Center Divide by Brian Jackson

Brian Jackson is an amateur writer who is trying, like many others, to get his words read. He is retired and lives with his wife, Melanie, a published author, in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Brian is the editor in cheif of DRR.

They say that any landing you can walk away from is a good one. So, Harry couldn't feel too badly about the landing he'd just made on the center divide of the San Diego freeway two blocks south of the Sepulveda Boulevard off-ramp. Freeway landings are seldom preferable to those at FAA approved airports and a cement barrier topped by a, now accordioned, chain link fence could never provide the gentle touch-down of freshly laid tarmac. However, having lost all power in his single engine Cessna while flying over the San Fernando Valley, Harry found the horizontal nature of a freeway landing preferable to the verticality of the building landing he'd narrowly avoided during his approach. He also viewed the saw-toothed surface of the center divide as plush in comparison to a head-on collision with a suburban assault vehicle in the fast lane.

"Holy crap, I'm still alive," he concluded. Yep, Harry knew he was a lucky dog simply to be walking away from this landing.

Having achieved sufficient awareness of the relative safety of his current situation to release his white knuckle grip on the steering yoke, Harry decided to spend some quality time gathering his wits and pondering his surroundings. He gazed out the cracked canopy of the cockpit onto a steady stream of early morning, rush hour traffic and tried to imagine what his fellow commuters made of the unique feast for the eyes he presented. A flying machine on the freeway, perched upon its nose and landing gear, as if kneeling before the patron saint of dumb-ass, lucky bastards. After some contemplation, Harry concluded that the passers-by were most likely either pissed about their tax dollars being spent on yet another piece of modern art gone awry, to say nothing of the poor choice of display locations, or pissed that they're leaders were making yet another blundering attempt to save tax dollars by renting local thorough-fares to LAX to handle overflow traffic. In any case, they were most likely pissed, as attested to by the cacophony of horn blasts that breeched Harry's battered sensory defenses in route to his the overtaxed byways of his brain.

Harry was basking in the good fortune of having survived his landing, or more accurately, crash, when his olfactory senses registered a trace of gasoline vapors upon a breeze wafting through a shattered cockpit window. He began to sample the air more vigorously when he sensed a hint of smoke.

Holy crap, I've gotta get outta here!" Harry concluded. Yep, the heavens only smile for so long, after which time you'd better run for cover before the shit storm resumes.

Harry squirmed violently in his canted seat until he was able to find and release the clasp on the seatbelt holding him fast. During this exertion he felt some tightness in his lower back, but was surprised to find he was otherwise unimpaired. He was glad to have avoided serious injury since he predicted a great deal of effort would be required to pry open the door against which he leaned the bulk of his weight. As it turned out, he needn't have concerned himself with exertion since the door fell away as soon as he touched the release handle. Instead, Harry should have concerned himself with the force of gravity that whisked him from his seat to be bounced off the afore-mentioned door and dashed upon the glass strewn pavement of the emergency lane below.

Harry lay stunned, with his face and hands pressed against the roadway, trying to ascertain how soon he must peel himself from the asphalt. In the distance, he heard the wail of sirens approaching, undoubtedly his rescuers attempting to batter their way through a sea of bumper to bumper vehicles. A sidelong glance revealed that all traffic in the oncoming lanes had stopped and all heads were turned his way; likely awaiting the next act of this morning's impromptu entertainment. Harry was wondering whether an intermission was in order when his face and hands registered the speed with which black asphalt can transfer heat to exposed skin brought to a sizzle under the relentless encouragement of an L.A. heat wave. Without hesitation, Harry discarded all consideration of an early intermission and promptly began the next act with a vigorous rendition of dancing and screaming.

"Shit, shit, shit!" he sang to the staccato accompaniment of flamenco style heel impacts.

Harry's energetic gyrations proceeded with increasing intensity and were eventually interleaved with twirling in an attempt to increase air flow over seemingly charred flesh. He was considering adding a series of hand claps to not only promote a healing flow of blood to his injuries but to complete the picture of a swarthy, Iberian hoofer, when he was checked by the sound of footsteps approaching from behind. Actually, Harry could easily have ignored the sound of the footsteps to continue his exuberant prancing. What he could not ignore was the uncomfortable sense that he could feel those footsteps coming through the soles of his shoes, after they had reverberated through the ground beneath his feet, possibly even after they had bounced off the earth's core and returned to the surface.

