by Jeff Gelb
I smiled at him. “Once, they were my greatest fear,” I explained calmly, although my voice sounded unnaturally high and shrill. “A phobia …” Pausing, I giggled as I began extracting strands of the argiope’s remaining web from the bush. “That’s all changed now, all changed.” Carefully, working slowly, I tacked a piece of the webbing back in, atop the thick band down the center, and bent it around; left, down, right, down, left, stop. “I have to let them know,” I muttered, glancing up at the still-staring couple. “That’s fair. I have to let them know.”
They kept watching and I kept working; the “S” had been easy but it took me quite a while to get a proper “P” formed in that web. There were four letters to go, plus the final pluralizing “S,” but I didn’t care how long it took. They had to be warned. It was only fair.
Shatter
Tia Travis
The speedometer clocks one more mile. One more. I stare blind-eyed down the double solid line that divides the interstate. J.P. is dead. She lies on an enamel table under the bright electric lights of a preparation room. The collison occurred at 4:04 a.m. on September 4. It took the state patrol and ambulance attendants two hours and fifteen minutes to remove her body from her totalled car, a Lexus LS 400 with excellent crash test results. The pavement was clear, even, and dry. Visibility was good in all directions. There was no explanation; she hit the concrete barrier dead-on. I identified the body. It had no face.
(At accelerated speeds it takes a fraction of a second for pictures to develop on the retina so you can see them. At 125 mph, you can see only one or two degrees to the right or left of your visual field because objects in the side field move too fast to register on the retina of your eye.)
There are no limits.
(Death is a limit.)
There are no limits.
(Death is the extinction of the personality.)
Splash of rain on the windshield. Impact of a million transparent screams. Something is killed every second, but the screams are too small to hear.
* * *
As I drive I reconstruct J.P.’s death behind a shattered and incomplete picture frame. Her yearbook photo—Class of ‘81—transforms itself into a death machine: dark hair a spill of motor oil over a steel frame, eyes broken headlights. Her last breath smells of exhaust.
On the floor of J.P.’s car, an ambulance attendant discovered a blood-smeared notebook. The Theory of Axial Collisions, in ink.
There are no accidents.
I slow to 40 and take the off-ramp. My mind reruns a series of films J.P. and I watched when we were fifteen, driver’s education films on a portable white screen the traffic patrol set up in the school auditorium. One hour had been set aside to watch the films and to ask questions of the two uniformed state patrol officers.
An expectant silence fell over the class as we waited on the metal fold-out chairs. The lights clicked off and the credits rolled. The State Highway Patrol, a division of the Ohio Department of Highway Safety, presents Signal 30, Mechanized Death, Wheels of Tragedy, Highways of Agony. Produced by Safety Enterprises, Inc., Mansfield, Ohio.
“Where’s the popcorn!” somebody yelled.
“Shut up,” J.P. said under her breath.
Crash
One man critically damaged (camera pan on a black rubber sheeted bundle on the ground).
CLOSE-UP ON DEAD MAN WITH CREW CUT AND BLOOD-SOAKED PLAID SHIRT.
In the car: Oh my leg. Oh no my leg.
(These are the sounds …)
My leg. MY LEG! MY LEG!
(of excruciating agony …)
“Can you afford it? Are you willing to pay it?” The patrolmen stood, arms folded, on either side of the screen. Eyes stared straight ahead, mouths grim lines as we observed traffic fatality after traffic fatality, each death clearly the outcome of the driver’s inability to follow elementary safety laws.
Crash
This car hit a concrete bridge railing.
Crash
That car had a dead baby in it—bottle stuck between the door and frame.
Crash
That car had a body folded in quarters under the car. It is pulled out (slop-slosh).
One kid said it couldn’t be real, that the accidents had been reconstructed on a carefully-controlled sound set somewhere in Universal Studios.
But—
Crash
This man lost control of his car and took out an EXIT sign
(Here’s your invitation … right before your eyes! There’s an exhilarating experience in store … just look! The driving thrill of your life!)
