Something (a bird?) loomed very close above Olin Montgomery’s head. He ducked forward instinctively and smashed his forehead solidly on the empty air in front of him, the shock sending a shower of sparks over his field of vision.
What had he hit his head on, his golf club? No, he could feel the club in his hands, and his head had hit something in between.
Between my hands?
Olin opened his eyes and screamed. He was hurtling down the highway (I’m on the 10) at full speed. Cars in front of him were moving all the wrong ways, traveling sideways, slowing, swerving, crashing into each other in a mad jumble. A hundred car horns bleated.
Olin was bearing down too fast on an old white pickup truck that was spinning in the road in front of him, spraying lawn care equipment in all directions. He stomped on the brake and yanked the steering wheel (not my five iron) sharply to the left. The rear of his Mercedes SUV snaked around to the right, jerked on something (pothole), swerved back behind and around to the left. Olin was thrown first to the right, sharply against the suddenly slackless seatbelt, then to the left against the door. A sheet of white (side air curtain) flashed in the corner of his eye, and his head hit something and twisted. The SUV tilted up on its left wheels. For a second it swivelled down the highway, wrenching the steering wheel from Olin’s hands, then tipped onto its side. The door glass splintered and the fragments spun and twisted as the car scraped and screeched roof first along the ridged concrete.
Olin could feel the SUV’s momentum slowing. I’m going to get out of this okay.
A sickening crunch hurled Olin toward the roof of the car, his seat belt slicing into his legs. The roof buckled and struck his head, bending him double as he dangled from the car seat.
Olin’s vision blended from black to red to brown, the brown of the car’s interior decor. His eyes hurt, and the top of his head felt like it was split open.
His hands still gripped the steering wheel.
Olin released the steering wheel and brought a hand to the top of his head. It didn’t feel wet. He looked at his hand. No blood. But Christ his head hurt.
Around him, beyond the crumpled confines of his SUV, the sounds of screeching tires and crumpling metal diminished. People were screaming, and perhaps had been screaming for some time. Some of the screams sounded like screams of pain. Others sounded like something worse.
“I need help over here!” someone shouted.
What the hell had loomed over him? It wasn’t a bird. It was… It was the roof of his car. As he swung his five iron back for an approach shot on the eighteenth hole at Hillcrest, the roof of his car had suddenly loomed above his head, and he suddenly he had been shooting down the 10.
Concussion. Had he passed out? He may have, when the roof had cracked him on the head.
The car’s digital clock, angled oddly above him, read 2:31 pm.
Tags: manuscript