Everything in our lives had led up to this exact moment.  I, driving in total unawarness, him poised at the edge of infinite danger. 

Little did I know a titanic struggle for survival was about to begin.

Before him, an ocean of black, screaming and teeming  with unstoppable petrofuel cannon balls.

Before me, a road called life.

With absolute conviction that now was the time,  he lunged forward in a mad sprint, tempting the angel of death in his folly.

Beneath him the highway flew past, his heart pounding at heart attack speed. 

I kept hurtling twoards him at over 90 feet per second surrounded by steel and glass, with another car right on my tail.

I saw him, but it was already too late and I knew it.

In the milliseconds of this moment, a billion neurons firing near the speed of light, physics and calculations are abandoned for the cold emotion of pure, unmitigated terror that grip his brain.

I am stuck, caught between the brake and a swerve.  I couldn't possibly even begin to move while I watch the impossible.

He stops and reverses direction, the laws of inertia seemingly tossed out the window in an amazing display of supernatural power.

The microseconds bleed away, the crashing waves of his thoughts are torn apart again by the roaring engine of my death hammer racing to meet him.

He reverses again, towards freedom, indecision becoming action faster than I can even register the movement.

I can appreciate the symphonies of the masters.

I can contemplate the vastness of the universe.

I can understand the meaning of love.

All of this is nothing compared to the incomprehsible, blinding speed with which he thinks and acts.

Again he reverses direction!

It is too late to stop!

My God I am going to kill him!

By the time my pondering dinosaur brain even started sending impulses, I was crossing the point of impact.

It would end in bone crunching agony and fear, a flash of light and then darkness  mixed with innocent blood on the highway. 

Guilt and horror rise like a dragon inside my gut.

Wait!

Hope!

I saw him in the rear view mirror!

Somehow, in that last possible nanosecond, he had reversed again, moving faster than time itself, bending reality in a hypersonic silent dash to the wood line.

Elation!

The rush of living, the triumph of survival washed over both of us with the force of a million tsunamis.

Together we were more alive than anything else in the universe! I had not killed him, he had made it across!

My iron girp on the wheel relaxed with a long, slow breath.

Fucking squirrels.

Copyright: Doug Socks 2010

(Image courtesy of www.tanktops2flipflops.files.wordpress.com)