What follows below is a short story I wrote in 2004 for a writing competition. It was supposed to be 2,000 words long, but ended up being a bit over 2,400 words long - thus it was never entered to that competition. It was briefly published by a Gothic/Horror website which subsequently shut down several months later. (Not due to my story... or so I hope) Since then it has laid silently on a dusty CD waiting to be found again, which I did recently. I wasn't going to do anything with it at all, but decided to publish it here instead of just letting it rest away on that old CD... Take it for what it is, a trip down what could be... it's a little strange, but I like it... hopefully you will too... with all that said: Enjoy!
Intersection
A Short Story
By: N. Wilson
March 2004
As Steve walked out to his car, he thought to himself that today had been a very good day. When he woke up this morning, his wife Samantha had told him that she was pregnant. At work his boss had told him he was in line for a big promotion, and he had even managed to win $100 on one of those raffle tickets they sell every so often in the warehouse he worked in. “Not a bad day at all” he thought to himself as he brushed the snow off of his car. Actually, the only thing Steve had to complain about today had been the weather. It was March, and after several weeks of nice warm weather, suddenly the temperature dropped and the snow had fallen. At first the forecasters had called for only and inch or two of snow. Now, nine and a half hours after Steve saw the first forecast this morning there was already 6 inches, and the snow was still falling. “Oh well,” he thought, “I guess I’ll be getting home late tonight.”
Steve climbed into his car, cranked up the heater, turned on the radio to a local rock station that was known for having the weather on every few minutes, and prepared for a long drive home. He had called ahead and let Sam know he would be late, so she wouldn’t worry. She was busy preparing a celebration dinner at home, and told him not to rush. She wanted him there in one piece, not stranded alongside the road in a snow bank. Keeping all that in mind, he put the car in gear and cautiously pulled out of the parking lot at work. He drove down the snow-covered road, trying not to rush, but still rushing himself a little bit. He was excited about the baby, and couldn’t wait to talk to Sam again and get all the details he hadn’t gotten that morning. They had been trying for this baby for months, so Steve figured it was a small miracle that she had even gotten pregnant. After spending countless hours and dollars on doctor’s office visits and various fertility clinics trying every imaginable combination of medication and testing, they had finally managed to get pregnant. And that, he thought, was worth celebrating.
Steve’s drive home was notoriously boring, several long straight roads without any turns and with the road being surrounded on either side by fields which in the winter were just long stretches of earth. Even with the added difficulty of driving in a snowstorm, Steve found his mind wandering off. The radio had said that the snow would be ending soon, and by the weekend the temperatures would be high enough to melt most of it away for good. “Thank God,” he thought. He was tired of snow at this point, it had already been a long winter and he was looking forward to an end to it. A good song started playing on the radio, and Steve unconsciously taped his hands on the wheel. He was getting lost in the drive and in his excited thoughts about the new baby. He found that letting his mind wander was the only thing that made this drive bearable, especially on a dark and snowy night. He had even spent several hundred dollars to have a CD player installed in his car so he wouldn’t be stuck listening to the radio all the time.
A loud, sudden screeching noise jarred him from his thoughts. Out of the corner of his eye he saw huge, bright headlights to his right. Glancing back, he realized what had happened. Lost in his thoughts and the song, he had inadvertently run the only stop sign on this part of his drive and had nearly gotten himself crushed by a tractor-trailer who was going the other way at an excessive speed. “Thank God for small favors” he prayed to himself, realizing that it was yet another small miracle that the eighteen-wheeler had been able to stop at all. “Two seconds later, and I wouldn’t be making it home for dinner at all,” he said to his empty car.
A few minutes later, he settled back into his drive, and happily realized that the song he had been listening to was still on. He cranked the radio up and went back to tapping his fingers on the wheel and thinking about his family. Even though he had only found out about the baby nine hours ago, he could already picture his son once he was born. He was quite positive it was a boy. So positive in fact that he had run out on his lunch hour and bought him a small baseball and glove. He and Sam hadn’t spoken of names yet, and he was afraid to try and decide one without consulting her. She had wanted this as much, if not more, than he had. He was sure she had spent most of her afternoon looking at the spare bedroom and starting to rearrange it to accommodate all the baby furniture she would put in there.
