DEAD SIMPLE

Oh, to be old and timeless enough to be able to forget things of real importance. To not know anything else but those things immediately surrounding you. To take for granted such an easy form of death. To forget. To be dead. To be dead and driving.

The flames curl like brightly colored ribbon. The snow stopped falling long ago. It happens like a speeded-up old movie. It seems like the moment when it happened never exists, yet you still hear the sound in your head. The bodies have burst front and back. There's more sound and body talk to it than you'd expect. There is a thirst that can only be expressed by flames. Gasoline is licked up like melted ice cream. A body lies face down in a puddle of blood. Two bodies. When the sun comes out, the blood will look red. Two parents and a child are in the car. It swerves to miss the Flying Dutchman, driving down the wrong lane. The worst happens – a wall of rock, the car springs up like a toy, glass falls down like hard rain, heads and necks spin around and around like you would never believe. If this were a movie you would see it all in slow motion but this isn't – it's a book and you will have to take my word for it. The baby is thrown into a pile of snow, the only and thus fateful pile of snow in this landscape of rock and night. The baby is too startled to cry. It is dreadfully night. The headlights have gone out. Fire and the moon let the baby watch but he doesn't feel like paying attention. His parents have fallen apart - their zooming car is burning. The burning gets bigger and then it gets smaller. The baby is cold - when the flames go away there is nothing to see but darkness. The road is empty. Because everything is so quiet the baby cries, but there is nobody to hear him.

Rock huddles into the mountainside. The wind blows like you do into a bagpipe. The world is completely quiet and empty and then it is as noisy as anything. The horizon grins as bright as if it were bringing back daylight, but it's too early in the night for that. The tires grind themselves into the road and their friction sends sparks flying everywhere. The force of the tires and light pulls the road off the world and waves it like loose carpeting. A Winnebago streaming light and darkness rises over the edge of the world and fills the night with cackles and screaming. The trees all catch fire and the rocks around them jump off the hillside and dance like demons. The ashes of the exploded car fly up like confetti and douse the world and buzz in and out of the light cast by the phantom Winnebago. The ghost ship stops next to the wrecked car and out jump five demons, shrieking and shaking themselves to pieces. The world shakes with them and the trees throw the balls of fire they make into the sky. The fire sticks there, casting down long shadows; stripes and spirals of fire spit and shake as the demons dance. The five breathe out lava and join hands around the wrecked car. They jump up and down on the bodies and the air smells cloudy and choking, like burned plastic. The demons draw numbers of fire on the dancing rocks and the buzzing black sky. The numbers are traffic fatalities. The numbers dance and swell. Each mile marker bends and holds more fire.

The baby isn't crying. Its wet eyes reflect back many balls of flame and toothless demon grins. The scene before the baby is burning itself into the back of his brain. A ball of flame flies right over the baby and shines back the crystals of all the snow snuggling him in. Little Pierre looks up with his sweep of dancing and sees the glints in the small baby eyes. Little Pierre ducks onto the ground. When the other demons trip over him and see him like that, they stop dancing. Peter Mouse asks him, "Why?" Little Pierre mutters, quiet enough but not so quiet that it doesn't get to their ears, "We're watched."

The rocks jump back into the mountain. The flame balls fly back to the faint stars. The trees and mile markers go dark and stand up straight. The Winnebago still glows, but green instead of so white. Fleek and Flake bounce into it thru its closed windows.

Maxine Vanderhofsberger walks over to the baby, lying safe in the snow, and picks it up. The sound that the baby makes when the dead woman picks it up is a cry so loud it is still echoing off the hills when morning comes from the east.

Copyright 2002 John Akre

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