Someone threw up. Splash of sick on the seat behind mine.
End credits, lights clicked on. I looked into the faces of my classmates, pale and terrified, blinking in the sudden bright light. I looked at J.P. with a slick sheen of sweat on her upper lip.
Later, we pedalled our bikes with shaky legs down the streets of our town. We rolled to a somber stop at streetcorn-ers, hands sweaty and jumpy on the handbrakes. A car accelerated past us in a blink of chrome and steel …
In J.P.’s apartment, September second. I examined the titles of the books piled on the table, the floor: The Mechanics of Vehicle Collisions, Complete Human Anatomy, Crash Injuries, The Statistical Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Emergency & High Speed Driving Techniques, The Encyclopedia of Medical Practice. She’d ordered the books from out-of-print dealers at exorbitant rates. They were delivered to her apartment by the truckload, and I pictured them in their plain brown wrappers as they crashed into the overloaded mailbox like smashed headlights.
“Look at this,” she’d said. She opened the book to the full-color photo of a car crash fatality. The head looked like one of those inflatable rubber balls with a smiley face painted on it. Deflated, now.
I shut the book and locked the picture back between pages 1248 and 1250. I closed my eyes and smelled transmission fluid and engine oil.
“Stop it, J.P.,” I said, and opened my eyes. I looked directly at her. “Stop it.”
“I can’t.” Her face had a pale shine to it, as if all she did was sit in the dark and watch newsreel footage over and over. I wanted to check the pads of her thumbs to see if they were permanently indented from the remote control button. Instead, I picked up another book from the stack on her table, automatically turning to the index. A number of entries had been underlined in red marker:
Abrasions 102–118 definition of 102; post-mortem appearances of 104; tire marks 115
Blood stains, appearance 0/491–528; differences between arterial and venous 494; examination at the scene 531; photography of 540;
Body, disposal of 112; measurement of temperature of 118; postmortem cooling of 121
Burns 719 appearance of corrosive 720; heat ruptures in death from 723
Cerebral hemorrhage, traumatic 828
Criminal responsibility and insanity 901
Cut throat, accidental, by glass 1120
Each underlined item excited a different picture, and I retained the imprint of each in a mental reference file.
Death, molecular 12; moment of 18
Features, reconstruction of 712
Head injuries 232; mobility of skull at time of blow 233; intracranial hemorrhage 239
Lacerations 455
Putrefaction 481
I knew she’d memorized the entries. I’d memorized them myself, or ones like it, when I was a university student with a part-time position in the medical library. I’d sit and read after hours in the dim illumination of a basement bulb, mentally participating in the putrefaction of the human body.
I turned to page 481 of J.P.’s book to check the definition. The excitement intensified as I speedread the section heads: Drowning, Mechanical Asphyxia, Electrical Injuries, Infanticide and Child Destruction, Criminal Abortion. Unconsciously, I licked my lips. Stop it. I’m just looking! Stop it. Alarms sounded, back of my mind.
There it was. Delirious excitement.
(You’re sick.)
The M
oments of Death. p. 481.
(Stop it.)
Putrefaction: the bacterial dissolution of the body into gases and liquids. A green or greenish-red discoloration of the anterior abdominal wall that later extends to the entire abdominal wall followed by three or four inch blisters filled with a reddish, watery fluid containing protein and white blood cells. Tumefaction of the subcutaneous tissues. Pressure increases in the body cavities and red fluid leaks from the orifices. Impatient, I turned to page 482, still reading page 481. My eyes moved like blips on an EKG. There. There, second paragraph. The climax.
Putrefaction: liquefication of the body organs. The eyes are the first to dissolve, followed by the brain, stomach and liver …
Putrefaction: the only irrefutable test of death.
“I know what you’re looking for,” J.P. said. She stood quietly behind me.
I didn’t reply.
“Proof of the inevitability of death, of the limits of the human condition.”
