A Tale of Two Daves

Cruising at 85 mph in the bumper-to-bumper, pre-rush-hour traffic, Dave was glad he had spent the money on the little extras in his Sterling. The custom seat seemed molded to his body, the sheepskin kept him cool in the 85 degree weather with the windows open, and the Michelin racing tires gave him the confidence to get out of nearly any situation.

The solid red brick wall that appeared in his lane right behind the car he was following too closely was not, however, just any situation. His highly-trained reflexes took over. The tires howled just shy of the skid point. He was downshifting and looking in all directions for a clear path without smashing into another car.

"Where the hell [1] did that come form?" would have been his normal thought, but there was no time for such thoughts. The wall loomed ominously over him as the speedometer fell back all too slowly past the 55 mark. As he searched desperately for an out, his gaze crossed the rearview mirror. His face froze in a panic. There was a motorcycle right on his bumper!

One of David's little inconsistencies in life was that while he never minded speeding or passing off the road, he always followed the letter of the law in things such as preparing to pass another vehicle. Mindful of the new DOT-mandated rules for passing on Federally-funded interstate highways, David let his signal flash three times, and began the appropriate maneuver to check the lane he was about to enter.

Setting the thumblock on his throttle, David stood up, moved his left leg across the seat, took his hands off the bars, switched his right leg deftly to the left side of the bike, and sat down facing rearwards, making sure there was nobody in what would have otherwise been his blind spot. Satisfied that nobody would overtake him before the lane change, he stood to turn back around. A motorist farther back in his lane waved in appreciation of David's following procedures.

Fortunately, Dave's legs and arms were as frozen as his face. The fetal impulses dashed to splinters on the solid glaciers of his muscles, and faded away with no discernible effect. The speedometer crawled counter-clockwise at a snail's pace. With eyes blind to all but the speedometer, the bike behind, and the wall in front, Dave failed to notice that the car to his left was slowing and moving over to give him room. He failed to notice the smoke boiling off of his tires, or the lurch when the left rear tire blew.

As David began to turn, his ears began to scream above the wind. They yelled with the sound of a thousand cars locking brakes all at once. Had he had a chance, David would have wet his new, red leather boxer shorts. As it was, he never got turned araound far enough to see what he was about to hit. But his mind saw it perfectly. The brilliant yellow Sterling, gleaming in the midafternoon sun. The polished chrome, reaching out to grab his front tire, to destroy it, to bend his forks cruelly, and smash the front wheel back into the mammoth V-twin engine. The gas tank reaching for his groin, just as he flew off the bike, too high to catch the tank, just in time to hit the rear window of the car in front...

The bike was doing 85 to the Sterling's 20 (and slowing) when it hit. As the biker's body missed the tank despite the front end (complete with crushed front wheel and cruelly mangled forks) rising into the air, his kneecaps caught the buckhorn bars and stayed there, with only a few thousand neurons to scream an anguished goodbye. The helmetless head swelled in the mirror; the rear window grew spiderwebs and began to swell inwards. Glass shards sprinkled daintily through the car as the now redheaded visitor rudely entered the car. Dave was not quite sure whether the scream made it through his lips or not, but it echoed for hours through his head as the body hurtled by him, only glancing his shoulder, through the windshield, trailing glass fragments from the read window, and disgusting drops of red and bits of flesh and clothing swirling all around. The Sterling, nose down, barely touched the wall, having spent all of its energy.

The bike flew magnificently, if awkwardly over both the car and wall. Dave hardly noticed. His eyes were riveted to the remains of the rider, as they slowly spread across the wall (fortunately already red) in front of him. Various (now unnecessary) and sundry parts of the biker's insides and outside drifted to the floor of the hitherto immaculate car, the red spots slowly spreading across the plush, yellow pile carpet on the floor, and onto the white of the virgin wool seatcovers. Oddly shaped, and stranger colored, unknown items and parts thereof dangle fromd the windshield or smacked the dash with little splats. Dave never even noticed the few odds and ends that clung wetly to his right ear or just above his right eye.

As the traffic backed up behind him, despite the people gesturing for him to unlock his doors, Dave could not move a muscle, other than those that his body moved whether he thought of them or not. He did not even blink - only his heart and lungs seemed to be working. He wasn't worried about losing lunch as he hadn't had any.

His eyes caught upon quivering blobs of gray on what little was left of his windshield, Dave's only conscious thought was, "Ummm! Liver pate'!"

The red lights washing silently in waves across the scene, the EMTs strapped the unresisting driver of the car to a stretcher. "Mouth's bleeding", one noted. "What's this gray stuff on his lips?", the other wondered aloud. A little girl standing wide-eyed nearby responded helpfully, "he was chewing at the broken windshield."

Dave's last thought before his conscious mind shut down permanently was that the chef should have used more salt in the pate'.

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[1] Considering that the wall was of glowing red bricks, with a pentagram etched into it in a slimy-looking black, he would hardly have thought, "Where the heaven did that come from?"

Last updated: 29 Mar 1994

Copyright 1989, 1994 Miles O'Neal, Austin, TX. All rights reserved.

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