Quickening

Another piece from my forthcoming short story collection.  Shameless plug: more of my fiction is online at Fictionpress.

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Quickening

Rain patters softly on the windshield, sparkling in the waning sunlight.  The silver Aerostar, our problem–prone minivan, hums resolutely.  Dusk has come, and Mom turns on the headlights.

“Mommy, is God crying?” my brother inquires.  He is his usual journalistic self despite on–setting sleepiness.  He twirls the tuft of hair that sprouts like crabgrass from the top of his skull.

In the rearview mirror, I see Mom's smiling eyes looking back at us.  Perhaps she is preparing a “mom answer”.  But twin yellow orbs are coming the other way, drifting, pointing, hunting –

The world shatters with a bam, a gunshot, a single staccato note of catastrophe.  I am thrown into my brother as the wall of the van rushes in at me.  We are all screaming, but I no longer hear anything.  The world dips sharply downhill before us, seconds before the heavy crunch of metal announces the rude introduction of our hood to the telephone pole.  There is no accenting crash of glass, no explosive puff of airbags, no grand finale.  Just a final, heavy hiss as our faithful yet temperamental mule heaves its last breath.

Numbly, I remove the safety belt as Mom wrenches open the sliding door, utilizing the strength leant her by necessity.  She could have lifted the entire van at that moment.  Together, we free my brother from the confines of his carseat and stumble up the grassy embankment to the road.  Our would–be–assassin has come to a halt on our side of the yellow lines, some hundred or more feet away.  The hood has been flattened considerably.

My brother is crying in Mom's arms, but I am not, and neither is Mom.  She gathers us close, asking again and again if we are okay.  Somehow, I think we are both too scared to cry, too shaken to feel much of anything.  But suddenly, God is really crying, weeping.  Huge tears splatter in our hair, hiss against the asphalt.

I look up at the clouds weighing heavily on the sky.  A low moan of thunder evidences divine grief.  We are alive and a passerby has stopped to call 911.

Why, God? I wonder.  Why are you so sad today?

The door of our nemesis swings open abruptly, drawing my attention.  I imagine a big man – mean, ugly,  covered in hellish tattoos.

One leg emerges, then two: thin and hairless, with the complexion of old fruit.  The rest of the young woman follows, curled protectively around her swollen belly.  She stands hesitantly, struggles to balance on those fleshy stilts.  A moment later, she collapses, clutching her bulging stomach with one hand and stabilizing herself with the other, vomiting pitifully on the blacktop.

Mom is shoving my brother into my arms and running to help, as is the stranger on the cell phone.  There is an urgency in their motion that startles me.  I hold my wailing brother tightly, swaying in that place of limbo, that fear which exists indeterminately between understanding and knowing.

END