The Lucky One

A brutal wind rips through the ancient pines, their ice encased limbs bend and creak in the subzero bluster.
         “Fuckin’ hell,” Matt whispers to himself as he precariously makes his way down the icy front steps of his million dollar house. It’s too cold to snow anymore, too cold for there to even be a cloud in the sky, yet the bright pale light of the moon offers no warmth. At 3AM in the tall hills of central Massachusetts not a living thing stirs, that is except for Matt. Again the wind tears through the night, almost knocking Matt off his feet and in near silent vigil piney arms wave goodbye.
         In the seeming moonlit tundra, Matt curses everything- his wife Julie, for wanting to live out here, his boss demanding he be at work for 5AM, his buddy Robbie for introducing him to Julie, even his parent for giving birth to him, everything, everything but his car. His leather gloved hand wraps around the handle and he swings the car door open. Like a first time lover, he eases himself into her, his baby. He turns the key in the ignition and holds his breath as she thunders to life.
         Matt rubs his hands together as he waits for her to warm up. Almost four years old now, he still remembers the day he drove her home, his first purchase after getting the job at the big accounting firm in Boston, a few months before he was introduced to Julie. He smiles to himself as he recalls the first time he sat in her- Mustang GT, all black, all leather interior, convertible, V8, 4.6L with 300 horses under the hood.
         Matt engages the clutch, puts her into first and glides down the driveway and onto the street. The roadway is unilluminated. He turns on his high-beams, this far out in the country they don’t even have street-lights; he shakes his head. The only light there is comes from those few houses in which the television has remained on, its viewers asleep on couches or in their recliners.
         Matt settles in, he’s got a good thirty minutes of back roads before he even reaches route 290. This early he doesn’t even bother to turn on the radio, he just listens to the roar of the engine as he navigates down the long, torturous roadway, more like glorified cow paths in his opinion. He misses the city, Boston, and again he curses Julie for insisting they move out to this frozen, hillbilly hell. After they were married she moved into his apartment in the city, overlooking the park. There were glorious wine toasted sunsets and he knew that he had found the life he was meant to live. Then it happened, shortly after his last promotion, Julie had a pregnancy scare and everything went down the shitter.
         Suddenly his apartment was too small, and who would raise their children in the city anyways? Julie wanted a house in the country, with a white picket fence, a yard big enough to play in and all that crap. It was not until she threatened to leave that he finally gave in, but this is where he drew the line, right here, with his baby. Julie could take away his friends, his gourmet wine shops, his favorite restaurants, but she would never take his car away.
         It was a rare occurrence that he encountered another vehicle on the road this early, if anything good could be said about this commute, but one appeared behind him, momentarily interrupting his usual thoughts. The large SUV comes right up to his rear, high-beams lighting up the whole cabin.
         “Ok, buddy, I see ya,” Matt mumbles to himself and shifts into the next gear.
         Then he had to go and buy snow tires, another five hundred dollars victim of Julie’s hormones. Robbie got it, stood by him through it all, even when old man Howard decided that Senior Accountants arrive an hour before their teams. The guy was a dinosaur, old man Howard was, still required their reports be submitted on paper, hadn’t the guy heard of e-mail? His peers at other firms were walking around with Blackberries, while he was stuck with this archaic pager; still the pay was top notch.
         The SUV following him has crept even closer. In the blinding headlights, Matt couldn’t even see the driver let alone the make and model, only that it was a big black mother of an SUV. The driver of the SUV flashes his high-beams on and off indicating his desire to pass.
         “Yeah right, no one passes me,” Matt down shifts again and accelerates into the night.
         To his surprise the SUV keeps right up with him.
         “Fuckin’ nut job,” Matt says to himself. The road narrows and despite the yellow line down the middle, there is hardly enough room for two cars to pass side by side. Tall pines, with their limbs outstretched over the road fly past him and Matt feels more like he is driving through a tunnel than through the country.
         Now the SUV is so close the vehicles might as well be bumper to bumper. Again the driver flashes his lights and pulls to the left to pass. Matt down-shifts into fifth gear and punches the accelerator. He hastily discards his gloves and wraps flesh around the leather steering wheel for better control.
         “Time to see how big your balls are,” yelling for no reason, Matt begins surging around the near hairpin turns. The whole car frame begins to shake violently as he hits 65mph over the ice heaved concrete. With his studded tires he half drifts around the next turn before taking a moment to wipe his sweat caked palms off on his peat coat.
