan’s dad was the cool dad because to him R ratings meant nothing, and drugs and sex and violence were just part of life, and adult words were just words and sometimes boys had to speak like fucking men.

After dinner Finn’s mom taught us how to play a card game. She poured us orange soda and we laughed and when Samuel won he got so excited he knocked his cup to the floor drip drip drip I knew right away that the night was going to be a disaster. I knew it from the music pounding into my shoes and I knew it even earlier when Finn called me and said: Let’s get fucking retarded. We got drinks and from the corner watched everyone dancing. My own small reflection, my thin stature, reflected by the mirrored backwalls, and before that them spinning. The lights crawled terribly along the edges.

At some point I saw her in the crowd and I pointed her out and Finn said that we had to go talk to her and I made excuses. I have to piss first, I said. In the bathroom I watched my laces struggle on top of wet tile. Sinks running. Someone heaving while others ranted. Dude, did you see? Yeah, man. Crazy. Like fucking insane man drip drip drip Mr. Arnoch had turned the lights down low and switched on the projector and it flickered and hummed, dully growing to life on the screen. He said we’d be learning about war and as he spoke I studied the shapes of these long-dead men. I wondered what they’d thought of their lives, and I remembered about her head and how the man on the screen had held it by the hair and I wondered what other things they’d witnessed.

At lunch I still saw their young faces. Not much older than me, and they had been smiling. What did they know that I didn’t? Mr. Arnoch said that men have fought for as long as there have been men. Birth, childhood, then war and violence—that cycle I was left out of.

At lunch Dylan talked about some friend of his uncle. He said: This guy was a menace, a packmule. He ran through these war zones, my uncle told me about it, and they shot at him over and over but he never got hit. He should’ve died so many times but he was lucky and never got hit.

What happened to him? asked Finn.

He went into underwater welding after his deployments and he was working on this bridge or something and his boss fucked up the air and now he’s braindead. He went too deep and they had to crane him out of the water like a rotten fish drip drip drip Finn’s mom finally went to bed but we kept playing cards until we all remembered. Dylan got his game and we plugged everything into the television, sitting giddy as the screen got bright.

The soldier in the game was deep-voiced and the machine gun rattled blood all over the camera. Spies and betrayal and terrorists, we watched it all, entranced. After a bit Finn was playing and the character marched through a crowd and the gun was cutting them all down. People ran and screamed and it was Finn’s job to shoot them before they got away and the sound of it was getting louder and we were all pointing: get ‘em, get ‘em, you missed one, he’s almost getting away, up top, up top, reload, Finn kill ‘em. And then it was almost over and as the screen darkened we could see his mother’s silhouette on the glass. Not for children, she said. We will talk about this later. It’s far too late. Go to bed.

We protested and groaned but she just turned and left again.

Finn said: What a bitch. And we agreed.

But did you see her nipples? said Samuel.

We all snickered except for Finn who told us to shut up.

Dylan said: I can’t believe you got to suck on those honkers, Finn.

And he got angry and Dylan made sucking noises and Finn hit him and someone mooed drip drip drip I came back from the bathroom and Finn was already drunk and he told me to catch up. Three shots lined up on the table and I took them one after another. Vodka running down my chin drip drip drip Her face is cut and her throat also, arms splayed out crazy. The car alarm over and over and over. But the grass is swaying beyond the headlights and the moon is there on the dash and it’s all almost beautiful. I finally understand. I look back at her, and the blood drip drip drip We went to the dance floor where I could feel the music in my bones. The floor was sticky with spilt things and the warmth of all the bodies pulsed like a heartbeat and soon we were spinning with the rest of them. Smiles in arcs. Lightlines and trails of neon.

She was standing somewhere in the middle of the crowd. Catching glimpses of her, I pushed through, braver now. Our eyes met for a moment and I hoped she would remember me from years ago. Excuse me, excuse me, coming through. Finn wasn’t there anymore. He’d been sucked into it. And I saw her eyes again, limbs thrown up all around. She smiled. I was right there next to her and I leaned in to say something and there was sweat on her neck from the heat and the dancing, trailing down her skin drip drip drip We lay there in the dark. Finn kept flicking Samuel, both of them laughing, and suddenly Dylan sat upright with phonelight revealing his tight face. I was eating chips and swept the crumbs from my sleeping bag. Holy shit. Guys. Look at this.

Samuel took the phone. Woah.

What? said Finn, leaning into Samuel’s lap. Jesus fucking christ. Start it over, start it over.

What? I said. Let me see. I watched their faces widen and loosen. Guys, what?

Let me restart it, said Finn. He flicked the screen then held out the phone upside down. I took it and watched.

A man wearing a jersey and holding a machete was speaking Spanish into the camera, a woman crying at his knees. I didn’t understand what he was saying but I could see that she was scared. Another younger man came into the frame and he pushed the woman down and pulled back on her shoulders with his foot on her calf and then the machete man pulled on her hair and started to hack away at her neck. There was screaming and shouting and the thick cords of her neck resisted the machete’s blows and I saw that it was real from the ugliness of it and the difficulty—both his difficulty cutting and the woman’s difficulty dying—and as I watched I forgot that I was there in the dark livingroom with my friends, forgot even who I was, and then the man pulled loose the head from the last thin strip of flesh, raising it by the hair, and it bobbed and spun for the camera. He kept saying things I didn’t understand and her eyes were half open and blood spilled from the neck wound drip drip drip Hey, I shouted over the music. Do you remember me?

She said that she did.

Let me buy you a drink.

Yeah, okay, smiling.

I grabbed her hand and pulled us out of the dancing. At the bar I ordered more vodka sodas, even though I was already drunk, and the man behind the bar spun the liquor bottle around in the air before the clear liquid splashed over the ice drip drip drip I thought about the video for days afterward. When it ended I realized I’d been so consumed, so elated that I’d seen the real thing, that I hadn’t realized I was still one step removed from the truth. It was only a video. Playing, replaying, her head being cut off forever on a loop. It was only a recording, but the fear in her eyes and the blood flowing from her neck drip drip drip Then we went to a corner of the bar where we could hear better, and after a while I looked away and saw Finn dancing with some guy I didn’t recognize at the edge of the crowd and then looked back to her. I want something real, I said.

Not long after we left. Drunk driving, flying. We made each other laugh and I felt strong. But I couldn’t stay distracted because this was as close as I’d come to the real thing and I didn’t want to be patient any longer. There was open road for miles ahead of us. It was simple. Beautiful. The wheel was so delicate in my hand and I jerked it free like her head on the screen and in those tumbling, thrashing moments I knew I was as close to it as I ever would be. No noise disturbed the peace I felt. Not the metal crunching or the sound of bones or her screams. It was the quiet of deep water underneath a world on fire drip drip drip Her eyes are dead and open and in them I see a reflection of myself reordered, hearing nothing while finally those dark shapes of life resolve in bright color.  ⏱︎