Wednesday, August 13, 2008

It runs in the family, apparently

So yeah, my family's really close - both my immediate family and my extended family.

But are we too close? Too loyal to each other? Too caught up in a feeling that blood runs thicker than water?

You tell me. After my post earlier today, I got an email from my cousin Jake. He told me that he'd had similar dreams in the past: a family member committing unspeakably horrible evil, and then, when push comes to shove, we just go along with it. And not only that, we worry about their leaving evidence behind. We do everything we can to help them get away.

We do our best to get around the situation by pretending like it never happened, like we can just sweep it under the rug.

None of our family members is a murderer, that I know of. But I still found it pretty odd that we'd had such similar dreams, and so did Jake. Here's his.



I had a test to think about. First one of the new year, I hate it when christmas break ends and you have to go back to school. Never a worse time in a midwest child's life that between about January 3rd and February 28th. Long, dark, cold winter mornings when you have to wake up at what seems like 4am to go to school. That was today. My dad was taking us to school that day on his way to work. It's overcast outside plus it's early and still pretty dark. And cold, really cold.

I'm sitting with Maggie in the back seat while my Dad checks a message on his phone. We know to be quiet, not as if we would have anything to say this early on, but still we knew. It hadn't been thirty seconds since we had left our driveway, hadn't seen any other cars yet cause it's early and our road isn't very busy anyway. I was zoning out watching the trees go by, drifting in and out of a dreamy haze huddled inside my big winter coat. I'm not sure if it was the jarring shock of a frigid metal zipper touching my cheek or the sound of the engine coming to life as my dad finished his call that brought me back, but either way I was aware again. Then something bright caught my attention up ahead- it was almost blocked by the bend in the road at first but it quickly came into view. As we neared the curve in the road I heard the hum of the engine grow rapidly louder. Then the car straighted out instead of taking on the gradual turn in the road. I see him. Does my dad? He's right fucking there. Wham! nailed him.

He barely even turned around before we smacked into him. I couldn't even see his face yet, just his ear and nose as he was beginning to turn and face us. He didn't stand a chance cause he never got to react. No jumping up to roll over the hood, just a slight turn in time to probably know he was fucked. We hit him and he went down. I followed the path his body took with my eyes as we passed over what I now presumed was a mangled corpse. I swear I heard crunching under my feet as the front passenger tire came back to the ground and the rear passenger tire lifted up over his body. What an odd feeling it is to be sitting one moment in your seat and then the next to be sitting in that same seat only a foot or so higher up and knowing full well that that increase in altitude is due solely to a human being's body being crunched under the tire of the three thousand pound car you're in.

Somehow I knew it wasn't a mistake. The car didn't slow before impact, it revved and sped up. The front bumper never dipped, maybe if it had he would have stood a chance over flipping up toward the windshield, but not this poor bastard. He went down under. Wait. That fucking song. It was on the radio right then. What a coincidence I thought. That's funny, this song is so catchy. The car was stopped. It had been for a while. Maybe an hour or two, or three seconds, I don't know, but it was long enough for my dad to be out of his seat. His door was shut. His coffee hadn't spilt. Good thing he brought that one cup with the safety top. The steam escaping the small opening in the lid was fogging up the windshield. I leaned forward to hit the defrost button and turn on the heat. Man was it cold. Wait a second. "Maggie, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just cold."

I wonder if that guy was okay. When I got out of the car my dad was stuffing his body in the trunk. He looked at me and casually mentioned that he was dead. "Oh, okay. What are you doing?"

"I'm gonna put him in the dumpster, it's garbage day today."

I nodded and followed the trail of blood back to where we hit him. I started scooping fresh white snow on top of the blood stains. My dad told me to hurry up or we'd be late for school. So I did. I covered up all the blood spots and erased my dad's tracks by kicking snow over them. I jumped back into my seat and shut the door.

"Sure is cold out there huh Jake?"

"Yup."





Yeah, I don't know. Analyze that.

1 comment:

Falwless said...

Wait a second. Is your last name Menendez?