(There are no limits)
“There’s no escape, Kelly. Believe me, I’ve tried. Tried it all. Quantum mechanics was my last bet, the last roll of the dice. The universe is unpredictable on a subatomic level; electrons jump from place to place. But for you and me …” She shook her head. “For you and me there will always be A and ? and the distance between. That’s why we have cars. To get from A to B.” There was a finality in her tone that frightened me. In that moment I think I understood J.P.’s mind: how it worked, the tracks it tread, the tires it tested. She had no more control than I did.
I hardly breathed when I said it: “I don’t want to die, J.P.”
(Death is the extinction of the personality.)
“We all die,” she said.
Later: blood-smeared handprint, chrome reflected in a pool of blood. Bodies like bruised grapes, slumped in sacks. Sneakers torn from the driver’s feet lay, inexplicably, yards away on the asphalt.
“Turn it off,” I told her.
She looked at me blankly, remote control in her hand. Click as the VCR backtracked ten seconds. The body on the screen folded back into quarters. White sheet, rubber gloves. My eyes were drawn to the dark diluted stains on the bottom of the white sack.
“Turn it off.”
Men in rubber boots, picking at the incinerated steel. The driver had violated the laws of physics. I saw the universe in black and white, cause and effect. Terror in me like a low-grade fever. No escape …
“At the time this documentary was made there were one hundred million vehicles on America’s roads,” J.P. said. “If you laid out car crash fatalities end to end on a highway they’d make a line more than fifty miles long. Next year the line will be two miles longer. In the time it took us to watch this film, another fifteen feet were added to that line. Don’t you see? It doesn’t stop. It will never stop.”
“No, J.P.” I said carefully. “You’ll never stop.”
“You remember the man who lived down the hall in 4B?”
Friendly man, mid-fifties. Looked like Barney Miller. I said, “I remember him.”
“Yeah, well he bought a new car last month, a retirement present for himself. He sure was pleased—an Infiniti Q45. Infinity is right. He was killed last week. Head-on crash on the 101 with a flat black Trans-am. The kid tried to pass a semi on a double solid. The Infiniti retails for $50,400. It has a 4.5-liter DOHC 32 valve V-8, 4-speed automatic transmission, 4-wheel anti-lock disc brakes, power steering, limited-slip differential and a driver’s side airbag that failed to perform on this particular occasion. 4B was killed instantly. Crushed by the steering column. The kid in the Trans-am walked away, Kelly. Walked away, with minor cuts and a fractured radius. They took 4B out in a bucket. What was left of him, that is. The day before he became a stat I was at his apartment looking at pictures of 4B, Junior. He’d just landed his first job as an test engineer for the Chrysler Corporation. You want to tell me what’s happening here?”
“I don’t know, J.P.”
She stared at me, eyes luminous disks in the semi-dark of the apartment. She walked back to the living room and sat on a metal tube framed chair she’d pulled up within two feet of the 48” TV monitor. She rewound to the start of the video, a dub of a dub with bad lighting and terrible audio. I remember it: Mechanized Death.
On her coffee table were full-color laser copies of 1950s medical case studies. Multiple compound fractures, bodies stiff and yellow and rubberlike—
(THIS is the car … THIS is the power team … Try the Rocket hydra-Matic “88” at your Oldsmobile dealer soon …)
—little black rectangles over their blind eyes to preserve their identities.
(Death is the extinction of the personality.)
Beside them: J.G. Ballard’s Crash. Pamphlets offering protective clothing and safety products for morticians. Your Lucky Numbers! License plate renewal form. New Car Price Guide. A fold-out from the American Funeral Director’s Magazine for 1994 Cadillac Funeral Coaches caught my eye, and I picked it up. It still smelled like ink and printing presses. The specifications and features of different models of hearses had been underlined. I had a vision of J.P. at the kitchen table, her face an illuminated blue under the artificial track lighting as she read and reread and made her notes:
1. Measurements (wheelbase, overall length, overall height, overall width, rear door opening height, loading height.)
2. Standard Coach Features (full sliding partition glass, rear floor rollers, forma style velour drapes, nameplate holders in side doors.)
