The Drive

-

Matt was beginning to feel rather nauseous,

while everything outside sped past in a blur.

He turned his head and looked back down the road.

With the car on the verge of taking flight,

and Caroline happily behind the wheel,

it was a good time to start praying, he thought.

Due to her current love affair with K-Pop,

she had the volume cranked up on the stereo,

blasting boyband music through the speakers.

It almost made him wish he had stayed home.

But he was captive as her passenger,

and nothing was going to change the fact.

He only hoped it would make the trip faster.


Suddenly, she tapped the brakes to slow down,

and ended up jerking the wheel a bit,

before abruptly righting it again.


"Oh, no, I think I missed the turn," she said

and looked around, checking out through the windows.

"This isn't the road we’re supposed to be on.

I think we were supposed to turn back there."


Matt looked out across the field on his side,

and, by the rows of large hay bales at the back,

he recalled it from earlier that day.


"This looks like the same road we took to get here,”

he said. "We're not lost. We came here this way.

It has to be the right way to get home."


"Yeah," Caroline replied, "but Mom told me

to go a different way. She said it was faster.

But this isn't it. I know where we are."


She sighed, shook her head and shrugged, then said,

"Might as well keep going, take this way home."


No sooner had the car returned to speed,

when Matt spotted something in the road.

At a glance, it appeared to be roadkill,

but there was something peculiar about it

and they were coming up upon it quickly,

and Caroline seemed to pay it no mind.

Then he made out the shape of a large bird

and realized there was a giant vulture

standing by the roadside with its head down,

picking at the dead carcass in the road.


Judging by the speed they were traveling,

he had a premonition they might startle

the bird and make it fly into their path,

and they regrettably wind up hitting it.

He wanted to tell Caroline to slow down,

but he was too afraid to start a panic,

and time was running out for him to act.

Instead of doing anything, he froze.


Startled, the vulture went to fly away,

but, as it beat its wings to gain the sky,

it made a line directly for the car

and slammed into the center of the windshield.

With a loud thunk, it spiderwebbed the glass,

and Caroline brought the cart to a halt.


She shook her hands and screamed, “What the hell was that!?”


“A bird!” Matt blurted. “Didn’t you see it!?

There was a giant vulture on the road!

I wondered if you were going to slow down…”


“What!? No!” she replied and started to cry.

“You’re kidding me! I can’t afford this, right now!

What am I going to do about it!?”

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