Sensible

by Robert Hugo Noble F10

The outdoor air entering through the vent smelled of freshly laid asphalt. Every couple months the highway got bogged down in construction equipment and toiling peons as a section of the pavement was replaced. Cranes could be seen at the edge of the highway moving trees into holes which were dug in the median. Highway beautification. The change in traffic flow disrupted the usual harmony of the morning commute. Out of the windshield rows of orange traffic cones could be seen with no visible end. Cars as numerous as stars. The sun was beating down on the morning traffic with a terrible fury; rippling air could be seen rising from the car rows.

“My last day of work,” he said out loud to himself. He took a deep breath and sighed.

He took a sip of the coffee which would be his last from a metal thermos and returned it to the beverage holder. Retirement and pension, this drive was his final escape from a life spent at a desk. He drove a sensible green hatchback, comfortable and functional. This car adequately transported his body from day to day, without flash or pretense. He was a man of good economic standing, he could afford a Lexus or a Corvette if he desired, but these cars exuded a certain flashy extravagance that he despised in others. His children were gone and had lives. He was ready to travel, to escape the nauseatingly periodic life that he worked so hard to create for himself.

“My child is an honor student at Turing Elementary School” a bumper sticker on the red convertible ahead of him read. In the back seat a school age kid could be seen, he was hunched over playing a Gameboy. His mother was in the driver’s seat, she was looking at herself in the mirror, applying makeup. Trivial bumper stickers such as these annoyed him almost as much as unfocused drivers. Her distraction at this point in time was not as reprehensible because of the stop-and-go traffic, however in principle it was still incredibly annoying. The radio in the red convertible was quite loud and it filled the airspace of his car.

A loud cracking sound thundered through the area. To his left one of the cranes which was previously moving trees began to look unstable. It swayed back and forth. It was positioned dangerously close to his car. Another loud snapping sound rang resonant across the cars. The crane started to fall towards traffic. He saw that it would hit the convertible ahead of him. He floored the gas pedal and crashed into the red convertible, pushing it forward. By the time that the crane finished falling he had pushed it out away from the danger. Boom. The crane landed squarely in the top of his sensible green hatchback. The front seat was crushed, killing him.