July 28, 2009
October 6, 2008
September 27, 2007
Life Isn't Fair
WARNING: THIS STORY IS VERY GRUESOME AND SAD. If this doesn't sound like something you want to read, don't! I have many other posts that are entertaining and lighthearted. This one is not. It was an English assignment to write a story that messes with time, such as the flashback and slow motion. This story does both. And I got the idea from seeing some very gruesome pictures of an accident scene, which is similar to the one I describe. Since the pictures told me nothing of the victim's life, so I added plenty of details and and turned the victim into a person with a life. So read on if you aren't bothered by gruesome things. But don't say I didn't warn you!
Juan Carlos feels joy and excitement swell in his heart as he rubs the small black velvet box with his chubby fingers. This box is now empty. He’d had the honor of sliding the diamond ring he’d saved for on sweet Erica’s long, slender ebony finger just hours ago. She’d said yes and now he is a happier man.
Turning his brand new, bright blue Toyota Yaris onto Fred Wilson Avenue he makes the 1.5 liter, four cylinder engine give him 40 miles per hour. The tiny car that looks like a baby’s shoe and gets an excellent 29 city and 36 highway miles to the gallon. Its cute little liftback and backseat which wouldn’t be roomy enough for a two year old add to the fuel economy.
Sniffing and savoring the new car smell, he is glad that he had enough money to afford the car payments and still buy the ring that would make Erica’s heart long for him in his absence. Life is good.
As the tiny car’s four small speakers blare the best love song from his favorite Flaco Jimenez CD, Juan Carlos gladly wails along. His Spanish is flawless, though his voice is not. But it doesn’t matter, nobody is with him to hear. Plus, as long as his girlfriend of three years had agreed to be his wife, what does it matter that his voice is off-key and doesn’t blend with the vocals of Flaco, or even the bass, guitar, and accordion, for that matter? As he sings, his focus goes off the road.
Until he looks up to see the cab of a semi only 20 feet ahead of him, driving westbound on the eastbound side of Fred Wilson Avenue.
¡Dios! Is his first thought as he locks the brakes and tries to swerve out of the errant driver’s path.
Then his brain, saturated with the neurotransmitters of love, drowns in epinephrine flood from fear and shock which has the effect of stretching his last conscious second on Earth ad infinitum.
Juan Carlos was back in the club with his buddies. For the past couple years, he’d chosen to spend most of his Saturday nights at the El Dorado Lounge drinking and dancing away the stress of a week spent in a cubicle answering phones, telling silly people in English and Spanish that they need to first make sure that the computer was plugged in and that the tower and the monitor were turned on before he’d get to use his computer science degree to help them fix their machines.
These Saturday nights, before church in the morning, he’d sip a couple mixed drinks with tequila in them and baila until his ankles swelled and his feet were sore. Usually, his amigos were more interested in just sitting around, but he never could do that for very long. After his drinks, he had to start moving to the Tejano beats—whether he had a girl or not.
He jerks the steering wheel hard to the right, then his hands and arms lock up and in that second, he is able to get the wheels to turn to the right. But it doesn’t matter. The drowsy truck driver had noticed his wrong way error a second before and had slammed on his brakes, but he is still going 20 when they hit. A fully loaded semi, from Omaha’s Werner Enterprises, which weighs a little under 80,000 pounds, hits the subcompact car weighing 2,295 pounds, plus 220 pounds of Juan Carlos, and an additional 100 pounds of cargo. The airbags in the Toyota don’t much matter in a head on collision, even at relatively slow city speeds, when the truck outweighs the car by thirty times.
That Saturday night, a little over three years ago, was in the middle of February. He’d noticed the beautiful woman walk in, because at his club, black people were rare, and she’d come alone. She was dancing on the floor by herself, though there were plenty of other groups of people on the floor, none of them were accepting her. So Juan Carlos, single, had taken it upon himself to dance over to her. She’d flashed him a radiant smile in that moment.
