Pass

The sky was turning purple just after the sun had set. Beck was on the radio. I was running on empty, but the tank was full of gas. It had been week after week of late-night shifts and odd jobs during the day, but now I was finally getting out. My body was tired but my mind was racing with possibilities. I pulled up to a stoplight on the edge of town. A pair of headlights pulled up behind me with uncanny menace. There was something aggressive about the way they stopped; sudden and just a little too close behind me.

I didn’t wait for the light to change to green. My tires screeched and left pink smoke in the red stoplight glare. I slapped it through the gears, rushing up to 3rd as I hit the mountain turns just outside of town. The headlights were well behind me, but keeping up. We ascended. Pine trees whipped by in the dark, and the road snaked away in front of me, turning, dipping and rising. I knew all the turns, but my heart still pounded. The leather on my steering wheel grew slippery with the sweat from my hands.

We were nearing the pass. I thought of what was behind me—pain, pressure, loss, unwanted memories, fear, and most of all an endless list of obligations. My mind filled with adrenaline from a sudden sharp crack behind me. Gunfire? I heard it again, then glass shattered behind me. I felt the warm night air rush in. Pain blossomed from my shoulder with another cracking sound. This was it. I could see the pass ahead of us, a lighter gap in the darkness of the mountains silhouetted against the night sky. I whipped the car around the next corner, but my shoulder was gone and my arm with it. My turn went wide, and I sailed through the metal guardrail. I heard the twisting and shrieking of the steel. The engine revved up as the wheels left the ground. My foot held the pedal down on the floor. I looked up and saw the pass one last time before the car fell to the cliffs below.