Ghost Post: Road Rage, a Short Story

Though I have been remiss in posting to this blog, I have not been so remiss in writing for the blog. Here continues a series I shall call the "far·ra·go Ghost Posts," entries intended for publication during my posting drought that I never got around to posting because sleep. And Facebook. Yeah, okay, mostly Facebook. Some entries will be incomplete, as I obviously didn't finish them at the time of their original composition, and I have since lost the gist of the original direction in which I was headed. And so it goes....

ROAD RAGE
a short story
by Tony Gasbarro
(November 25, 2013)

The light was red. Victor Trachtman saw in his side mirror the man from the other car approaching him, anger hunching his shoulders and squeezing his fists. Vic's foot trembled on the brake pedal. His window was open. Panic seized his mind as it replayed the earlier few seconds of his life, and froze his hands from closing the window.

Vic had signaled his intent to change lanes as he waited for the white Dodge minivan to pass on his right. He had checked the right lane in his right-side mirror. All had been clear. The minivan had cleared Vic's front bumper, and he had accelerated slightly and leaned his steering wheel to the right to take the lane. A sudden screaming horn had startled Vic, and in a brief spastic moment he had punched his brake pedal, jerked his steering wheel to the left, and seen in his right-side mirror the sleek grey Lexus — its headlights flashing and its horn blaring — rapidly closing in on his rear bumper.

The man pounded his fist on the trunk lid of Vic's car as he closed the distance to Vic's open window. Vic could feel his heart's rapid beating in his throat.

Vic's first instinct had been to swerve back into the left lane, but in the split second before doing so, he saw that his acceleration had carried him past the rear bumper of the Yellow VW Beetle. So he had accelerated more and eclipsed the speeding Lexus. To make matters worse, the white minivan had then slowed to turn right, into a shopping center parking lot, and Vic had braked hard in order not to collide with the van, thus causing the Lexus to nearly crash into him from behind.

The man was now in his window, in Vic's face, screaming profane insults at him, his own face nearly purple with rage. Vic heard the man's voice, but the throbbing in Vic's ears garbled the man's words. At first, all he knew was the man's rage, and that the man's mouth was inches from Vic's ear.

And then the words started to catch hold onto Vic's psyche. "...cking moron! Didn't you see me in the lane, you stupid motherfucker? HAH? You need a fucking telegram before you move your stupid piece of shit car in front of someone's fucking way?"

Vic's panic began to give way to anger. The lane had been clear. He had signaled his intent. The Lexus had come seemingly out of nowhere. "I had my blinker on," Vic said, his voice tentative at first. With his next breath Vic felt his own rage rise. "You knew I was changing lanes. You need to slow the fuck down, pal!"

In an instant, the man from the Lexus flipped from rage to insanity. "The fuck...!" He reached a hand in and grabbed at Vic's face. "You don't tell me what to do, motherfucker!"

Vic's own hands went up to fend off the man's grappling at his face and shirt collar.

The man pulled one hand free and started pounding at Vic's face and neck, and screaming. "I'll fucking kill you! I'll fucking kill you!"

Vic threw his arms up to cover his head, and reached out to push the man away from him, shoving at his face. He felt the man seize his arm and start pulling at it, and alternately landing fists on Vic's neck and jaw. "Get out the car, motherfucker! GET OUT THE CAR!" Vic pulled back, gripping his steering wheel with his right hand for leverage while his fastened seat belt anchored him to his car.

Each time the man pulled on his arm, Vic's other hand yanked on the steering wheel to pull back, and deep inside Vic's survival instinct was a calm area experiencing a mild frustration with the steering wheel turning under Vic's fight to stay in the car. A slow reasoning started to build that Vic was going to lose this fight under the raging man's terms. The man had the advantage and all the leverage, with his legs beneath him and his feet on the ground. Soon, the solution to Vic's problem became clear in his mind: he must knock the man off his feet.

In a frantic moment, as danger for his life felt imminent, Vic's right hand pulled the top of the steering wheel to the left and around again until he felt it stop at its limit. Then he slipped his foot off of the brake pedal and onto the accelerator, and his car lurched to the left, knocking the man from the Lexus off balance. The startled man now gripped Vic's arm for leverage rather than advantage, but released it all together as he fell under the heaving automobile.

Flight was all Vic could think of, now, and the sensation of the car riding up, and the sickening yelp of the man's voice as its tire rolled over him only came back to Vic when his senses returned to him while he sat in his car in his garage at home.

"Oh, shit, what have I done?" Vic said aloud. He began to tremble Every sense in his body told him he should call the police, turn himself in. "But HE attacked ME!" Vic said, again aloud, but this time in response to an imaginary interrogator.

His mind's eye pictured, as though a third-person eyewitness, his car running over the man from the Lexus, its tires riding up over the man's hips. He feared the man would never walk again. Or was he dead?

"Maybe," Vic thought aloud, "nobody saw it. Maybe," he hoped, as he realized that it was a busy intersection — EVERYBODY saw it — "they saw what an asshole he was, and nobody reported it."

Vic knew that the right thing — the only thing — was to go to the police station and turn himself in. "But how do I explain to them why I ran away? Or — shit! — why I ran him over?!"

"Somebody must have taken down my license plate number. They'll find me."

He waited for nearly an hour in his garage, waited to hear a knock on his door, or to see the door fly open as the police kicked it in, or used one of those battering rams he had seen used in those reality cop shows on TV. But nothing happened. Not even in the next hour.

Vic left his car and went in the house. His fine house. What would happen to it if he went to prison for running over the man from the Lexus?

In the bathroom, in the mirror, he saw some bruises forming on his jaw where the man's fists had landed. There was a small cut on his neck. Vic trembled again as he relived in a second the whole incident. "What's going on there right now?" he asked his reflection. "Do the police have crime scene tape blocking the corner? Do they do that only if it's a murder?"

Vic vehemently deflected thought of going back there to see. "The suspect always returns to the scene of the crime." Crime?! Was he a suspect? "Oh, Christ! WHY did I run away?!"

The news. "The news will know." He looked at the clock. The evening news was on when he ran over the man from the Lexus. That was three hours ago. The nighttime newscasts wouldn't be on for another hour.

He couldn't eat. He didn't want a drink. "I'll just wait."

The phone rang. He stared at it on the wall for several seconds. Its ring seemed surreal, as though its meaning was detached from the phone. He picked it up. He put it to his ear.

"Hello?"

A hollow silence on the other end. Vic had never hoped for a telemarketer before, but if the caller was selling something, Vic vowed in that moment he would buy it.

"Yes," said the deep voice on the other end. "I'm trying to reach a Victor Trachtman?" He pronounced the "ch" like in "church" instead of the correct "k" sound.

"Speaking," Vic said slowly, his mouth dry.

"I'm Detective Bob Gonzales, Bradley PD, Metro division."

Vic closed his eyes and breathed a heavy sigh.



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