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Chapter Three

Nick


The grill of an eighteen-wheeler is an impressive sight. Particularly when it's less than a foot from your side and still barreling forward. The horn was so loud off the front of it that it shook the glass of the window and I stared at it, my mouth gone dry. A hundred thousand thoughts went through my head as I sat there.

This was it.

My last life.

I was about to die.

I thought of the character I'd left crouched in the grass on my video game.

I looked down at the remote control in my lap and I grabbed it and aimed it at the window and pressed the pause button as I closed my eyes.

I didn't want to see myself die. I didn't want to see the spray of blood on the window or hear the crunch of my bones or feel the grate of the truck push aside the atoms that made up my muscles and everything.

I must be good at blocking things out because everything went silent.

I braced myself. I waited for it, for the crushing blow, the impact, the sound of shattering glass and twisting metal...

They're right about that moment before you die, how everything kinda pauses and the instant lasts a lifetime. I felt like I'd been sitting there a good two or three minutes already, just waiting for the truck to cross those last few inches before colliding with me.

It was taking way, way too long.

God, please, can't this just be over yet? I pleaded. Anticipation of the instant was straining every muscle in my body. Why do you gotta drag it out this long, man? I accused God, Wasn't I a decent person? Why you gotta torture me like this?

It'd been about ten minutes, it felt. And yet... still, no impact.

I didn't dare to open my eyes.

Everything was so quiet.

My finger was still pressing against the button on the remote control, my fist tight around it, fingertip aching from the push. I licked my lips, and strained my ears. Shouldn't there be sirens? Shouldn't there be shouting?

It occurred to me that perhaps I'd already been killed. Perhaps I was sitting in whatever version of the afterlife I was to receive with my eyes closed. Maybe I should look around. I still didn't dare to open my eyes, so I reached out my hand instead - the one not depressing the button on the remote - and felt the dashboard. So I was still in the car. I felt my way along the air vents, the stereo (the stereo was on, wasn't it?), and I found Brian's hand on the shift stick.

Brian's here. I must be in Heaven at least. That's good.

"Bri?" I choked, my voice sounding like it was rusted and old and unused, like it needed some WD-40. "Brian?" His hand was so still. My heart crawled into my throat and I turned my head in his direction and slowly, terrified of what I'd see, I opened my eyes.

He was wincing, leaning forward, in a position as though he were bracing for the blow, his shoulders hunched inward, his face scrunched up, teeth bared like he'd been about to yell something...

"Brian," I said, but he didn't move. Not even a little. "Brian?" I touched his face. Warm, soft, but... not moving. "Brian?"

Then I noticed specks of light in the air all around us. Little prisms. I reached up and touched one and it moved as I pushed it through the air. I took hold on it, closing my palm around it and pulling it closer to look at it. I turned it over. Glass? A shard of glass... But there were millions of them... suspended in midair all around us. I waved my hand through the cluster of them and realized the windshield was gone, replaced by these shards that looked like a sheet of rain, frozen in the middle of trying to fall.

I know they say that when you're in the midst of trauma that everything moves in slow motion, but this was beyond ridiculous. And I wasn't moving any slower - only everything else was.

And it wasn't slow motion. It was no motion.

That's when I remembered... what I thought would be the last thing I ever saw.

I turned slowly, my heart beat rising until it had climbed into my throat, and I saw the grate of the 18-wheeler directly beside my window on the right. The door of the car was already bending around it slightly on the outside, the window a spider web of the suspended shards of glass.

I looked down at my hand on the remote control.

"Holy shit," I whispered.

My finger was pressing pause.

"Brian," I tried again, "Brian, wake up, it's okay, you can move. I paused it. We can get out." I didn't know how to explain to him what happened, other than to say that we could get out of the car before the eighteen-wheeler smashed us like bugs. I reached over and put my hand on his shoulder, "Brian."

But he was paused, too like everything else.

Well I'd just have to save us both then, wouldn't I?

