The Precipice

It was too fast. Everything happened far too quickly. The rain, the spin, the car, the man. Too fast. I lifted my head off the steering wheel with the words still echoing in my mind. I touched a shaking hand to my brow. It was far too dark to tell whether the wetness was from the rain coming through the windshield, or a cut from the impact.

I struggled with the seatbelt, shoved the airbags away, opened the door and nearly fell into the mud-laden grass. The sounds of the world crashed around me through the ringing in my ears. Rain pounded down on the roof of my car, obscuring my ragged breaths even from myself.

The wreckage was mainly contained to the front of the car. The hood buckled. The bumper wrapped around a tree, beyond which was an incline that led into darkness. If the passenger side hadn’t slammed into that trunk, I’m not sure I would have come out of the ditch.

The true damage laid beyond the reach of the flashing headlights. Through the spattered blood, they cast a ghastly orange glow over an impossibly bent foot, while the rest of him was firmly within the shadows.

“Oh my-” I brought my hand up to my mouth as a second line of defense against the bile rising in my throat. I was mistaken. Not everything was shrouded in the darkness. The pulsing lights were reflected in his glassy eyes. They were still open as widely as they had been when he turned to see my headlights from the side of the road.

No. No. No, this couldn’t be happening. This was terrible. Disgusting. Hot, salty tears mingled with the rain on my face. I steeled myself, and bent down to wrap my fingers around his wrist. He stared at me, his face half-submerged in the muck, as I felt for a pulse.

It was over. He was gone. I leaned to the side and retched, releasing all the contents of my stomach. Several times. My hitched breathing wasn’t helping to calm the nausea. Wiping away the hair clinging to my face, I stood up. I paced between the two scenes of mayhem, holding my arms over my head.

I climbed into the car and turned the key. I could drive away, let someone else find it and make it their problem. I could just go, leave this all behind, so long as this stupid car would start. But it sputtered and clanked until I stopped trying to force it back to life. I couldn’t force anything back to life.

No. No, this wasn’t supposed to happen. There wasn’t supposed to be any rain tonight. The car wasn’t supposed to veer off the road. But it had happened. All of it. A storm rolled in. The car spun out. It was totalled. Because of it all, there was a man lying on the side of the road and I couldn’t do a thing about it.

No, I couldn’t do a single thing for him. Not anymore, but I could do something for me. His life may be over but mine didn’t have to be. I stood over him, at the edge of the chasm. All it took was a shove.

It was a simple collision. An accident. It had gotten too dark, too fast, and the rain was more intense than anyone anticipated. I hydroplaned in the rain after a stressful day. I hit a tree, and when I came to, I called 911 immediately.

There was a nasty scrape on my forehead, the paramedics told me. A shard of glass was stuck in one of my hands. And I was lucky to be alive. If I took care of everything correctly, I would be just fine. So lucky.

Once bandaged up, the sheriff’s deputy meandered out of his cruiser to my side in the back of the ambulance. He took down my brief statement in his little black notebook. He seemed annoyed to be called out to the scene at all.

“So, it was a freak accident, then?” he asked, sounding content as I nodded. He flipped the book closed, with a sigh and asked the paramedics about my BAC, and anything else he should know. Despite how hollow the story sounded to my own ears, he bought it, as the thick darkness masked anything not already washed away by the downpour. A tow truck was arranged to retrieve my car by morning, and it was decided I would be taken to the hospital to rule out any internal bleeding.

While en route, I was reassured by one of the paramedics, “Don’t worry, sweetheart. That’s an awful dangerous stretch of road. You’re not the first we’ve had to pick up from that exact spot.” Again, I nodded and continued to stay quiet. Until I signed the discharge papers the following morning, I spoke to no one.

I returned to my apartment, with the help of a cab. Finding the mail already delivered, I scooped it up on my way inside as if all was well, even waving to my neighbor. Once inside, I threw the assumed stack of bills onto the counter. In an attempt to stay calm, I tried pouring myself a glass of water. The overhead light reflecting in the water’s surface was too similar to another small orb of light.

I dropped the cup, folding into myself on the floor as I remembered those eyes forever illuminated by headlights in my memory. I covered my face with my hands, wracking sobs throwing my body against the wooden cabinet. The knob jabbing me in the shoulder and hinges digging into my spine was insignificant compared to what I deserved.

