Week Three - My Short Story

Week Three, Journal 1

A Deer in His Headlights

Jacob had just left the best party of his life. He'd finally hooked up with Sally there and he could hardly believe his luck. Ever since he'd moved here from Dallas, he'd been looking for somebody special to spend his time with. Sally seemed like she could be that girl. And man, she had looked good! Her hair was down, which was a change because she always had it pinned in the back of her head, and that tight dress she'd been wearing was rocking!

“Whoa”, he said, as he straightened the wheel of his new Honda Civic. He'd almost driven off the road. He thought about those 6 long island teas he'd had at the party and the two beers he'd had on the way over. He realized that he probably shouldn't be driving, but hell, he figured he had to get home some kind of way. Sally had had to leave because she was dropping a couple of her girlfriends off. She said she was gonna call when she got home to “check on you”, as she put it. And he could hardly wait to get there.

In his excitement, Jacob sped up. “Just a few miles over the speed limit's not gonna hurt anything”, he thought. Besides he was perfectly fine. In the past, he'd drank much more than what he'd consumed that night and he was always perfectly fine. Yep, Jacob considered himself a lucky duck.

He whistled merrily and smiled like he'd just won the lottery. Keeping his eyes on the road ahead, he reached over to grab his cell phone out of the console. “Dam, why is it so dark on these country roads in Minnesota?”, he thought aloud. As soon as he'd grabbed the phone, it rang.

“Yell-oo,” he said gaily. He listened intently, but didn't hear anything. “Yo! Hello!”. Still nothing.

Thinking that it might have been Sally, Jacob dropped the phone, irritated, and gave the car a little bit more gas. “Oh yes! I can not WAIT to get her over to my house tonight!” he said, still driving as carefully as he could. By this time, he was traveling close to 75 miles an hour on the not so brightly lit highway and he was feeling fine.

He looked down to retrieve his phone once again, it wasn't there. He looked into the seat and then looked over to make sure it wasn't on the floor on the passenger side and when he returned his gaze to the road ahead it was too late. He'd looked up just in time to see that a deer had jumped into the middle of the road and he was bound to hit it.

“Oh my -!!” he started, but that was all he could get out before the impact of the collision forced him into silence. As the body of the deer came crashing through the windshield, Jacob raised his hands up to shield his face, but the car's air bag beat him to the punch. The car spun once and Jacob heard the deer make the most horrible sound that he had ever heard, and then all was silent.