He knew he needed to talk to her before she thanked him for the dance and left because he’d never seen her in here before and El Paso was a big city, so he couldn’t risk chickening out because if he did this time, she might not come back next Saturday and he might never see her again. Unsure of what to say, he quickly scanned her, and the most interesting thing he saw was her long, perfectly manicured and lavishly painted finger nails. Relying on his brave little buddy, Jose Cuervo, who swimming through his circulatory system and dancing his way through Juan Carlos’ blood-brain barrier, he used the loud, pulsing beats as an excuse to get much closer to her. Stepping in, the fact that she was about three inches taller than him became even more obvious. He placed his chubby arms around the fashionable grey sweater she wore and could feel how trim her stomach was.
She didn’t recoil at the touch, and he leaned further in and said, “Nice nails!”
Immediately sensing how awkward this compliment was, he blushed. But this woman he was with just flashed him another big smile and said, “Thank you.”
The song ended abruptly, and Juan Carlos asked her if she’d like to join him at a table. She did, and Juan Carlos ditched his buddies and took her to a small table where they could be alone. Those locos would definitely lower his chances with this woman.
They’d hit it off in a big way that night. They ended up talking for three hours until the bar closed. As he walked her to her car, Juan Carlos suddenly realized that he had forgotten to get Erica’s number. And he also realized that this was probably a good thing, because he usually just walked up to a woman he was attracted to and asked for her phone number, and usually got turned down immediately, which tended to result in a chronic lack of dates. But this time, he’d taken the time to impress her and be impressed by her in meaningful conversation before he asked for those vital digits. Of course Erica gave him her number. And he used it on that Monday.
His foot shoves the brake down as far as it will go as fast as he can. This locks the tires and leaves a thick strip of rubber on the road. He is only able to slow from 40 to about 30.
A woman whips her head around as she hears the screech of tires. Max, the German Sheppard she is walking down the sidewalk had sensed the danger an instant before her. Two toddlers are playing with a ball in their front yard. They see the semi driving the wrong way down their street, but don’t understand why this is a bad thing. But they do, however, understand the screech, the sickening crunch of rapidly collapsing metal, the shattering of glass, and the smells of gasoline, blood and rubber. Only a minute after the semi stops pushing the car the sirens begin wailing in the distance. The brothers start crying, and their mother comes and ushers them into the house so they can’t see any more of the horror.
After reliving his first meeting with his fiancé, then seeing the witnesses to his death, Juan Carlos looks up and sees the horrified look on the truck driver’s face, who is now hyper awake, his state of shock just as high as his future victim’s even though his cab would only have a small dent in its huge shiny chrome bumper.
The police, ambulance, and fire fighters show up quickly to the grizzly scene. There are no patients at this accident. The trucker, completely unhurt, is in a daze as he takes his citation and court date from one of the officers who investigated the crash. It will be days later that the stress and remorse of taking another human life, even though accidental, would hit him. He would later go meet and apologize to Erica and Juan Carlos’ father, both of whom forgave him unconditionally, even in the first few weeks of their grief.
It takes over an hour to pull the car out from under the truck and get the Jaws of Life to spread the metal enough to pry out first the head, trunk, and arms of Juan Carlos. His upper body is essentially jellied because the front of his car and the truck shatter every rib and most of the craniofacial bones. They place that in a body bag on the street then they do some more work with the Jaws of Life to pull his severed legs out. Technically, he isn’t completely cut in half, because there is still some intestine intact between the two parts, though the garden hose-sized artery called the aorta is completely severed, shooting the blood that hadn’t gone with the legs out in seconds.
When the semi and Yaris collide, the Yaris is smashed in to where it looks like a crushed soda can. The little liftback area is the only recognizable part. Juan Carlos had felt nothing, other than the unpleasant second where he realized he was going to die. Mercifully, the impact knocks him unconscious before the engine compartment, which his legs were under as part of the space-saving design, collides with his abdomen, leaving his legs and a third of his blood on the floor of the car and his torso in the trunk compartment.
Many of the responders and the witnesses chose to get therapy after seeing the most violent crash some of them would ever see. But Juan Carlos, though he had to leave what might have been a nice marriage to a great woman, and a sad father, was with Jesus now. Life isn’t fair, but Juan Carlos never suffered, unlike those who lie in a hospital bed for years, wilting away slowly.
Juan Carlos feels joy and excitement swell in his heart as he rubs the small black velvet box with his chubby fingers. This box is now empty. He’d had the honor of sliding the diamond ring he’d saved for on sweet Erica’s long, slender ebony finger just hours ago. She’d said yes and now he is a happier man.
