A Wicked Line by Douglas R. Brown
The garbage truck came out of nowhere.
Jackson’s ears popped. A flash of white seared
his eyes as coarse nylon canvas raked across his
face. It sounded like a bomb had gone off. His
arm slammed against the underside of the
dashboard, his brand-new Motorola beeper, still
illuminated with his wife’s last message to “pick
up milk,” tumbling to the floorboard. Metal
twisted around him like warm taffy.
A second deafening crash chased the first, this
time from the passenger’s side. His head whipped
toward the center column and then back against
the driver’s side window, shattering the glass with
the sound of a blown-up paper bag popped by a
prankster.
His lights went out for a second—or a year—he
couldn’t be sure which. An intense ringing in his
ears followed. And then everything went quiet.
What happened? he wondered. His head throbbed
worse than the nastiest hangover, yet he hadn’t
been drinking. It was a deep, encompassing hurt,
the kind where he just knew that something in his
brain was broken. A cloud of chalky dust burned
his eyes. He struggled to focus on the steering
wheel in front of him. The vomited remains of a
deflated balloon hung from a gash in the center.
