Back to Lunch

Behind the wheel, James looked out on the world in contentment. His warm coat rustled against itself as he pulled his arms left to merge into the empty lane, moving past a semi and a sedan with a "school bus" sign crossing the roof horizontally. Smiling, he leaned forward slightly to see under the fog, the ice crisscrossing the road ahead. Should he turn the air hot or cold to defog the windshield? He couldn't remember. He tried hot, as hot as it could go. It seemed to work for half the glass, and that was good enough.
The chassis rattled over a dip in the pavement, and small chunks of frozen snow bounced from the hood across his vision. James was content, even with this crazy world. He pulled back into the right lane just in time to jam his foot onto the break when the pickup in front of him slowed abruptly. Crazy world full of crazy drivers. No one moved. Sometimes impatience and contentment can simultaneously exist.
He pushed his lips together and jerked the wheel to merge left again, turning his head to see the huge prison bars of a grill two feet from his face. Oncoming, oncoming. James looked at them, saw them, read the lettering between the silver shafts as they crawled closer at seventy miles an hour. James was still strangely content.
The bars pressed against the rear of the car and shifted it to the horizontal until they met the driver's door.
It exploded into his left arm and shoulder. Splitting metal ripped into his ribs, grating against the bone and whirling blood up into his eyes as his world was thrown upside down. A cloud of glass and a roar washed over him, and he was hanging from the seat, the car gently spinning. James heard screaming, and fighting lions, a crew fixing the highway, and an airliner exploding. Dew dropped like thunder on rainforest leaves. Whales breathed fire over a barren titanium moon. A bathtub drained in lazy spirals that played in and out, in and out, in and, out in, and, out. 

He thought of his grandmother, tea in hand, sitting comfortably in the wooden chair, a dogwood blossom tickling her right ear. She smiled and gave him a little wave, and he came to sit beside her. She handed him a glass, light condensation wetting his fingers as they wrapped around it. He put it to his lips, and it was good.