Playing Possum
2 AM and we were ten miles out of town. We were speeding down this little country road. Screaming out the windows, music drowning out all our rational thoughts, and my foot was flooring the gas.
Suddenly there was this creature in my headlights. It was tiny and if it wasn’t for the stark contrast of its pale flesh, we wouldn’t have seen it at all. To me, it looked like a corpse was dragging its upper torso across the road by its arms. I squinted trying to make sense of the creature in the bouncing headlights.
“Shit! Look, it’s a possum!” slurred a voice from the back.
Maybe my imagination was a little too drunk off the excitement. Because dragging corpses didn’t exist. Possums existed.
“Quick, man, let’s hit it!” There was cackling in the back seat.
My foot was already addicted to the speed. It didn’t need any more incentive to speed up. I swerved toward it roughly, dropping a tire onto the shoulder.
At the last moment, the creature jumped up on my windshield. My heart and my screams got caught in my throat and I reflexively hit the brake. For a moment, I could’ve sworn I was looking directly into its eyes. The possum’s. I thought it was going to come through the windshield after me. Some sort of last revenge, but instead it just bounced right off and the glass held without a crack.
“Aw, jeez!”
“Did you see how far that thing flew?!”
My brakes were screeching. All my passengers were leaning out the windows searching for the wrecked corpse. So far, I was the only one who noticed all the splatter on my windshield.
“Woah, that thing had a lot of guts in it!” someone finally noticed.
“Are you sure that was just a possum?”
“How am I gonna get all this crap off my windshield?” I asked the most superficial question I could think of because I was still a little shaken by those eyes.
A shallow laugh. “Oh yeah, good luck! It’s all nasty!”
I restarted the car and someone turned up the radio, even though no one ever turned it down in the first place. There was blood trickling everywhere. It was sick to look at and I didn’t have a choice but to shrug off my jacket and wipe away some of the grime just to be able to see. I dropped it in the middle of the road.
I was driving more carefully now because it was getting worse and worse to see through the windshield. The gore was becoming streaked everywhere and collecting in thick globules.
I was beginning to taste bile in my throat when I suddenly felt a damp droplet on my arm. I looked and immediately rolled up my window.
“Geez, look at it all,” mumbled my friend on my right. I didn’t look, but the others did.
“We must have hit the thing worse than we thought; look, there’s splatter even on the back door!”
At that point, I turned on my windshield wipers. The wipers would sweep off the blood leaving smudged red tinted streaks, but almost instantly, more would seep in to cover my window. I clicked my wipers as high as they’d go. It was like driving through a rainstorm. As fast as my windshield wipers would wipe the blood away more would cover its place. Everyone in the car had gone quiet. The wipers were beating almost as loud as the radio.
“I can’t see,” I finally admitted to the rest of the car.
“Then pull over!”
The engine gave its last sputter, I hit the brake, and blood flooded through the pedal. I gasped and pulled my left foot up as it soaked through my shoes.
The brakes were shot. I didn’t know how, but they were gone. I couldn’t see; I couldn’t stop; I looked around at my friends and they all had the eyes of that creature before I’d hit it.
