Chasing Destiny
by G. Allen Wilbanks
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
conclusion
After learning that his wife had died, Nate gave up. Life held nothing for him but misery. He spent his time hiding in his house, just praying for something or someone to end his pain. He had thought about suicide many times, but fear had kept him from actually attempting it. What if he fouled up and only made his situation worse? He might leave himself a paraplegic. Or brain damaged. Or worse.
So, afraid to live, but even more afraid to do anything about it, he waited. He turned off his phone, refused to answer the door when people came over, and did his best to pretend the world no longer existed. Unfortunately, he could truly ignore it only for so long.
Although Nate detested the idea of leaving the house, he still needed to eat during his self-imposed exile. When all his shelves and cupboards were completely bare, and his stomach began protesting his lack of attention to it, he decided it was time to make a short trip outside. He lived within walking distance of the nearest store, and he knew that during the few minutes it would take to make the trip, there would be minimal opportunities to run into anybody he knew. Although he dreaded having to endure the pitying glances and feigned concern over his emotional state from well-meaning friends, he felt the chance of confrontation was slight enough to take the risk.
Less than ten minutes later, the automatic doors were swinging open for him at the front entrance to the supermarket. Nate stepped in, picked up one of the shopping baskets, and began to wander the store in search of food. Row upon row of boxed, bagged, and bottled items greeted him in every shape, size and color.
For a moment he was at a loss even where to begin. Donna had always done the shopping for them, while he had merely added items he needed to the ever-present shopping list hanging on the refrigerator. Although each of the aisles was marked with a hanging placard announcing what items could be found in its recesses, there seemed no obvious place to start short of picking one side of the store and laboriously making his way through the entire expanse.
This needed to be a short excursion. Nate reasoned that the best options for him would be frozen meals and sandwiches, so he started by browsing the bakery aisle for roles and sliced bread. As he wandered down the aisle, trying to remember which brand Donna usually bought for them, he stepped past a short, heavy-set man wearing a blue jumpsuit. The man knelt beside a four-tiered gurney holding pallets of hamburger and hotdog buns. Nate paused a moment to watch the delivery worker as he shifted back and forth, pulling items off of his cart and stocking them onto the store shelves with quick efficient motions.
Perhaps sensing that he was being watched, the man paused a moment to glance up at Nate. “Can I help you?” he asked. “I don’t work in this store; I’m just one of the truck drivers for the company, but I can get somebody if you need help finding anything.”
Nate did not answer. Trees had replaced the shelves around them and the store’s artificial lighting had suddenly become much too bright. He glanced up, searching for the cause of the light and discovered the sun overhead, high up in a cloudless blue sky. Nate glanced at his wrist before remembering he had not put on a watch that morning but discovered that he was wearing one nonetheless. It was the silver Seiko with the white face that Donna had given to him for his birthday a few years ago. The hands indicated 11:06. But that couldn’t be right. It had been just after nine o’clock in the morning when he left the house.
A thunderous roar filled his ears, driving him a step backwards. The sound surrounded him, quickly becoming unbearable. Through the foliage surrounding him, he saw a massive skull with glass eyes and long silver teeth in a leering mouth, lurching forward, rushing to swallow him whole.
He dropped his basket and ran, fleeing the store and running through the parking lot in blind panic. His hands covered his ears by instinct, even though he knew it would not do any good; the sound was not something he could shut out. It was in his head and growing louder by the second, like the rush of an approaching freight train. Nate continued to run.
As quickly as it had begun, it stopped. It took a moment for Nate to realize it was over. The sudden hush was almost as disorienting as the noise had been. He halted his panicked flight and cautiously lowered his hands, wondering if the noise were truly gone or if it had only paused for a moment and would soon resume in all its fearsome glory.
The fragile silence persisted and, though his heart was still hammering in his chest, Nate began to relax enough to take in his current surroundings. He found himself standing on a sidewalk facing the intersection of two streets. Breathing deeply and trying to calm his racing heartbeat, he searched the street corner until he found the posted signs that told him he was standing at the intersection of Calvine Road and Vintage Park Drive.
He glanced at his wrist, but the watch that had been there so clearly only a moment before was now gone.
