The Gates of Steel

Like a forlorn asteroid hurtling toward its
inevitable destruction, the magnificent Dodge
Charger slid off the road. Chrome slotted rims and
metalflake paint glistened momentarily in the
moonlight. The driver smiled to herself and a few
last remaing, peaceful seconds passed while woman
and machine hung in space. Nature, in all her
mysterious power and glory, decided to erect an
oak tree directly in the path of this representa-
tion of twentieth-century transportation.


"Lover, I need you..." whispered the girl in
the car. Time and motion slowed until they
appeared to be almost nonexistent. She had a mo-
mentary flash in her mind of a wild and crazy-
eyed boy who had been with her in this same car,
in almost the same situation, years ago. He had
laughed then. If he was with her, he'd laugh now.
She decided to do so now instead.


"God, how I've missed you,"she thought with a
trembling chuckle.


The scene now unrolled before her much in the
manner of a pleasant daydream gone unexpectedly
sour. The driver braced herself and watched the
front end of the automobile fold up like a discard-
ed, battered accordian. A fender buckled and
sprang from the car. She heard the engine give one
last churning gasp as the driveshaft audibly
snapped and exploded through the floorboard with
the tail of the transmission. The mauled engine,
not content with its confining compartment, now
rent the firewall asunder seeking refuge in the
front seat of the vehicle.


The girl gripped the steering-wheel in one last
effort to hold on as the dislocated hood complete-
ly shattered the windshield. She could taste the
oil and gasoline mingling with her own life-giving
fluids. She felt the sickening wrench of metal
twisting and snapping and realized her own body's
frame was reflecting that of the car's. A front
wheel left its axle and went running crazily past
the tree and into the darkness.


Momentum carried the car into the next tree
after the first had finished its job of demo-
lition. With the force of a medieval batteringram,
a stump-like branch pounded its way into the side
of the car, pile-driving the driver's door inward.
And then, as quickly as it had begun, it ended.


Blood ran steadily down the gearshifter from a
mutilated pulp of flesh that had once been a hand.
Splotches of gore splattered the length of the
dashboard. More blood was splashed across all of
the glass that was still intact on the car. Lazily
a line of dark crimson liquid made a path down the
sides of the transmission, joining gladly with the
gearfluid and grease. Together they journeyed fur-
ther until they united with Mother Earth.


Back inside the car, the woman's other useless
hand still clung to the steeringwheel, faithfully
obedient even after death. Unshut eyes stared into
the nothingness of a shattered domelight. But
somewhere in that warm summer night, another one
of the last free souls drove an even faster Dodge.
And this time I would be with her.

For Peggy Lynn