Stephanie

Whenever we went somewhere together, Stephanie drove her her hot little convertible. A MG Midget, not much bigger than an amusement park car broken free of its miniature track. 

Small, cute, perfect. Her automotive doppelganger. 

That particular rainy morning we had gotten up early to drive down to Virginia Beach for a bit of fun and sun. The weather channel said it would clear by the early afternoon. Her idea, I was just fine hanging out at my place, but I had spent the week on a carnival ride from hell with my work, so I was seeking vacuous bliss with someone else in charge.

It was hard to see the road that morning, a misty rainy shit of a day. Wind driven water sought the path of least resistance and dripped from the line of rubber lips where the convertible top was clamped down tight to the windshield. Never tight enough of course.

I was really enjoying being the passenger for a change, rolling a joint, kicking back. Normally I was “in charge” of our time and activity. At work it was worse. It was great for her to take the wheel for the day, for her to drive everything, with or without the car. “You decide” I said. Where we were going and what we would do was her job that day, I was along for the ride. Not an easy thing for me to do, I finally relaxed and started to enjoy the letting go. That's when she rounded a tight curve and drove head on into the front end of a big Chevy four door. A fucking boat of a car. Young Stephanie had put a wheel over the edge of the road on the right side, quickly over-compensated, and cut a hard turn to the left, directly into the path of the Chevy.

Stephanie, oh Stephanie, such a sweet little fawn of a girl, smashed that beautiful face of hers into the steering wheel. In an instant, the plastic disk at the center of the wheel broke away and allowed the metal post of the horrifically designed horn mechanism to slice her face open like an ax. From her upper eyebrow line down to the center of her nose she was divided into opposite halves. We hit in slow motion, my legs driving into the glove compartment and dash, molding those to the shape of my knees. The beach towel I had been using to stop the leak at the top of the windshield glued itself to the radio controls like a fresh coat of white paper mâché.

Stephanie hit the wheel hard, bounced back and turned slowly to me with a look of surprise and awe. I could see her brain clearly, beneath specific layers of sinus cavities and bone, cleanly opened by the surgeon of traumatic impact. Her face had been split in half. At first there was no blood, just clean white flesh and bone, layers exposed, a chart hanging on the wall of a cranial anatomy class. I was interested in the anatomy of the horror, taking mental notes, observing the dissection. Time clicked on in mini-seconds dressed, in costumes of eternity. The arterial blood startled me as it began to pump from the center of her face, surprisingly hot spurts ejaculated onto my arms as I held her, for the last time.