Lerong Ajang - Scrawlings

Title: “Twin Lanes”

Author: Lerong Ajang

Rick Bode had just snapped into reality when he noticed that his car had skipped the guardrail after colliding with a red vehicle and was now plummeting into the valley. The utter quiet of his dream, despite being terrifying, was definitely pure fantasy compared to the quaking reality of death.

As the winds howled into the cracked driver’s window, he wondered if it all was simply a dream, but, strangely, he could only think of the last few minutes of his travel, leading him to this point. Maybe, in these last few seconds, he could unwind the mystery and unlock some universal truth, and, in unlatching this enigma, he would awaken in bed alive and well, rewarded for being so clever.

Several moments before his crash, he sat patiently at the steering wheel marveling at the endless car line-up. Somewhere, in the distance, the winding road swiveled into a valley and disappeared. It was strange that such a seemingly isolated mountain area would be backed up in heavy traffic, but, nevertheless, both lanes, marked by imperfect white lines were clogged with waiting vehicles. The hissing wind seemed to scratch chilled nails of frost beneath the seal of the car window.

It seemed quite some time since he had actually jerked the gear back from park, enabling the car to drift, inching closer to the red bumper just ahead. Flicking his wrist in minor frustration, he pushed the ignition back, and, after a short rumble and groan, the car fell silent save the buzz of a local radio station. He gazed across the bordering line of cars to his left, catching an unwanted glimpse at the elderly couple parked in a white car beside him. When met with a judgmental stare, he averted his eyes and shifted his gaze upward at the rising mountain slope winding around the narrow valley through which this road ran.

Turning off the radio, he cracked the car window. He could hear the wind; he could hear the occasional flits of children’s laughter but, beneath the inconsequential sound there was nothing. Troubled by tense quiet, he twisted the ignition back on. He slowly dazed in and out of consciousness until the sound all together stopped, and that is what awoke him: the sudden fright of absolute silence.

His head wrenched up violently. The road was still blocked. He shook his head, trying to quake sound into the dizzying silence. He assumed that many other vehicles had shut off their engines as well, contributing to the sustained hush. The red bumper was still ahead of him, unmoved.

“How can four lanes of traffic get backed up out here?” he asked. His intent look sharpened as he panned across the congested mountain highway. “Four lanes?” he inquired. He thought there had only been two. Had he been too tired to notice before?

He glanced toward the white car beside him. The miserable old couple glared back with large, orange eyes: eyes of the color of the autumn leaves. Startled, he quickly hurried out of sleep to snap the door lock into place. He looked into the review mirror, and, in the car behind him, the family, including the four children in the back seat, scowled forward with the same anomalous stare. The red car in front of him, for some reason, appeared to be vacant, perhaps abandoned. He glanced to his right and was suddenly more confused: a duplicate of the elderly couple in their white car. Rick shifted right to peer over the bordering row into the mysterious lane thereafter. He was certain that he caught a glimpse of a car that resembled his, also bordering the elderly’s white vehicle except on the left side. A haggish white mane interrupted his gaze as the click of a lock resounded, and Rick noticed the elderly couple exiting their vehicle, their evil, orange gape fixed upon him.

There was no time to piece together the mystery, and, all in all, there seemed to be no sense to be made of it. Why would two ghost lanes of traffic materialize parallel to his unmoved location and mimic the appearance of both his lane and the lane bordering on his right? Then he remembered:

As the old, gnarled fingers crept into his cracked window, he stumbled out of sleep yanking the gear back and stomping down hard. He didn’t wake until the icy wind tickled his cheeks. The car plunged into the dark valley.