The Accident

(Based on a true story ... )

Gretta always drove fast. This night she pushed her vintage Aston Martin faster than usual around the hair pin curve on the country blacktop. A few miles down the road from the tavern. A few more miles the other direction from her home. The buzz of bourbon in her veins, foot tapping on the gas pedal in time with the last jukebox tune, thinking about that cowboy hunk who squeezed her tight against his pecks in that last dance. A great looking guy, who knew what might have happened? But there was always tomorrow, and despite her money, despite her free and easy life style and her silver blond hair, styled that day, despite her crooked knowing grin and deep-throat chuckles and muscle car, Gretta wasn't going to be a slut. Not tonight. Who knows about tomorrow. She tap-tap-tapped the memory of that dance and that tune and the wind blowing over the top of her flint gray convertable. Tap-tap-tap, a little harder each time as she remembered the cowboy's chiseled jaw and perfect nose and smouldering dark unreadable eyes boring into her, prising loose her libido, her breath becoming more labored with each beat of the tune's drum, until she reached a moment when she had to either fold into him or cut loose. She recalled that moment, more and more clearly as the blacktop unfolded before her, until both the road and her emotions yanked her out of herself.

The split second before she knew what had happened, that the sleek, stylish body of her automobile had left the road, that it had lifted, all she knew was that she was airborne and it felt perfect, the culmination of all that had happened that night, better than any orgasm she had experienced, and that she had collapsed into that cowboy's maleness, the way she had so desparately wanted to and against which she had fought at the last second, instinctively knowing failing to do so meant loosening her self to god knew what and that she meant to preserve her self, even at the cost of the purest moment of ecstasy....

But then she knew where she was and that she had done it anyway, in the least safe way possible, and that though she floated, what goes up must come down ....

Then that sudden moment when it all stops, everything, even the fear and the pain, and it's over and just for a second, she sees that her car, her beautiful car, is ruined, and probably she is too, wrapped around the base of a highway sign. Looking up, her last look, Gretta saw the words above her, huge, an expanse across her vision, letters the size of her soul, saying "JESUS SAVES".