Steve could picture her there, moving things around in the room. They had been together for five years, and married for three of those years. In those years Steve had managed to fall more in love with her everyday. People often speak of how someone’s little idiosyncrasies will drive you nuts once you live together for any period of time. Steve disagreed. He thought that those very little habits were what made him love Sam. Thinking about those habits made Steve’s mind wander back to when he first me Sam. He had been working at a gas station, and she had been finishing up college. She came in to get some gas in her little red Neon (the same car Steve was driving right now) and he had instantly fallen in love. When she came up to the counter to pay for her gas, he had asked her out on the spot. He didn’t even realized what he had said until she said yes. She wrote her number down on the credit slip, and walked out before Steve even realized what had happened. Two nights later they were at the movies watching a horror film, with her frightened and huddling close to him. Within two weeks, it was like they had known each other for life. Ever since then, Steve had felt like he was living in a dream world. Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined being with someone who was as attractive, smart, and funny as she was. When they first met he thought she was way out of his league, and now five years later, he still felt that way.
Steve’s mind slipped away from his thoughts for a second, just long enough to register that the song he had been listening to was still on the radio. He figured the CD he had put in must be skipping. “Two hundred dollars for a CD player, and it skips, even when there aren’t any bumps. That’s workmanship for you these days.” He said to the empty car. He looked forward, and settled back in for his drive. By the way it felt he still had at least a half hour until he got home. “I need to find a job closer to home.” He thought again. He again started to relax, and drift into his memories. He wasn’t really aggravated about the radio, it had been a good day after all and he wasn’t going to let the stupid radio change that. It was a good song after all, why argue.
Up ahead, Steve saw a grouping of trees that marked his first turn off of this straight and lonely road. After that turn there was at least more to look at, as he turned into a residential area that marked the outskirts of the town in which he lived. Steve’s mind started wandering back to the day they moved into the little house they bought. It wasn’t a large house by any stretch of the imagination. There were just two bedrooms, an adequate living room, the kitchen to which the dinning room was attached, and an average sized bathroom. The size of the house didn’t matter to them at that point in life, when they opened up the front door for the first time the house seemed as large as a mansion. Steve had jokingly carried Sam through the threshold that first day, and then straight to the bedroom. They had spent the next two days unpacking their belongings and making love in their house. They both had liked the feel of saying that, “Their House”. In the back of his mind, Steve had a sense that they had finally ‘made it’. He had that sense even more today. He had a good job, a good house, an amazing wife, and now he would have his first child. Plus there was still a great song on the radio.
That last thought jarred him a little bit. He glanced down at the CD player in the car and was surprised to realize it was still playing that same song. Even with his mind on other things, enough time had to have passed for the song to change. Plus he hadn’t heard the noise his CD player made when the tracks skipped. He hit the eject button on the CD player but the CD wouldn’t eject. This was starting to seem a little strange. He glanced up at the road to make sure he was still headed straight, wouldn’t want to get into an accident over the CD player after all, and then glanced back down at his radio. He looked at the display and realized his error. He hadn’t been listening to a CD he had been listening to the radio. “Some radio station attendant is going to fired,” he thought. “That same song has been playing for at least 15 minutes.” He decided to change the radio station and see if he could get an updated weather report, since the guy at this station obviously didn’t care to take that CD off. He hit the seek button on his radio, but nothing happened. He hit it again, but the station stayed the same. For that matter, so did the song. At this point, he also listened a little closer to the song. It hadn’t just been playing all the way through and restarting itself. It had been playing the same ten or fifteen seconds of the song over and over again. Steve started to get a little nervous and decided to turn the radio off. He hit the power button but nothing happened. Now he was starting to get seriously worried. Strange things never happened to him, and in his orderly life, THIS was strange. He glanced back up to check the road again, and for the first time in his life he felt real terror.
When he looked up again, he noticed that the trees he had seen earlier were still the same distance away. For a few seconds they would seem to get closer, and then they would fade back. Being a logical person, he couldn’t find an explanation for this. As he watched the road, and the trees he also noticed another strange pattern. While the song on his radio played forward, the trees moved closer. When the song bounced back, so did the trees. Steve was now terrified. He searched his mind for an explanation of what was going on. He couldn’t find one. The only thought that clearly popped into his head was the theme from the old Twilight Zone television show.
Attempting to regain control of the situation, Steve took his foot off the accelerator of the car. Nothing happened. The car refused to slow down, instead keeping what appeared to be a steady speed. Steve was starting to sweat. He reached over and turned the heater down. That didn’t work either. He tried the window, but it wouldn’t go down. On the verge of panic, Steve took both of his hands off the wheel and fished in his pockets for his cell phone. Two things happened at this point. One, the car didn’t swerve at all even though it badly needed an alignment. Two, Steve started to realize he might be in a situation that was totally out of his control. Looking at his cell phone Steve realized that it had no service. He tossed it to the passenger seat, and looked forward again. Even thought he was more frightened than he had ever been before, he still thought of Sam. He thought of the one other time he had felt like this.