"Way to go, shit for brains!" Harry heard in a guttural growl from over his shoulder.

Wearying from his exertions and having banished the worst of the sting from his fried extremities, Harry became aware of how ridiculous his antics must appear to the casual observer. He mentally juxtaposed a vision of himself dancing in the center divide, hands flailing over his head, with the size, severity, and proximity of the voice from behind to intuit that caution was in order. Planting his feet firmly, he inflated his chest to increase his bulk and thereby exaggerate his ability to defend himself, and turned to present his most intimidating visage as a shield to any eminent threat, only to be struck by the futility of such a gesture. Harry found himself face to chest with a behemoth - a giant in all three dimensions of height, width, and depth.

Harry was stunned by the fact that he needed to shift his head from side to side to view the full girth of the musculature before him. Wiry, black hair peeked over the top of a low cut muscle-T framed by an unbuttoned, short-sleeve work shirt. His blood chilled when he realized that he was viewing arms rather than two smaller men standing to either side of the stranger. He felt his sphincter tighten as he craned his head back between his shoulder blades to view the behemoth's full countenance. Finally, he was thankful for the tightened sphincter when he saw the maw above him contort into a rictus grin. Having completed his visual tour of the beast from hell, Harry's gaze snapped back to the detritus strewn tarmac at his feet only to notice the density of the massive shadow cast by the mountain of flesh hovering before him.

"You know I'm paid by the hour, little man?" the behemoth queried. Harry shook his head in reply, unwilling to return his eyes to the shark grin he knew to be leering down at him. "You know that you made me miss a bid on the most important construction contract of my life?" the behemoth continued. Letting his gaze wonder, Harry spotted a mammoth pickup truck, driver's door ajar, parked in the fast lane a hundred yards away and wondered how far to either side it had rocked when the behemoth alit from the vehicle. "You know how much your gay little dance is costing me?" the behemoth probed further. Nope, Harry didn't know the answer to that one either. "You know what I do to punks who take my money?" the behemoth bellowed, causing Harry to shuffle his feet in search of a reply.

In a flash Harry's beleaguered mind grasped upon the perfect response to the behemoth's seemingly endless interrogation. Having no choice but to put action to thought, he took one small step forward and proceeded to evacuate his overwrought digestive system onto every surface of the nightmare before him -- and he did it with verve. Previous to this morning, Harry had heard of projectile vomiting; but such a lurid description seems exaggerated to all but the few initiated. No two words could fully convey the intensity, quantity, concentration, or duration of such a volcanic digestive eruption. Harry was later willing to swear that he had seen the behemoth rocked back on his heels by the magnitude of the impact.

"Holy crap," Harry gurgled through an excess of mucilage left in his mouth.

To Harry's surprise, the act of vomiting, with such intensity, had managed to defuse the situation. The behemoth stood, arms extended, unsure as how to respond to such an unexpected, confident, and unrestrained assault.

Harry thought he perceived an expression of utter confusion on the yeti like visage peering through a drapery of flowing spew. The behemoth dabbed at his saturated shirt and smacked his lips in disgust. For a time, Harry wondered whether the behemoth might resume this play with his own rendition of stomping and screaming; but alas, he instead determined it was time for the final act.

"You little bastard!" the behemoth exploded, the force of this expostulation rocking Harry back on his own heels. Harry was then literally lifted off his feet by a sharp grasp of his shoulder. No pain he had felt previously during this entire episode compared with the lightning flash of agony that shot up his arm from this vise like grip.

"Time to die, faggot," the behemoth snarled, cocking his fist for the coup-de-grace. Harry squinted down the vast length of the oily, hirsute piston aimed at his face and began to whimper, suspecting that his good fortune was at an end. He pathetically wondered if it would be worth protesting that he was neither a bastard nor a faggot. But before he felt the anticipated pain of percussive impact or touch of an angel come to relieve him of his corporeal remains, Harry felt a different sensation which was the last he would have expected. He was flying.