I struggled out of the seatbelt that held me firmly in place in the seat and leaned forward to push the glass shards in the air out of the way, clearing a space in what used to be the windshield. I awkwardly crawled out of the clearing I'd made and knelt on the hood of the car. Like the glass shards, the air was full of tiny prisms, but these were rain drops that were falling at a diagonal angle from the sky. I reached back in through the windshield for Brian, hooking my hands under his arms and pulling him. I had to keep repositioning him, like he was an action figure or something, moving his arms around and bending him to get him out of the car.

He was heavier than I remembered him ever being and it didn't take long for me to feel a sweat breaking out on my forehead. I leaned him against the hood of the car, his legs still inside, and swiped my brow. "Jesus, Brian, you should get with Lauren and have her help you lose some weight, you could really use a work out," I muttered.

It took me a long time to get him completely out of the car and drag him across the road and onto a hill that lined the side. The grass was wet, but a couple swipes of my hands and I'd dusted the water drops away from the grass, clearing a mostly dry spot for me to drop Brian down to the ground at. I sat beside him and stared at the car, at the way it was about to be completely cremated by the truck's advancement. I rubbed my knees. "Well shit, it's a good thing I brought this remote, huh B-Rok?" I asked. I looked at the remote in my hand. It was a Sony. I planned to write a long letter of appreciation to the company, detailing how well their products worked.

Brian lay there on the grass where I'd put him, his arms at an odd angle the way I'd positioned him. He still wasn't moving at all.

"You realize your last words to me were almost calling me a colossal asshole?" I questioned him. I wondered if he could hear me. "I guess my last words to you were almost Boob-job Barbie, though, so I guess mine were worse." I looked back at the soon-to-be-wreckage. "Well I guess we should get moving again, huh?" I laughed, "Shit, the guys are never gonna believe me when I tell'em how we got outta there." I looked at him again. "Well you might not, either, unless you can hear me right now that is."

I realized that this was the most I'd said to Brian in over a year without it being a scripted thing for the fans. I hesitated. "You know I miss you," I said, "I miss the old you, the you I used to hang out with and laugh with and stuff. I miss playing basket ball with you and guy talk and pulling pranks on the fellas and fighting about football and stuff. I miss that you."

No reaction.

"I just thought you should know, since I can tell you right now and you have to listen and everything." I lifted the remote control and aimed it at the wreck. I pressed play.

Nothing.

"Maybe it's like one of them ones you gotta hit pause again," I muttered and I shifted my finger and pressed pause.

Nothing.

I shook the remote and looked at it carefully, then flipped it over and opened the battery compartment. I popped the batteries out, rubbed the positive end against my jeans, hoping for a static charge, and slid them back into the compartment. I aimed again and pressed the buttons again, but still nothing happened.

I started to panic, "Why ain't you workin'?" I demanded of it. "Play, you stupid thing..." I shook it and pressed the button repeatedly, frustrated like an impatient old man. "Ugh!" I looked at Brian, "The batteries must be dead. I need to go find some batteries for this thing. Do you happen to have any AAA batteries on ya Frick?"

Course he didn't respond. He was still paused.

I stood up and galloped down the hill toward the car and pulled the back door open. Several of our bags were suspended mid-air, being thrown about by the impact or Brian's sudden brake-slamming or something. I grabbed hold of one of Brian's bags and unzipped it, rooting around through the stuff he had in there, searching for AAA batteries. He didn't have any.

"Well shit I gotta go to the store then, I guess," I announced. "I'll be back, Bri," I said, and I looked back at Brian on the hill. He'd be okay there. Everything was paused, it wasn't like a wild animal was gonna waltz out of the woods and eat him or anything. They were all frozen in mid-air like the glass and everything.

I turned and started walking down the road, pushing rain drops away from me with wide swipes of my hands as I made my way back to a gas station I'd seen a few miles before... It was the weirdest thing because the trees were all stuck in the middle of bending for a breeze and there were frogs frozen mid-leap on the pavement, and a bird darting among the rain drops overhead, and a squirrel poised, about to make his rush across the street. I passed another car, the driver balancing the wheel and a cup of Starbucks coffee and his cell phone as he drove.

I seemed to be the only one not effected by the pause anywhere.