Trembling With Fear 06/16/2019

The Driver

            The driver noticed the tuft of human hair and broken headlight at the same time. He had just pulled into the carwash. The hair was wedged in the plastic covering over the bulb. Instinctively he looked around to see if anyone else was watching. Fortunately it was midnight, so the place was deserted.

            He knelt and studied the damage, removing the hair with his fingers. It was long and honey colored. There was no doubt it was much too long to belong to anything else but human. The panic began to rise in his chest. How had it gotten there? He didn’t remember an accident. Reaching inside the covering he checked to see if the bulb was still intact and felt something loose. He retracted his hand and found that it held a human tooth. He stood and examined it in the light. It was very small—clearly that of a child’s. Now the panic constricted his throat as he tried to remember the drive to the carwash. There was simply no way he could have hit a child. What would a child be doing in the street this late at night? He tried to account for every moment of the trip, but there were gaps where his mind had wandered. It is almost impossible to remain aware of what you are doing every second of every day. 

            Retrieving a flashlight from his car he lay on his back and shined it along the undercarriage. He noticed at least three different places where bloody pieces of skin were wrapped around the control springs and brake housing. He turned off the light and contemplated the implications of hitting a child. There would be guilt and reproach. His life would be ruined.

            In a sudden flash of hope it occurred to him that he might be washing the wrong car. He had parked in one of the stalls then walked to the coin machine. It was a common model and color so he sometimes approached other people’s cars in parking lots before realizing his error. Exiting the stall he stood back and looked at all of the openings. They were all empty except his. That was when he heard the sirens. He stood like an alerted deer, tracking their progress across the city. He tried to remember his route. Had he come in from the north or the east? They were both equally plausible. He gauged the sirens to be coming from the northeast, but he couldn’t be sure. The fog was playing tricks with sound.

            With his mind racing the driver hurried into the stall and put coins in the slot, his hands trembling. The reassuring spray initiated and he returned to the front of his car. That was when he noticed the tooth was missing. Where the hell had it gone? He was sure he had put it on the hood—or had he? He looked around at the pavement to see if it had fallen. There was nothing. Now the fear migrated to his limbs and he began frantically washing his car, taking special care to blast the human remains off the undercarriage and into the drain.

            When this was done he replaced the hose and studied the vehicle. He was somewhat comforted by the fact that it looked good as new. He began to calm down. Once he fixed the headlight it would be like the whole thing never happened. There was the problem of the tooth, but it had probably slipped to the pavement. Certainly no one would pay attention to such a small thing. He was thankful that the sirens had stopped.

Then he saw the bloody drag marks. Why hadn’t he noticed them before? Walking back into the parking lot he traced their progress from the road to his stall. There was something lying on the ground. He picked it up. It was a piece of bloody fabric. The color and design reminded him of something a child would wear. The panic returned.

How could he hit and drag a child without realizing it? Wouldn’t he remember doing such a terrible thing? But how can you trust your memories? We all die moment by moment only to be reborn into a new unreality. How can you be sure of anything when you are nothing but a transient observer, doomed to grapple with an alien world that is constantly changing? How can you trust a phantom self that died the moment it was born? The person who drove to the carwash was dead and now he was left to sort through this stranger’s crimes from inconclusive fragments of memory.

Looking at the bloody fabric the driver visualized the police investigating the accident scene, then noticing the drag marks. Soon they would follow them to the carwash. Driven by guilt and fear he stumbled back to his car, tossing the fabric onto the passenger seat as he got in and started the engine. Pulling onto the street he drove away from the carwash in the opposite direction from his home. He hoped he had been thorough when he washed the car, though a part of him wanted to go back and confess. As he contemplated that option, the ramifications were simply too awful to imagine. The best thing to do was look for a place to get rid of the bloody fabric. Perhaps he would drive by a dumpster. He reached over to make sure it was close at hand, but found that it was gone. Instead his hand closed on something else. He held it under the pulsing glow of the passing streetlights. It was the tooth. The driver pressed on the accelerator, fleeing toward a nightmare that rushed to greet him like an amorous lover—the two of them entwined in a never-ending cycle of death and rebirth.