Turning his brand new, bright blue Toyota Yaris onto Fred Wilson Avenue he makes the 1.5 liter, four cylinder engine give him 40 miles per hour. The tiny car that looks like a baby’s shoe and gets an excellent 29 city and 36 highway miles to the gallon. Its cute little liftback and backseat which wouldn’t be roomy enough for a two year old add to the fuel economy.Sniffing and savoring the new car smell, he is glad that he had enough money to afford the car payments and still buy the ring that would make Erica’s heart long for him in his absence. Life is good.
As the tiny car’s four small speakers blare the best love song from his favorite Flaco Jimenez CD, Juan Carlos gladly wails along. His Spanish is flawless, though his voice is not. But it doesn’t matter, nobody is with him to hear. Plus, as long as his girlfriend of three years had agreed to be his wife, what does it matter that his voice is off-key and doesn’t blend with the vocals of Flaco, or even the bass, guitar, and accordion, for that matter? As he sings, his focus goes off the road.
Until he looks up to see the cab of a semi only 20 feet ahead of him, driving westbound on the eastbound side of Fred Wilson Avenue.
¡Dios! Is his first thought as he locks the brakes and tries to swerve out of the errant driver’s path.
Then his brain, saturated with the neurotransmitters of love, drowns in epinephrine flood from fear and shock which has the effect of stretching his last conscious second on Earth ad infinitum.
Juan Carlos was back in the club with his buddies. For the past couple years, he’d chosen to spend most of his Saturday nights at the El Dorado Lounge drinking and dancing away the stress of a week spent in a cubicle answering phones, telling silly people in English and Spanish that they need to first make sure that the computer was plugged in and that the tower and the monitor were turned on before he’d get to use his computer science degree to help them fix their machines.
These Saturday nights, before church in the morning, he’d sip a couple mixed drinks with tequila in them and baila until his ankles swelled and his feet were sore. Usually, his amigos were more interested in just sitting around, but he never could do that for very long. After his drinks, he had to start moving to the Tejano beats—whether he had a girl or not.He jerks the steering wheel hard to the right, then his hands and arms lock up and in that second, he is able to get the wheels to turn to the right. But it doesn’t matter. The drowsy truck driver had noticed his wrong way error a second before and had slammed on his brakes, but he is still going 20 when they hit. A fully loaded semi, from Omaha’s Werner Enterprises, which weighs a little under 80,000 pounds, hits the subcompact car weighing 2,295 pounds, plus 220 pounds of Juan Carlos, and an additional 100 pounds of cargo. The airbags in the Toyota don’t much matter in a head on collision, even at relatively slow city speeds, when the truck outweighs the car by thirty times.
That Saturday night, a little over three years ago, was in the middle of February. He’d noticed the beautiful woman walk in, because at his club, black people were rare, and she’d come alone. She was dancing on the floor by herself, though there were plenty of other groups of people on the floor, none of them were accepting her. So Juan Carlos, single, had taken it upon himself to dance over to her. She’d flashed him a radiant smile in that moment.
He knew he needed to talk to her before she thanked him for the dance and left because he’d never seen her in here before and El Paso was a big city, so he couldn’t risk chickening out because if he did this time, she might not come back next Saturday and he might never see her again. Unsure of what to say, he quickly scanned her, and the most interesting thing he saw was her long, perfectly manicured and lavishly painted finger nails. Relying on his brave little buddy, Jose Cuervo, who swimming through his circulatory system and dancing his way through Juan Carlos’ blood-brain barrier, he used the loud, pulsing beats as an excuse to get much closer to her. Stepping in, the fact that she was about three inches taller than him became even more obvious. He placed his chubby arms around the fashionable grey sweater she wore and could feel how trim her stomach was.
She didn’t recoil at the touch, and he leaned further in and said, “Nice nails!”
Immediately sensing how awkward this compliment was, he blushed. But this woman he was with just flashed him another big smile and said, “Thank you.”
The song ended abruptly, and Juan Carlos asked her if she’d like to join him at a table. She did, and Juan Carlos ditched his buddies and took her to a small table where they could be alone. Those locos would definitely lower his chances with this woman.
