Chapter One: The Beginning

Reflexively, I turned the wheel of my Chrysler Sebring compensating for both the centripetal acceleration and the friction posed between the wheels and the road. I was driving home through Berry Creek, a route that I have practiced hundreds of times; this time, however, there was a new variable that I had to consider: my friend Perry was there with me in the passenger seat. I could feel my heart rate increase as I worked to determine the possible consequences of my rash decision to allow him to ride in the “shotgun,” as he insensitively referred to the passenger seat. “Mass,” I thought, “The additional mass would increase the turning radius and the amount of energy to accelerate to a given velocity.” I could feel my palms begin to sweat as I began to realize the full implications of my dire situation. My thoughts diverged, however, when I perceived a more urgent emergency: A stop sign thirty yards away. My fists tightened around the steering wheel as I quickly began applying the brakes; I applied them lightly, of course, because a slight, constant deceleration over an extended period of time would minimize the amount of damage to the brake pads. Perry, fully unappreciating the severity of our situation, began to yammer on about some trivial proposition; I smiled weakly in response as I attempted to mitigate a nearly imminent disaster. As we neared the stop sign, I checked the speedometer: Sixteen miles per hour. This implied that I had achieved a fifty percent reduction in speed; however, past statistical data suggested that a sixty-five percent reduction was necessary to stop from the point that we had reached. Perry still was droning on. As we neared the stop sign, my knuckles ran white with desire as I tensively gripped the wheel: I could see that we might just make it. I closed my eyes as hard as I could; all I could sense was Perry’s dull, baritone voice and a bright flash of light. I was helpless; it was all up to fate, now. With my eyes still closed, I felt us come to a complete stop. Almost shaking, I began to open my eyes to see if we had made it: a cool flood of relief washed over me as I saw that we had stopped just short of the sign. I released my grip on the wheels and I relaxed back into my seat. After a moment of quiet reflection, I realized that Perry had stopped talking. I casually looked over in the passenger seat. It was then that I witnessed something terrible. It was then that I realized that the apparent ending of one nightmare only signalled the beginning of a new one: The beginning of something so terrible, so terrifying, that it needs its own chapter just to talk about it.