ICE ROAD
Her breath formed icy crystals with every exhalation. It was cold, freezing cold. She imagined it was cold enough that if she threw a glass of water into the air, it would be ice before it hit the ground.
Of course, she didn’t have a glass of water. Worse still, she was running low and gas and her car was stuck.
She pulled out her cell phone again and slid her finger across the screen. No signal. She dialed a number anyway, but it would not connect. She climbed back into her car and hovered her hands in front of the heater, warming her chilled fingers.
The deer had come out of nowhere, leaping over the snow bank and dashing straight at her car. It ran straight into the driver’s side door and panicked, she had over-steered into the snow bank where she had been stuck now for the past three hours.
She looked at the carcass on the road behind her. A small pool of blood had formed on the icy white road next to it. It had been steaming at first, as the deer twitched through its final moments of life. There was no steam now, and no signs of life.
Sickened, she adjusted the mirror away from the grizzly site. The red warning light on the dash indicating her fuel levels was no more comforting than her averted gaze from the dead deer.
She didn’t no what to do. Three hours in the middle of nowhere and not a single car had passed by. It was a whole new vision of desolate out here. Wisps of frosty snow snaked along the length of highway, the only sign of life she had seen since the deer’s final hoof twitch.
She leaned back in her chair and pounded her fists on the steering wheel in frustration. The lights dimmed on the dash and she felt a small shuddered pass through the seat. There was a final ding and the car sputtered to a halt. She was officially out of gas.
The sun was slowly sinking into the horizon ahead of her, which meant that it was going to get much colder, much quicker now. She closed her eyes for a moment, digging deep within for a sudden inspiration as to what she could do. Nothing.
There was nothing she could do. She opened her eyes and caught a shining glimpse cresting the farthest point of the road. Was it possible? Another car?
She watched as the glint slowly revealed itself before the backdrop of the setting sun. It was a car! She jumped out of her car, ecstatic, and started waving her arms. As the car drew nearer she could hear the comforting roar of the engine. She was saved.
The car mounted the last hill and sped towards her, slowly easing up as the driver noticed her frantically waving arms. As it neared, a sudden flash of tawny brown erupted out of the copse of evergreens and over the bank next to the highway.
The vehicle swerved to avoid the deer and slowly started spinning out of control. She watched, defeated and paralyzed by fear, as the car sped towards her like an out of control top. The impact was horrendous.
The driver of the car stared into his rear view mirror at the prone form of the woman lying in the road behind him. A small steaming pool of blood was forming next to her head and a deer loomed over her. There is something wrong about that, the man thought, and then passed out.
wow!
ReplyDelete