The meager sunlight that was able to break through the cloud cover poured in through my windows and faded away as the tantrum wore on. I would cry, recover, then think of everything all over again. The darkness returned to me before I could stop the weeping. I sat on the floor, staring into space as tears dried on my cheek. Once the events of the night were played over in my head so many times I no longer cried, I relived the final moments before I dialed 911.

I decided my life needed to go on, and so I stood up. My shaking hands were no longer a product of fear, but of hunger. I searched the kitchen for food, but once I remembered the reason I had been driving to begin with, I turned to the mail with a sleeve of crackers. As suspected, it was all bills. Rent, car payments, student loans, credit card bills, along with notices of overdue payments.

However, at the bottom of the stack was a small package I hadn’t noticed before. In my earlier, pathetic state, I tossed it on the counter, not realizing it was different than the rest. I turned it over in my hands, looking for evidence of a return address. I wasn’t expecting a package, especially not one like this. A brown paper bag, folded over and paper-taped shut. But there was nothing. No stamp or label of any kind aside from my name. My full name.

Careful not to let the contents go flying, I ripped the bag open. Inside was a simple white envelope sealed with the glue strip on the flap. The front was blank. It felt empty. Hesitantly, I ripped open the envelope to find a printout of my bank account activity.

At the bottom of the page, in chicken scratch, was written, “You’ve done well.” The balance had two zeroes more than it should have. The most recent deposit was $18,000. I looked back at the originally ignored contents of the bag. There were two stacks of $100 bills.

After flipping through the bills, I shoved everything into the paper bag, stuffed it under the sink and ran into my room. Shutting the door behind me, I climbed into my bed and pulled up the covers. I hadn’t slept a wink at the hospital. I was so tired, I could be imagining things.

I laid on my side, flipped to my back, then the other side. I even tried shoving my face into the pillow and sleeping on my stomach like a baby, but sleep would not release me from this insanity. I grabbed my phone and logged into my banking app, hoping the display would read the appropriately low number.

My stomach dropped. It read the same as what the paper said it would. An even twenty thousand dollars was dropped onto my doorstep out of thin air. I returned to the kitchen to double check if I had ever seen that handwriting before. Arms slung over my head, I paced the kitchen trying to think. Neither the writing on the page, nor my name on the outside of my bag rang any bells.

Who would do this?

Why would this happen?

Where did all this come from?

Questions plagued my mind, and for whatever reason, I kept coming back to the man. Everything started with him. He was resting somewhere in the forest, but something was telling me that was not where his story ended. This was his fault. He refused to remain in anonymity, lost to the woods.

Except he wasn’t lost. He was at the bottom of a ditch next to mile marker thirteen. I could go back there. I popped some nighttime pain meds to make the time before sunrise go away, and woke up to the honking of the cab I ordered for eight in the morning.

I knew I looked like a maniac, directing the cab driver to pull over on the side of a country highway. I didn’t care. I gave him one of the hundreds and told him to keep the change, even though he assured me he could break it.

“If you’re that worried about it,” I replied, leaning down to his open window, “Wait here for thirty minutes. If I don’t come back, you never saw me. Understand?” He nodded, as it probably wasn’t his shadiest interaction.

My car was gone. All that remained was the sparkling glass among the grass, and the scoured tree trunk. I peered over the edge of the hill. Now that it was daylight, I could see how steep it truly was. Unsure if the man had fallen all the way to the bottom, I scanned the drying leaves as I descended for any trace of his body. There were drag marks where it rolled down the hill. Leaves were pushed aside from flailing limbs.

When I got to the bottom of the incline, all marks had long since stopped. I kicked at the undisturbed leaves, gripping the phone in my pocket. The man was not only dead, but gone as well. If $20,000 was the reward for his disappearance, then who could say what I did was wrong?

I double checked the bank account right there. It was the same. Twenty thousand was my new favorite number. We all wonder what we could do for a million dollars. But so much less could change a person’s life.

I felt my face twist into a grin, and relief blossomed in my chest. I timed out my thirty minute promise to the cab at the bottom of the hill, ensuring there was nothing to tie me to this scene. I wondered how many people had been thrown to the bottom of this ravine, and how many more would go unnoticed under the rotting leaves. I had done this once. Who’s to say I couldn’t do it again? I wasn’t sure if it would award me another twenty thousand, but that didn’t matter. Who needed their life to be changed twice? Firsts may be scary in the beginning, but when you know you can do something, the confidence to do it again is unmatched.