The Drive Home
“CLAIRE!”
I
woke up in a veritable maze of tall grass but had no idea how I got there… at
first. It was late in an October evening and the falling temperature pierced my
every nerve as though a cloud of ice was seeping through my pores. I could see
no hint of the city’s luminescent aura to guide me toward civilization and the
thickly expanding mist hung eerily heavy upon the ground, making me feel completely
alone. But I wasn’t alone out there.
“CLAIRE!
WHERE ARE YOU?”
I
started remembering a road; I knew it was out there somewhere as surely as I
knew my wife was concealed within the surrounding darkness. We had gone to a
wine tasting party in the country and were driving home, dizzied by drink and
laughing like fools. Claire unbuckled her seatbelt to take off her coat… she
felt hot. And then she started to play the wily tease, unbuttoning the top
buttons of her blouse in a clumsy attempt to be seductive. It was working; the
car suddenly felt warmer to me, too, as my eyes locked onto the wisps of
burgundy lace peeking out from behind her gray satin top.
“ADAM!” Claire suddenly shrieked.
The deer might have come out of nowhere; I wouldn’t know…
I wasn’t looking. I jerked the wheel and the world became a sudden
merry-go-round as the car had spun sideways off the embankment. We crashed and
banged and twisted around like laundry in a demonically violent dryer. I became
dizzy; disoriented as our ghostly headlight beams swirled with blurring
rapidity in the darkness just before they were abruptly extinguished, and then
there I was… lying in the grass.
“CLAIRE!”
Where
could she have been? Why didn’t she answer me? The silence felt more terrible
to me than if Claire’s bloodcurdling screams had suddenly pierced the inky veil.
I was going blind with panic; the dread that I might not find her, and I didn’t
know what I would do if that happened.
“Adam…”
I
heard her voice. It was a whisper, but I heard it and I raced to meet it as
fast as my legs could take me. The brush disappeared before me and I soon
looked upon a ditch at the side of the road. Next to a splintered and crumpled
fence post, I found the demolished remnants of the car; upended… cold… as dead
as the hand that stretched limply out from under it. It couldn’t be; it just
couldn’t be… Claire’s lifeless form was sandwiched between the car and the
earth.
I
fell to my knees, a devastated sudden widower. She had spoken to me; I was
certain beyond any doubt. I reached out with trembling fingers to confirm her
body was real, but stopped with a jolt when I noticed that Claire wasn’t alone
in our car. There I was, still strapped to the driver’s seat and just as broken
and dead as Claire. I barely had a second to comprehend the insanity when a
hand gently pressed against my shoulder.
I
turned and found Claire’s peaceful face smiling down at me. It was completely
impossible. She was broken and withering in our obliterated car; we both were,
and yet she stood before me without a care in the world. I had so many
questions for her; so many things I wanted to say but as I opened my mouth to
speak, she softly shushed me with a finger pressed against my lips.
“Everything will be alright…” she whispered;
“let’s go home.”