Nate stared out at the traffic in the street, trying to decide if he should risk returning to the store or just go home, when he noticed that something was wrong with the cars driving past him. Many of the vehicles on the roadway were solid and very clear as he watched them drive by, but others seemed translucent, as if not really present. They shimmered, fragile and ghostly. And there were too many of them for the space available. As a white Mercedes accelerated and drove through the truck in front of it, Nate understood that the vision was not yet done with him.
He watched the eerie display and waited.
All at once, he knew.
“White Buick, blue Toyota pickup, and a black Honda,” he muttered.
All he had to do was come back to this intersection tomorrow morning and wait for the black Honda to drive by. If it did not come tomorrow, he would return the next day. Then the next. Eventually, fate would do the rest.
* * *
The Honda lurched to the right across the full width of the freeway, narrowly missing several vehicles. Laura screamed and fought to bring the car back into line. Her scream was cut short by an explosion in the Oleander lining the median. Trees uprooted and flew into the air, their trunks bursting with a noise like a shotgun blast. The explosion was followed immediately by the appearance of a massive silver grill parting the bushes, a grinning death’s head with silver teeth and glass eyes.
The chaos along the median resolved into an eighteen-wheel transport truck moving at high speed into the oncoming traffic of Highway 99. The metal monster passed on Nate’s left close enough for him to clearly read the red and silver logo proclaiming “Peterbilt” on its front. The Volkswagen that had been following them so closely only a moment before disappeared with a screech of compacted metal and a yellow-red burst of flame.
Laura wrestled her car to the shoulder of the road and braked to a wild stop. Skidding tires launched a cloud of dirt and dust into the air that wafted over the vehicle with the movement of the wind. When the car had stopped moving, she put it in park and looked at Nate as though seeing him for the first time.
“You grabbed the wheel to pull us out of the way of that truck,” she said.
Nate stared down at his hands where they lay in his lap. His eyes found the shiny gold band of his wedding ring on his left hand. He nodded; a barely perceptible movement of his head.
“There’s no way you could have seen that truck through the trees. Not until it was way too late. But somehow you knew it was coming. Didn’t you?”
Nate didn’t speak. He couldn’t. Not without opening the floodgates to questions he was not yet prepared to think about, much less answer.
Laura opened her door. “I have to go see if I can help anyone back there. I’m not done with you, though. Don’t you dare go anywhere.”
Nate heard the car door slam, then the sound of Laura’s footsteps fading as she ran toward the scene of the accident. He didn’t realize he was crying until the first tear fell into his lap.
A high-pitched beeping filled the car as the alarm he had set on his watch the night before activated. A glance at his wristwatch showed 11:06. With the press of a button, Nate silenced the noise, shaking his head in bewilderment.
He should be dead. He was supposed to be dead. Why am I still alive? he wondered.
It had been so simple. All he needed to do was just sit in the car and let it happen. But at the last minute, without considering why he was doing it, he had backed out.
Was it some kind of moral decision? he asked himself. Did he feel that he couldn’t let someone else die if it could be prevented? Or did he, against his best intentions, discover that he had come to know and like Laura too much to end her life along with his own?
Was it simple cowardice? Fear of death?
Or was there some part of him, deep down, that actually wanted to live?
Nate turned to look over his shoulder at the hellish conflagration behind him. He could hear sirens somewhere in the distance as police and paramedics rushed to the scene to assist, though the odds were low that anyone in the path of that semi had survived. The fire was burning bright and hot, and he quickly looked away. The afterimage stayed with him for several seconds, flaring white and silver when he blinked before gradually fading from his vision. The image dissolved and his eyes cleared. He gazed through the windshield at the road in front of him.
In the end, he decided, it did not really matter why he had grabbed the steering wheel. The results were the same regardless of the motivation. He was alive. He was surprised to realize that he was happy with the outcome. Or, perhaps happy was too strong a word for what he felt, but at least he did not regret his actions.
He missed Donna. It still hurt to know she was gone. But maybe, just maybe, it hurt a little less today than it did the day before.
Tomorrow?
Well... he would just have to wait and see.
Copyright © 2018 by G. Allen Wilbanks