He had been married to Sam for about a year when he realized something was wrong. He couldn’t tell what, but he knew something was off. Her eyes, which were usually bright, seemed cloudy and distant. Dark circles appeared under them, as though she hadn’t been sleeping. While he knew something was wrong, he also knew he had to keep going to work, or they’d never be able to afford that house they had been looking at. On one particularly bad day he had almost decided not to go to work, sensing that something horribly bad was going to happen when he wasn’t around. The dutiful voice in his head told him he had to go to work, or he would be putting their future in jeopardy. Wanting to be the great provider for his family, Steve ignored the dark feeling he had and went in to work. Once there, a grave feeling passed over him, almost the same feeling he had at this very moment. At two-o’clock in the afternoon he jumped out of his chair, and left work. He gave no reason, because he couldn’t have known the reason even if he had wanted to share it. He just knew he needed to get home. He darted through the door to their little one bedroom apartment, to find Samantha sprawled out on the floor with a bottle of pills next to her. He had no idea how long she had been there, or even what the pills were. Without pausing, and being carried along only on sheer adrenaline, he grabbed the pill bottle and hoisted Sam off the floor. He carried her to their car (the same one which he was now driving), and drove at an inexcusably high speed to get her to the hospital. They had been able to revive her, but barely. That night, he sat next to her bed and watched her, as she seemed to have horrible dreams. She would mumble things under her breath that he couldn’t quite understand. He only remembered two words she had said that night, “run” and “sign”. He had never been able to make any sense of them. The next morning, after she had woken up, she said she was sorry. At that moment, that was enough for him. Steve would later find out that she had been depressed at their not being able to have a child together. He didn’t know what the feeling was that told him to go and help her that day. However, right now, he was wondering if she was having that same feeling.
Since the world seemed to be moving in ten second intervals, Steve had no idea how long he had been lost in his thoughts when he heard that screeching noise again. His eyes suddenly focused on the road in front of him again, and on the trees that never seemed to get any closer. He looked down and realized he had pressed the numbers “45683968” into the keypad. He didn’t really care why, as the phone was useless at this point anyway. He tried to focus all of his energy on figuring out what was happening, and how he was going to get himself back to Sam and their unborn child. Steve put both hands on the wheel and smashed his foot on the gas pedal, hoping to jumpstart himself forward, past these 10 never-ending seconds. Nothing happened. Steve pounded his hands on the steering wheel out of frustration. He was convinced he would never see Sam, or his not as yet born child, again. The screeching sound came again, this time he was thinking clearly enough to hear where it was coming from. He looked to his right, and suddenly he realized what was about to happen. Frantically, he tried to bring his mind to other thoughts, hoping if he distracted himself again time would freeze for just a while longer. Memories flashed in his head: eating an ice-cream cone when he was a child, his High School graduation, his father’s funeral, an image of his mother, his grandparents, old girlfriends. Despite this effort time moved forward again, and one last word crossed his mind. This final word came out as a scream.
The driver of the eighteen-wheeler was a man named Danny Troutman. Danny had never had an accident before in his life. He always drove at a safe speed, and obeyed every traffic law. He expected others to as well. He was traveling at the posted 55 mph speed that the state felt was safe for this particular stretch of road. He was almost home, and he knew these roads well. He’d been out on the road for 5 days, and was happy to be on these familiar roads. The snow didn’t bother him much, as the roads were straight and his old rig had been through much worse storms than this. He’d been having a good day after all, and the local radio station had a good song playing. He was driving along happily when his world collided with Steve’s. He never even saw the little red neon, until he collided with it.
The snow had made any attempt at a sudden slowdown impossible for Danny, even if he had seen the car. The rig exploded into the passenger side of the neon, and pushed it along for almost a full quarter of a mile before finally coming to a stop. Pieces of the compact car were strewn all over the road. The car had nearly been ripped into two pieces. Danny jumped out of the cab of his truck the second it had stopped. He had not been injured at all, and his truck had only minor damage. The Neon and its lone occupant was another story. Steve never even stood a chance at survival. Even though the noise of the crash was deafening Danny would later swear he had heard the driver of the neon scream when the two vehicles collided, and he wondered if it was true that your life flashed before your eyes before you died.
Samantha was at home, preparing their celebration dinner. She had just enjoyed the most wonderful day of her life. She found out that she was pregnant, and that their dreams of being a family would finally come true. She had even heard the baby’s heartbeat. She knew Steve was excited, and she couldn’t wait for him to get home. She was making his favorite dinner, a nice baked ziti recipe she had learned from her mother in law. She leaned over to check the ziti in the oven when a sudden white flash hit her, and she could have sworn she heard Steve screaming her name. She sat down and tried to convince herself that she had just bent over too quickly. She breathed a quick sigh and said, “That’s all, just a little hot flash. That’s to be expected with a pregnancy.” She smiled to herself and sat in her chair for a few minutes before going back to work on dinner. Thirty minutes later, the phone rang. This time it was Sam who was screaming.
