deathluck night




gina tron



My ex and I planned a getaway to NYC. I worked a late shift so we had to take the 7 hour drive overnight. We started our drive around 2 or 3 AM. Terry. Our 4 year long relationship started like the majority of my relationships, with hallucinogens. This was towards the end of our doomed love affair, and we were arguing about some petty ass shit on the back roads of Vermont that flowed into I-87. Our bickering was interrupted by the sight of a dead raccoon on the side of the road.

“Oh man,” I said with disgust. “I have yet to hit an animal,” I told Terry. “Well that’s not true,” I backtracked. “When I was a kid, my mom hit a deer and it rolled over our car.”

“Did it cause damage?”

“Just a dent.”

“Well let’s not change that record tonight.”


Terry loved animals, and was practically a vegan with the exception of cheese. He just could not give that up. He was kind of pretentious about the whole thing I felt, sometimes. Maybe I was just annoyed because going out to eat or going grocery shopping required a few extra minutes of attention.

Terry did make me realize how easy and healthy it is to be a vegetarian. As opposed to when I was 8 and my parents went vegetarian for a brief moment, boiling fucking tofu and serving it to my brother and I. Boiled tofu and ketchup.


We rode up and down little bumps in the back road. As I went over a little hill I saw two glowing dots. A skunk in the headlights looking at me, its reflective eyes revealing utter terror and there was nothing I could do to save its poor soul.

THUMP.

We killed it. We didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Maybe it was only a matter of seconds.

“What the fuck was the chance of something like that happening after we talked about that?”

‘Well at least it’s not a human,” Terry joked.


I felt some kind of weird vibe that night, some sort of evil vibe I’ve felt before. Or maybe it was in my head. All I know is when I feel that feeling it feels supernatural in nature. And it makes my eyes well with tears, though I am not feeling sad. More like tears of fear than actual tears, some sort of bizarre reaction.


A few hours later, the roads were covered in fog. Visibility was limited. Though, that didn’t matter as we were about to leave the back roads and transition onto a very desolate highway. It was the I-87 in upstate New York. As soon as we turned onto the highway, we saw what looked like a giant cloud of fog. It was not just fog, it was smoke as well. On the median strip we saw a car overturned in the grass. Its emergency light flashing creating a ray of light through the fog and smoke.

“Shit,” we both said at some point.

I feared what was in the car. We didn’t have to look too far to see one half of what was. A girl was walking towards our now stopped vehicle holding her stomach. Walking through the fog she resembled a zombie.

We parked the car. We got out and walked towards the girl. She was pale and panicking.

“I don’t know what happened,” she stammered, “My… my fiancé.”

Terry went to the car to try to help her fiancé.

“I think you should sit down,” I told her.

She was shaking. She was going into shock.

I was trying to comfort her by asking her about her life.

“Where are you guys from?”

“We’re from Georgia. We were up for a friends’ wedding. We thought we could drive down overnight.”

I called 911. I told them what exit we were at.

I was holding her hand, and it was getting cold. We talked about crap, really. What she did for work which I can’t remember. We talked about high school because she didn’t go to college. I heard sirens in the background but then they went into the distance. I called 911 again. They had gone the wrong way.

I saw Terry kneeling down next the car.

“Is my fiancé okay?” the girl kept asking me.

I didn’t really know what to say. It looked like Terry was talking to the guy so I guessed that meant that he wasn’t dead. So I said, “Yes, I think he’s okay.” But he wasn’t getting out of the car.

The girl began shaking almost violently as I heard the sirens heading our way.

As I saw the couple getting put into the stretchers, I felt a feeling of sadness; like a drug comedown. The end of adrenaline. I felt like I was going through withdrawals. Like a deranged version of post-Christmas blues. Just like that it was over. I often wondered if they remembered us. I often wondered if the guy driving was drunk or just exhausted.


What to do now? Night had become dawn in the process. We must have been there comforting the two for over an hour.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“Let’s buy a lottery ticket,” Terry suggested.

“Sounds like a solid plan. Our luck is, well it’s something today.”

We thought, why not try to hit the big time? Maybe the stars were aligned in our favor or in Satan’s favor or some shit like that.


We stopped at the local yokel convenience store, the closest one we could find. We scratched the lotto tickets like maniacs in hopes that the events of the night meant something. Like something good would balance out the negativity we had just endured. We won nothing. Sometimes things just happen. And sometimes you can’t explain things.

@_ginatron

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