Re write Secret Race

                                                        The Secret Race

                                                      By Curtis Ray Jones



          Slumped and saggy eyed in his old pickup truck Lucas Hayes let the black featureless night whip past unnoticed. Twelve hours on concrete lugging seventy-five pound blocks of natural rubber from bale to belt had wrung the last drop get-up-and-go from his tall lanky frame. 

    Home, soft and easy, was all he had on his mind. A warm shower to wash away the stench of burnt rubber and carbon black then off to bed he would go.

    He had no idea how many how many times he had driven this narrow stretch of asphalt with those same thoughts in his mind. Nor could he recall how many times he had driven across the Black River Bridge with no thought of the deep dark torrent far below. With so many uneventful crossings behind him, he had no reason to wonder what might lie ahead. 

  However, this time his eyelids were like lead curtains that refused to stay up. His head kept bobbing up and down struggling against the heavy quilt of sleepiness creeping over him.

    The soft green glow of his dashboard lights grew dimmer and dimmer as the truck weaved nearer and nearer to the bridge. He knew had to make that turn but his will was melting as fast as his consciousness. 

  The smooth seamless night and the trucks rhythmic rumble seemed determined to float him away. He could feel the world shrinking to a pinpoint as his mind fluttered like a dieing candle flame. Suddenly the image of the bridge flashed across his mind. He was about to miss his turn. He flung his head back, yanked the wheel hard to right slammed down on the accelerator thinking it was the brake. The truck roared down the steep rocky riverbank twenty feet past the bridge plowing through the flimsy underbrush straight toward the river. 

  Lucas slammed both feet on the brake and clawed at the stirring wheel as hard and as fast as he could sending the truck sliding sideways toward the rushing black water.

    A large boulder punched out the left headlight crumpling his left front fender.  His windshield exploded. Crystal shrapnel sprayed straight into Lucas’ unprotected face shredding it to bloody ribbons.

  The unyielding boulder upended the truck, sent it tumbling roof first into the deep fast moving water flinging him up and over just before the explosive impact. 

  A piston of cold blackness punched through his open side window knocking him senseless as the river rushed in and swallowed the truck and its helpless passenger whole. 

    Lucas did not hear his ribs popping into against the seat belt when it slammed against his chest no more than he felt the shards of glass that ripped bone deep through his flesh. His mind had already shriveled into a protective ball when the wall of icy water slammed into his head.

    Ruddy water swirled about his dangling limbs teasing his bleeding broken body as the lifeless truck drifted down turning, and tumbling with the current until it finally came to rest against a mud stuck log twenty feet below.

    The moment his truck stop moving a dull white sphere four times it size began burning its way into this world. It bore through the air like the red-hot tip of a cigarette punching through a sheet of plastic then popped out two above the river and directly over the truck. Having located his vehicle, it projected a narrow beam of white light at it.

    Not being a laser beam, but something much more sophisticated, it did not burn through the metal it merely shrank until it could neatly slip through the truck’s tightly woven molecular inner structure.

    Upon penetrating Lucas’ metal cocoon it passed though hair, scalp and skull as if they were damp tissue paper entered his brain did some preparatory re -wiring it then moved on to its primary target his DNA where the bulk of his so called extra junk DNA was ‘brought on line’ as it were. 

  Lucas’ eyes was just beginning to flutter open when the beam blinked out and the large white sphere burned back to its’ dimension of origin. He had no idea what had just happened to him, but as he lifted his hands he could feel the water’s cool resistance against his skin and even in his mouth, yet he was breathing. He opened his eyes, rubbed his face, and felt only water. There was no air. He could not be breathing and something was illuminating the truck’s cab with an odd golden glow. He figured it must be sunlight filtering down as he dismissed the light and focused his concern on the breathing, the breathing his breathing was just flat out impossible. ‘This can’t be, it’s a dream, a crazy stupid dream, and I’m waking up right now!’   

  He flailed about easily snapping the seat belt, and then he was floating, floating toward the jagged window frame. Like smoke from a flu the current was drawing him out, and out was exactly what he wanted. 

  Moments later he was broke the surface of the river and found he could swim against the current with hardly any effort at all. He also made another startling discovery, the sun was not up, but he could see the bridge the river, the trees and the stars clear as day. The light was coming from him, more specifically his eyes. “I can see in the dark, breath water and what else? This is too much, too nutty. My life can‘t be a comic book. It just can‘t!” He shook his head slinging water like dog then swam to shore. He needed soft and easy and a strong dose of reality. He needed to go home. However, as he climbed the slippery riverbank he knew home would never the same again.