The official police report would say that Steve had run the stop sign, and that the driver of the eighteen-wheeler had no chance to stop his rig. Steve would be reported dead on impact. No mention would be made of a time lapse, or the world stopping and repeating ten seconds. After the wreck, Samantha was required to gather their personal belongs from the car. When she recovered Steve’s cell phone, she saw the numbers “45683968” on the display. She was confused, and wrote the number down, meaning to call it when she got a chance. The driver of the eighteen-wheeler had tried to call and somehow apologize, but she refused to take his call. She didn’t blame him for anything, it wasn’t his fault Steve ran the stop sign after all, but the thought of talking to the person who killed her child’s father was still just too much to bear right now. Steve’s family helped with the funeral arrangements, hoping to take some of the stress off of her.
Sam did eventually meet Danny however. It happened the day of Steve’s funeral. When the services were over, Samantha walked alone to the limousine, which was parked nearby and ready to take her home. On her way there, Danny approached her cautiously, knowing she wanted nothing to do with him. After introducing himself and assuring that she wouldn’t go into a rage and start slapping him, Danny offered his condolences. Sam accepted them politely and started to walk back to the limo. “Excuse me,” said Danny. “I just have one other thing. I know you don’t know me, and I know you believe I’m responsible for the death of your husband. I am truly sorry for all of that. I also know that you’re expecting a new child, it was in one of the newspaper reports about the accident. I don’t expect you to want my help, and I don’t expect that you’ll accept it but I’m going to offer it anyway. See, my father passed away in a car accident before I was born. My mother ended up raising me with no help, and I remember how hard it was on her. I can’t offer you a lot, but I can offer you this.” With that, he held out a check to Samantha. It was made out to her in the amount of thirty thousand dollars. “I can’t accept this, I really cant. I appreciate the offer, and it isn’t because I blame you for what happened, but this… this is too much.” Sam started to cry. “Take it, please. You may never understand, and I’m not totally sure I understand. I just know that I need to do this. I need to do this because of my mother. I need to do this because of my father. In time, maybe all of this will make sense. Or maybe none of it will. That’s just life.” With that, Danny walked away, leaving Samantha bewildered and confused.
Later that night, Samantha looked at the check that Danny had given her. In the memo field were the numbers “45683968”. She again made a mental note to figure out what that phone number was. Two weeks later, she made a copy of the check, wrote a letter to her unborn son, and deposited the check into an account for him. Nine months later, when he was born she named him Daniel. She named him that for two reasons, one was that Steve had never wanted his child to be named after him, and he thought the name should have more meaning. Reason two was because she felt a strange connection to this man. A connection she couldn’t identify, but was there nonetheless.
Eighteen years later Samantha’s son decided he did not want to go to college. He decided he wanted to drive a tractor-trailer for a living. School wasn’t for him he loved being outside, or going on road trips with his friends. He loved to drive, and he loved travel, he felt drive a truck would be the perfect fit for him. His mother had always been supportive of any decision he made, and she wasn’t going to start questioning him now. When he told his mother what he wanted to do, she didn’t hesitate, she just pulled out the copy of the check she had made all those years before. She had been saving it for his college, but this felt like the right moment to start letting him decide what to do. When she took out the check, she realized she couldn’t find the letter she had written and attached to it. Dismissing that to old age starting to creep up on her she handed Danny the check, and told him of the interest bearing account that could help him purchase his own rig. Since that was indeed what he wanted to do. He looked at the check, and at the memo field, and saw the numbers. He read them aloud and said, “I love you,” with a grin on his face. Samantha, who was calling the bank to get the exact balance of Danny’s account, whirled around towards him. “What?” She yelled, snatching the check from him “How did you know that?” “I use it with my girlfriend all the time with our cell phones, those numbers spell out ‘I love you’. It’s cheesy but we do it.” It was plain as day if you realized what you were looking at, she looked at the phone in her hand, and at the check. “45683968” was “I love you” spelled out on a telephone keypad. Samantha started to cry. Danny tried to console his mother, telling her things were okay. She had done a great job raising him on her own, even though he knew it had been tough. He told her he would get that rig, and take care of her for the rest of her life. It was a promise that he kept.
Fifteen years later, driving down a snow covered road listening to the local rock station on the radio, Daniel Steven Troutman had his first traffic accident. He collided with a compact red car. The driver didn’t survive.
THE END