They’d hit it off in a big way that night. They ended up talking for three hours until the bar closed. As he walked her to her car, Juan Carlos suddenly realized that he had forgotten to get Erica’s number. And he also realized that this was probably a good thing, because he usually just walked up to a woman he was attracted to and asked for her phone number, and usually got turned down immediately, which tended to result in a chronic lack of dates. But this time, he’d taken the time to impress her and be impressed by her in meaningful conversation before he asked for those vital digits. Of course Erica gave him her number. And he used it on that Monday.His foot shoves the brake down as far as it will go as fast as he can. This locks the tires and leaves a thick strip of rubber on the road. He is only able to slow from 40 to about 30.
A woman whips her head around as she hears the screech of tires. Max, the German Sheppard she is walking down the sidewalk had sensed the danger an instant before her. Two toddlers are playing with a ball in their front yard. They see the semi driving the wrong way down their street, but don’t understand why this is a bad thing. But they do, however, understand the screech, the sickening crunch of rapidly collapsing metal, the shattering of glass, and the smells of gasoline, blood and rubber. Only a minute after the semi stops pushing the car the sirens begin wailing in the distance. The brothers start crying, and their mother comes and ushers them into the house so they can’t see any more of the horror.
After reliving his first meeting with his fiancé, then seeing the witnesses to his death, Juan Carlos looks up and sees the horrified look on the truck driver’s face, who is now hyper awake, his state of shock just as high as his future victim’s even though his cab would only have a small dent in its huge shiny chrome bumper.
The police, ambulance, and fire fighters show up quickly to the grizzly scene. There are no patients at this accident. The trucker, completely unhurt, is in a daze as he takes his citation and court date from one of the officers who investigated the crash. It will be days later that the stress and remorse of taking another human life, even though accidental, would hit him. He would later go meet and apologize to Erica and Juan Carlos’ father, both of whom forgave him unconditionally, even in the first few weeks of their grief.
It takes over an hour to pull the car out from under the truck and get the Jaws of Life to spread the metal enough to pry out first the head, trunk, and arms of Juan Carlos. His upper body is essentially jellied because the front of his car and the truck shatter every rib and most of the craniofacial bones. They place that in a body bag on the street then they do some more work with the Jaws of Life to pull his severed legs out. Technically, he isn’t completely cut in half, because there is still some intestine intact between the two parts, though the garden hose-sized artery called the aorta is completely severed, shooting the blood that hadn’t gone with the legs out in seconds.When the semi and Yaris collide, the Yaris is smashed in to where it looks like a crushed soda can. The little liftback area is the only recognizable part. Juan Carlos had felt nothing, other than the unpleasant second where he realized he was going to die. Mercifully, the impact knocks him unconscious before the engine compartment, which his legs were under as part of the space-saving design, collides with his abdomen, leaving his legs and a third of his blood on the floor of the car and his torso in the trunk compartment.
Many of the responders and the witnesses chose to get therapy after seeing the most violent crash some of them would ever see. But Juan Carlos, though he had to leave what might have been a nice marriage to a great woman, and a sad father, was with Jesus now. Life isn’t fair, but Juan Carlos never suffered, unlike those who lie in a hospital bed for years, wilting away slowly.
April 20, 2007
Insomnaeic Poemia
Here it is purdy danged close to 5 a.m. and I am not in the least bit sleepy. My thoughts have turned to my blog, and I was wondering what to write about. Then it hit me! One sleepless night in my Junior year of college I penned this poetic gem at a computer in the Hill Hall lobby and entered it in Poetry.com. So I just went back to the site, searched my name, and cut and pasted my Insomnia poem. Sorry, it isn't in any style nor is it in iambic pentameter. Happy sleeping!
Here I am
Insomnia
Here I am
What time is it?
Darkness pours in through the windows
Outside the sun mocks me from China
The Earth greedily eats the rays and dances slowly
Like the fat boy super-sizing his fat meal at the fat fast food shack
Incandescence thumbs its nose at the sun from my bulb
My brain pulses to the beat of the Earth
And space and time and distance
Oh, to stand on the surface of the sun
My feet would get hot
And I would jump and run and yell
I wouldn't even care about time or sleep or pillows
And blankets
All I want is ice water and
Less gravity
Copyright ©2007 Scott Phelan
Copyright ©2007 Scott Phelan
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