Plus a six year, 60,000 mile guarantee. She thinks of the territory 60,000 miles will cover, the cemeteries it will include, the funerals for the car crash fatalities from shattered prom nights. Blood-stained carnations on tire-tracked lapels.
I zoomed in on J.P.’s face, on the tired lines etched below her dark eyes. I see the exhausted motions of pale hands on demi-matte stock as they outline the specifications, once, twice, a thousand times.
If I could choose three features. If I could choose two features. One feature … Decisions become harder. She is so tired. Stands up, rubs the back of her neck. Walks stiffly to the window and looks down into the street at the fall of rain, the shimmer-slick pavement. There’s a car below her, approaching a four-way stop sign. A Ford Taurus, new model, with speed sensitive powersteering. Steady, reliable. The car stops at the intersection. Brake lights flash red in the dark.
J.P. watches, waits.
The clock ticks.
The Taurus accelerates through the empty intersection and disappears.
The driver could make it home, in theory. Could, that is, if he is careful and has his seatbelt on.
Accidents are the result of inattention to traffic laws.
J.P.’s eyes become windshield screens. She constructs the crash, the Taurus in a collision at the uncontrolled intersection. There is permanent deformation of the car’s frame at impact. She examines velocities, momentums, elastic rebounds. Blood pools under the driver in a deep circle. Poker chips of glass crunch on the road.
J.P. rubs her neck, lets the Taurus continue home. Back to work. There are 60,000 miles to cover …
There are no limits.
(Death is a limit.)
There are no limits.
(Death is the extinction of the personality.)
Looking at J.P. on the preparation room table, I had been compelled to roll back her death clammy eyelids, to cover the pupils with my thumbs and press them in. Don’t look, J.P. Don’t look.
Instead, I watched them prepare her, listened to the whine of the embalming machine. It didn’t seem like J.P. at all, dead on that table, with Celtrol Anti-dehydrant (complete preservation, cosmetic perfection, life-like appearance) being pumped through her arteries. I picked up my car keys and walked out into the dark. Unlocked my car and started to drive. Same drive J.P. took ten hours before. I don’t know what I was looking for. A little piece of that 60,000 miles, maybe.
So now I drive, and I think about the parts of a car.
(Death is a limit)
There are no limits.
I accelerate to 90 mph. I lose my peripheral vision, if I had it at all.
100 mph
It occurs to me
110 mph
that J.P. was in error.
120 mph
There are no limits
(Stop me if you’ve heard it, J.P.)
125 mph
There are no limits (A to B, and everything inbetween.)
130 mph
There are no limits on the interstate. Death is the extinc—
Once Upon A Darkness
Stephen Gresham
The plastic gloves.
Diaphanous, yet milky white, they had arisen from his subconscious as the catalyst image for the novel. A disembodied pair of gloved hands reaching for the throat of a child. The narrative unfolded from there, taking on a life of its own. He had pulled out all the stops. Blown a few mental fuses. He had surrendered wholeheartedly and wholemindedly to the project. He had created a monstrous character. And the experience had been exhilarating.
Even rereading scenes from the manuscript was a joy …
For a timeless instant, Jaynie relaxed. She felt as if she were sinking within a whirlpool of warm water. She looked into the nurse’s eyes again and saw the day’s final light slip away. The nurse’s strong hands were around her throat. The plastic gloves squeaked like a frightened animal.
Lifting. And on the road a car shifted gears, its headlights dim against the black matrix of the woods.
Slowly lifting.
Wind soughed high in the pines.
The nurse lowered her face. Her teeth found the girl’s throat, gripped and lifted.
Jaynie’s penny loafers dangled a few inches off the leaf-strewn floor of the woods.
* * *
John Newland could tell a chilling horror story.
But he never suspected that he would live one.
In the coziness of his study, such a possibility was indeed remote. Things were going too well. He sipped at a fresh cup of coffee and felt the deep down satisfaction that a writer feels when he’s produced a piece of work that he wants to live with.