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The Car
It was a cold and rainy night, family movie night at
my house. I joined my mother and father on the couch as my brother secluded
himself to the chair next to us. I cannot remember whose turn it was to pick
the movie but I know it was not mine for I soon found myself drifting to an
un-peaceful sleep. The loud sound effects booming through the surround sound
speakers shook me every time I entered a light sleep. I soon could not
differentiate between the movie and my parents talking, until my father paused
it and my mother shook me and asked, “Kell, did you hear that?” I responded
with a sleepy moan but that would not suffice, my mother persisted I pay
attention. She did not trust my father’s “old” ears that were hard of hearing.
“That loud noise, did that come from outside?” she asked. I insisted it must
have been from the movie, it was an action packed movie so I assumed there must
have been an explosion of some sort. My brother and I convinced her it was nothing
to worry about as my dad hit play on the remote.
Two minutes later, after no more words had been
spoken on the matter, my mother rose and turned off the TV. “I know I
heard a noise and it came from outside, it was loud, I think something’s
wrong,” she said. She started to make her way for the door but no one followed.
“Isn’t anyone going to come?” she asked. We told her we would wait here and if
anything were wrong, which we all doubted, to come back and get us. She left
and we started to watch the movie again but I had an unsettling feeling in the
pit of my stomach; I felt as though she had been gone too long. “I’m just going
to check on her, tell her to come back inside and watch the movie with us,” I
said.
I opened the front door, but I did not close it
behind me. I rounded the corner of the house and that’s when I saw it, I let
out a shriek. A car was crumpled between my favorite magnolia tree and the
front of my house. I was stuck in place; I could not believe what I was
witnessing. The entire front of the car was smashed in against the stone front
of the house. My mother was simultaneously talking on the phone with the police
and with what it appeared to be, someone in the car. My brother and father
rushed past me to see what was going on and suddenly I could move again. As I
ran to my mother’s side, I heard police sirens in the distance but could not
peel my eyes off of the crushed car and the tiny woman stuck inside it. Blood
was streaming down her face and I had never seen the amount of fear she had in
her eyes before. My father was trying to comfort her but words could not do
much as she was stuck in between the steering wheel and the mangled car door,
unable to open.
The police arrived with the ambulance and fire truck
in tow and everything happened so fast. They quickly used “the jaws of life” to
open the car door to free the woman and she was immediately put on a stretcher
and taken away in the ambulance. The police stayed for a little longer and
questioned my mother about what exactly happened but she could not answer. They
assumed that as the car approached the bend in the street I live on, the driver
did not see the turn in the dark and went airborne across my front yard and was
only stopped by the impact it made with the front of my house. I could not stop
myself from shaking thinking about this scenario; my mother told me everything
would be fine. We never found out what happened to the driver, once the police
left and the mangled magnolia tree was cut down; it was like the accident never
happened.
The Trail
I had turned twelve a month earlier and since then
was obsessed with my favorite birthday present, an ATV. Soon after I got this
ATV two of my neighbors got their own as well and every day after school we
would meet to ride around on our favorite trail in the woods. We had to keep
this destination a secret from our parents because we were technically
trespassing, but in our eyes the trail was made just for us and we never
encountered anyone else on it, although we had had some close calls.
We would meet on our street and then cautiously make
our way through our grumpy neighbor’s back yard. This neighbor was hardly ever
home, considering he did not even live there anymore. But we still had to be
careful because he periodically came by to check on the house. Little did we
know he currently lived in a house that backed up to our secret trail. We did
not think much of the two houses that we could see from the trail; there were
dozens of trees between us and them. Other than this the trail was quite
secluded except for in a couple of areas where it opened up to fields where we
had seen men working or tractors that had recently been used. As twelve year
olds we gave little attention to these things. We knew we did not own the
property we were riding on but thought that we were not causing any harm at the
same time.
This particular day was like any other. My neighbors
and I met on our street and then continued on to the trail. We rode around back
and forth for about an hour and did not see anyone. As we left the trail and
entered our neighbor’s backyard a black escalade began to aggressively honk
from the street. I turned to look at my friends who were a little ways behind
me; their eyes were wide open and fixed on the car. I looked back towards the
street and the escalade had driven off of the road and was now headed through
the grass right for us, still honking ferociously. I quickly turned my ATV
around and signaled for my friends to do the same. We were going as fast as we
could for the tight entrance of the trail because we knew that the car could
not fit. We were only fifty yards away when the car sped past us and blocked
off the entrance. We froze.
Out of the escalade came a large man with an
intimidating look on his face, “do you know who I am?” he asked. We could not
answer, we could not speak. “I own this land, this land that every day you have
trespassed on,” he said. “I…I’m sorry,” I managed. “Sorry?” he repeated with a
mocking tone. “Do you understand how loud these ATVs are, do you understand the
consequences for trespassing?” We all shook our heads no. He then walked closer
to us, my limbs began to shake and I thought I was going to throw up. “Give me
your keys,” he demanded of all of us. We did not know any better, quickly we
pulled our keys out of the ignition and handed them to this scary man; thinking
this would make him let us return home. But we were wrong, he shoved the keys
into his pocket and then grabbed me by the arm, I yelped. He lifted me off my
ATV and shoved me towards the car, he then pointed to my friends and told them
to get off and join me. I shook my head and yelled “run!” But the man reached
out and with both hands and grabbed them by their arms. He told us to get in
his car and he would drive us to our respective homes and have a word with our
parents. We told him we did not need a ride, “we live right up the street, we
can easily walk,” I said. He told us that he was not offering a ride, he was
demanding. We insisted that we were not allowed to get into a stranger’s car
but he said he knew our parents and that they would not be upset. He then
individually lifted us into the backseat of his car.
I grabbed my friend’s hand as she began to cry,
“it’s fine, we won’t be in too much trouble, maybe we won’t even get grounded,”
I whispered. Then we passed my driveway. “Sir! That was my driveway!” He did
not answer. I began to scream and we screeched to a stop. “Listen little girl,
we’re going to the police station so you can scream all you want there but for
now stay quiet,” he demanded. No one spoke for the rest of the long trip to the
station. Once we arrived and entered the building everyone gave us odd looks
and I felt out of place. The man brought us to the front desk and began to recount
the story to the officer. While listening to this story the officer’s face
turned into a look of confusion and disbelief. “So you’re telling me you
kidnapped three twelve year olds for driving their ATVs on your property?”
asked the officer. “No. I did not kidnap them, see they’re right here,”
motioning to us, “I’m just helping you guys do your job,” said the angered man.
The officer mumbled something into his radio and soon after, two more officers
arrived and asked the man to follow them. My two friends and I were asked to
call home. About twenty minutes later our parents showed up and the officer
explained everything to them. We all cried and our parents hugged us and then
ushered us into our cars. Shortly after this incident the man sold that house
and moved but to this day we have not ridden on that trail since.
Sonnet
"My heart I gave thee, not to do it pain"
Thomas Wyatt
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