         Inspite of his best efforts, the SUV doesn’t lose an inch on him, as the odometer pushes seventy. Matt doesn’t quit, never quits, and he doesn’t lose, never loses, only to Julie. First she took his heart then his life and it eats him away slowly on the inside. He bites down hard on his lip until he can taste salty blood in his mouth.
         “Never again,” he promises himself. He crests the next hill and all four tires tread air on the descent, the frame crashing onto the shocks with a loud thud. With fluorescent arrogance, the SUV flashes its headlights again and Matt’s face flushes red with anger, his heart pounding so hard it threatens to break his ribs.
         At the bottom of the hill is a little known shortcut Matt discovered one morning by accident. Cutting five minutes off his commute, the shortcut is also poorly kept up and narrower that the other roads. It is a tiny one car road, but he no longer cares. “Fine then, asshole, I’ll see you on the highway.”
         Without ever touching his turn signal, or the brake, Matt pulls hard on the wheel and swings the car to the right and onto the hazardous shortcut. His black tire momentarily catches on a patch of black ice and the car fishtails wide on the turn. Matt hardly notices, he is so intent on the turning lights of the SUV that once again fly up on his bumper.
         “Now it’s fuckin’ personal,” he swears, sweat trickling down his forehead as he pushes the accelerator all the way to the floor.
         Eighty, eighty-five, ninety, ninety-five and its all Matt can do to keep his baby on the one lane road. He glances in the rearview mirror at the two blazing headlights, like the eyes of some crazed madman. He looks back to the road as he negotiates the next corner to see another set of headlights coming right at him.
         He slams his foot onto the brake as hard as humanly possible and tries to turn the wheel but he is going way too fast for anything to make a difference. The sound of contorting metal and crushed glass splits the night wide open. Matt’s face slams forward into his airbag.
         Laying semi-conscious in the heat of emergency deployment, Matt waits for the second crash of the SUV into his rear end, but it never comes. Instead, as if in slow motion, the towering SUV glides to a stop right next to him. In the strobed yellow hazard lights and blare of the car horn, Matt watches the driver-side door of the dark tinted windowed SUV breeze open. Blocked by the enormity of the vehicle, it seems as if an age passes for Matt while waiting for the SUV driver to make his way around the vehicle.
         In staggered frames, like an old misreeled movie, the driver of the SUV slowly comes into Matt’s fading view. Piece mail vision. A long black coat. A wide hat pulled low. An inhumanly wide grin on a long bone white face. Eyes as deep as oblivion. And the horse, dry-as-dust words: “Looks like you’re the lucky one.”
         And . . . and . . . nothingness . . .
         “Looks like you’re the lucky one.” . . .
         Matt’s eyes crack open, for a moment there is nothing but a white blur. “…huh? . . .” his raw throat gurgles out. It takes a moment but Matt’s vision adjusts to the sterile white ceiling, the god-awful blue Johnny, the long ropes of tubing connected to his veins. Lastly his drugged gaze settles upon the gray-haired doctor sitting at his bedside.
         “Wh-what did you say?” Matt chokes out, swallowing hard.
         “That it looks like you were damned lucky,” the doctor looks up from his clipboard.
         Matt responds with a dulled questioning look as his mind strains to rewind; he remembers driving and headlights, the pointed teeth of a flesh eating grin, a black trench coat swishing soundless in the wind.
         “The man in the other car crushed his wind pipe on impact; he died moments after the crash. You got lucky, we didn’t think you were gonna make it at first. Guess it just wasn’t your time,” the physician explained matter-of-factly, yet with a strained attempt at bedside consolation.
         Searching, Matt reads the name on the doctor’s coat, Dr. Richardson, “Black SUV,” he coughs out, mouth rough like sandpaper.
         “No, no, the other guy was in a sedan.”
         No, there was another . . . guy in a black SUV,” with scrambled mind he struggles to explain.
         “Well if there was he didn’t stop. Thankfully all the noise woke up people in the nearby house and they called 911,” the doctor re-hangs the clipboard and stands up.
         “Wh-wh . . .  my car?” Matt inquires with growing clarity.
         “Not real sure, but I heard the cops had to have the remaining pieces towed away,” he nonchalantly explains on his way to the door.
         “No . . .” Matt whispers to himself; moisture begins to collect in the corners of his eyes.
         “Would you like me to let your wife in now? She’s hardly left your side for two days now.”
         Icy cold runs of tears streak down Matt’s face. The doctor clears his throat and through watery vision, Matt looks up.
         “Your wife, can I let her in to see you?”
         “Yeah,” breaking down, Matt begins fully weeping.
         With the door half open, the aged Dr. Richardson turns back to Matt, “Guess with a wife like that, you really were the lucky one.”