The heat from a smoldering piece of rubber cast from the wreckage was met by a stream of gasoline spilling from the ruptured fuselage, and together they conspired to extract enough oxygen from their smog laden surroundings to not only blow what remained of his crippled plane to pieces, but to launch Harry on the wings of a new adventure. The entire experience most likely occupied an instant of time, but each detail was etched in Harry's brain as if the instant had spanned hours. It began with a massive concussion, second only to the Big Bang in intensity. Harry felt his feet whisked from beneath him, his legs and arms thrown akimbo. He tumbled through the air, losing all awareness of left, right, up, or down. Remembering his most recent encounter with the laws of gravity, Harry assumed that his current experience would come to a bad end. But he also realized that this latest twist of fate had erased his impending need for immediate, extensive dental surgery. The behemoth was gone. Harry assumed that the behemoth had embarked on his own personal exploration of the laws of physics and that he too would be bargaining with his creator for an acceptable outcome. As for Harry, he had returned to the cocoon from whence he'd emerged, the cocoon which had protected him from reality for many years. He was flying. There was no pain, there was no fear - there was only the peace and serenity of flight.

The fact that Harry didn't immediately come to his senses splayed upon blistering pavement and instead awoke supine upon a bed as soft as cloud seemed a boon. He flexed his aching muscles experimentally, and as a result experienced the cool caress of feather light material against his skin. He kept his eyes closed, not wanting to interrupt what he felt to be a much deserved reward for his recent ordeal.

"Any explosion you can walk away from is a good one," Harry quipped.

Things got even better when he opened his eyes.

Harry pried open his swollen, sticky eyelids to gaze into the two most beautiful pools of azure blue he'd ever seen. Hovering above him was a face, with skin like that of a fresh peach, framed in golden hair. In apparent response to his waking, the two rose pedals forming the lips of the face gently parted to unveil an even, dazzling white smile. As his field of vision expanded he beheld that the creature above him was draped in white and that they were alone together in a world of pure light. Harry felt his breath halt with the realization that he was in heaven rather than the place in which most people expect to spend eternity.

"You're awake," sang the voice of an angel, as heard across a bad cell phone connection. "Don't try to speak Mister Carlson. You've been in an accident. You're at Mercy General Hospital. You received some minor burns and a couple of fractures, but otherwise you seem to have faired extremely well considering the crash and subsequent explosion."

Harry tried to part his lips to tell the angel that he loved her, but found that the devil had joined his lips together to prevent him from praising this emissary of the Lord.

"You're sedated, so you should feel no pain and, in fact, are most likely feeling light-headed. You're mouth is probably too dry for you to speak. We'll be rehydrating you as soon as we've had a chance to ascertain that you're in stable condition," the herald of God continued.

The best response that Harry could muster was a gaze from two dreamy, puppy-dog eyes. This seemed to charm the angel who shook her head, and rose gathering what inexplicably resembled a clip-board.

"Look Mister Carlson," said the cherubim, patting his leg, "we'll give the drugs a couple of hours to wear off, after which I'll come back and we'll have a long talk. In the meantime, you relax and enjoy the rest of the ride."

With that, the angel was gone, most likely winging way to an urgent rendezvous with yet another of the dearly departed.

Harry closed his eyes and began to experience a sensation of floating which he assumed to be prevalent amongst those becoming acclimatized to life in the heavenly abode. Rather than hearing the sound of harps, which Harry assumed would have been provided in aid of acclamation, he instead heard an annoying knocking sound coming from the world of light outside his eyelids. As the knocking persisted, Harry tried to ignore the interruption but was drawn back to the realm of heavenly light by a consideration that yet another emissary of the Lord might be awaiting him, and that she too might be a total babe.

Harry opened his eyes and cocked his head to acknowledge the source of the interruption. His vision having cleared, he now perceived that he was lying in a white room, apparently a heavenly holding cell, and that several individual's stood crammed in the doorway, one of them robustly rapping his knuckles on the door.

With a gut wrenching jolt, Harry fell to earth and the reality of his hospital room surroundings flooded his vision to slam his brain against the back of his skull. Standing in the doorway was a crowd of individuals, all identically dressed in immaculately tailored suits, carrying briefcases and all wearing similarly, compassionless expressions. Once they saw he was awake, they smoothly swam across the room, jostling one another for the first strike, all eyes glued to their prey lying defenseless upon the bed. This terrifying vision returned Harry to his ordinary life on Earth in a flash. At last, his luck had one and truly run out.

The lawyers had arrived.

© 2009 by B. J. Jackson