Imagination
By Keely Christensen
There's an old man who lived out past county road ten. He died last year. I didn't actually see him die, but I really do wish I had.
I would ride with Papa every single weekday on that road. It'd be about three-thirty; Papa would pick me up from school and take me to my gymnastics class. We'd drive by the old man's house, and nearly every other day we'd see him walk across to his mailbox. Sometimes, Papa would have to tap at the brakes because the man wouldn't check both ways before crossing. Sometimes, we'd be just going past as the man neared the end of his driveway. Sometimes, the man would already have his mail and be on his wa
One random day, (could have been a Monday, could have been a Wednesday — who knows), we drove past as he left his house. I saw the door open and his dirty-looking tennis shoe step out. For a moment, I wondered what kind of mail the man got. Was it catalogs? Letters? Or just some plain old bills?
"Look, Clara! See this black car driving towards us? That's the kind of car your Papa's going to buy you when you're sixteen!" Papa loved to point out all the stuff he'd get me when I was older.
"Papa," I said. "Don't worry about buying me a car right now! I won't be driving for four more years. What I really want, though, is a cell phone."
Papa just laughed at me. I had been trying to get him to let me have a cell for over a month. He would just smile and tell me how a twelve-year-old girl doesn't need a "mobile telephone." I tried the old it-would-be-great-for-emergencies trick, but that didn't work either.
"Just wait until you get your license," Papa said. "Then when I point out a black Dodge Charger and tell you I'm going to buy you one, you'd gladly give up any cell phone you had for it!"
#
After gymnastics, (Papa always stayed to watch my lessons), I begged him to take me to the ice cream shop. I told him I need it to "cool down" after working out.
"Not today, honey. Your mama wanted me to pick up some stuff from the store for supper tonight, but I forgot to write it down. We need to get home and ask her, so I don't get in trouble."
I gave Papa a pouty face.
"Well, if I had a cell phone, you could just call her and ask her, you know."
Papa playfully pushed me on the shoulder, called me a "smartypants," and told me to get in the car. I fiddled with the radio for a while until finally turning it to a Ke$ha song. My payback to him for no ice cream.
As we rounded the corner and headed down the stretch on country road ten again, I saw police lights off in the distance.
"Somebody's busted!" I said in excitement. I loved to watch people's faces when they were pulled over.
Nearing, I could see that it wasn't a traffic stop. Random emergency vehicles and people were everywhere. Papa came to stop and rolled down his window.
"Good evening, sir," an officer said. "We've been directing vehicles down that gravel road there, but we're just finishing up with the clean up, and it should be no more than five minutes before you can get through here."
"What happened?" Papa asked.
"Some guy was hit crossing the road about an hour ago."
As I looked through the windshield, I could see everything. Pieces of glass and metal from the black Dodge Charger that had scraped marks down the pavement, probably from rolling; blood staining both lanes, splattered around like the death site of a million deer; a crushed and mangled mailbox lying the ditch.
#
That night I didn't eat. Couldn't sleep, either. All I could do was imagine what the old man must've gone through. I could see him taking his walk across the way (did he get the mail? or didn't he make it that far?), turning his head too late to see the car speeding towards him. The driver of the car, probably on a cell phone (I didn't want one anymore after that), looking up at the last second, slamming on the brakes — turning the wheel as far as it would go, causing the car to move sideways. It skidded along before finally tumbling side over side, breaking apart with each hit to the road. Taking with it, the old man.
I know Papa watched the news about it, but he never mentioned it to me. And I never asked. I didn't want to know. It wouldn't have done me any good to hear the man's name or know if he had a family. It wouldn't have stopped the nightmares to learn the death was immediate and with very little suffering. All I could do was picture it, a million times over, in my head.
I really do wish I would have seen it. It would have been the only way to really know how it happened.
I sit outside my house nearly everyday now and watch the street. I keep hoping to see someone get hit by a car. At least then I can stop imagining it.
BIO: Keely Christensen's stories tend to have one thing in common with each other. They are written in first-person with female main characters--clarify--psychotic main characters. Very rarely will you read a work from her that doesn't have at least one crazy person in it.
You may see some of those other stories in Writer's Beat Quarterly, Short-Story.Me!, Sex and Murder magazine, and House of Horror magazine.
