- #1
Themenstarter/in
Habe mich vor einiger Zeit mal an einer Kurzgeschichte auf Englisch im Stil von Stephen King versucht, in der ich ein einschneidendes Erlebnis zu meiner Zivi-Zeit als Rettungsassistent beim Roten Kreuz verarbeite. Habe sie dann auch gleich mal altsäckig eingelesen 
That March of '94 was a mean one. The kind that sinks its icy teeth into your bones and don't let go. I was just a young buck back then, wet behind the ears, working the ambulances as an ALS for the Red Cross. Fulfilling my civilian substitute service duty. We got us an old station, all cinder blocks and chipped paint - the kind of place that's seen things, heard things. Things that leave a stain.
That day we pulled a double, me and my partner Tom. We was itching to get out on the road. Cabin fever don't even cover it. We took off around noon. Tom fired up the ambulance and off we went, tires spinnin' and slidin' on the black ice that coated the road like the icy grip of death. But ol' Tom, he could handle that beast of a vehicle like it was his own kin. We drove around just for the sake of drivin', windows down, lettin' the piercing cold air bite at our skin. Felt good. Stopped for a coke and a coffee at the Gas-N-Go off Mulberry, and that's when I saw them...
Couple of local boys, cocksure and liquored up. They was whoopin' and hollerin' like a couple of morons, showin' off their bottles like trophies. I watched them stumble into an old Dodge, peeling out, wheels spinning and spitting gravel everywhere. And I got a real bad feelin' about this in my gut right then, somewhere deep down by my belt buckle, that I was gonna be seein' those fools again. Sooner than later.
"You keep drivin' like that, there's no way in hell we'll be dragging your sorry ass from a snowbank tonight," I mumbled to myself, disgusted by the boneheadedness they paraded around.
Tom shrugged. "Not your call to make, buddy."
But I knew it was coming. Could feel it in my achin' bones and in the greasy diner coffee we was sippin'. In the way the bare trees creaked and groaned in the wind. There was something wicked coming down that lonesome road, I thought. And I was right.
Sure enough, just a few hours later the alarms went off, near scaring me and Tom half to death. Word came in over the wire ‘bout a nasty smash-up on Old Mill Road. Head-on collision with entrapment. My gut seized up somethin' awful.
"It's them," I said. Didn't know how I knew, but I did.
We tore through the back roads, ice be damned, got there in seven minutes flat. And Christ almighty, what a scene it was. Crumpled metal, broken glass, blood… and other stuff…looked like a war zone. That all too familiar Dodge was a mangled mess wrapped around a Buick. And them boys...well, it wasn't pretty. One was ground up like hamburger meat on that steerin' column. Other was wailing for his mama and his hurting leg. I was almost tempted to tell him that his leg was enjoying a little break from the action, just lying there on the road beside his car. But I figured he had enough on his mind already. They was still liquored but feeling it now, you bet.
That Buick had an older guy in it. Salt-and-pepper beard and desperate eyes peerin' through a mask of blood. He was in rough shape but alive. Me and Tom cut him out, loaded him up in our wagon while the other techs scooped up them dumb boys.
Later on I found out that Buick fella would actually pull through, by some miracle. But it wasn't ‘til years later that I got wind of what really went down that night. At first there were just whispers, rumors spreading through town about something more sinister taking place before that crash. The details came slowly over time - bits and pieces, speculation mixed with fact. Folks started talking about the man having a body in his trunk, dead before the wreck ever happened. Never did find out if he was the one that did the killin’ or just tryin’ to cover it up for somebody else. I wrestled with those questions for years, never able to get the full story. So where's the justice in that? Those boys got what was coming to them that night, but sometimes the wrong ones walk away clean. And there I was left wondering, with a nagging feeling that the dark truth was still out there somewhere, just out of reach.
I saw one of those other guys later on, when I was transporting patients to the nuthouse upstate. I recognized him right away - the loudmouth from the gas station that night, toasting and hollering at us. Now he was slumped in a wheelchair, neck bent forward, a line of drool running down his chin. Eyes fixed straight ahead, staring into nothing. The crash had shattered more than his bones; it had shattered his mind. He was little more than a breathing corpse now, trapped in that chair, trapped in his own nightmare of that night.
That winter stuck with me. All these years later I still feel the cold in my bones when the wind whips up. I still see them crippled cars, smell the blood in the air. It stays with you, this job. The things you see that can’t be unseen. The people you meet that leave a mark on your soul.
And it leaves a man questionin’ whether justice was ever real in the world, or if it was all just some fairy tale we tell ourselves to feel better about all the darkness that lurks in men’s hearts. Maybe there is no point at all to our suffering and violence except to keep the cycle going - the wolves feeding on the sheep, us feeding on each other. The world ain’t ever been fair, and it ain’t about to start anytime soon. None of them stories we tell ourselves around the campfire can hope to change a thing. In the end, we’re just bodies drifting along together into the void, waiting for that final crash that takes us down.
That March of '94 was a mean one. The kind that sinks its icy teeth into your bones and don't let go. I was just a young buck back then, wet behind the ears, working the ambulances as an ALS for the Red Cross. Fulfilling my civilian substitute service duty. We got us an old station, all cinder blocks and chipped paint - the kind of place that's seen things, heard things. Things that leave a stain.
That day we pulled a double, me and my partner Tom. We was itching to get out on the road. Cabin fever don't even cover it. We took off around noon. Tom fired up the ambulance and off we went, tires spinnin' and slidin' on the black ice that coated the road like the icy grip of death. But ol' Tom, he could handle that beast of a vehicle like it was his own kin. We drove around just for the sake of drivin', windows down, lettin' the piercing cold air bite at our skin. Felt good. Stopped for a coke and a coffee at the Gas-N-Go off Mulberry, and that's when I saw them...
Couple of local boys, cocksure and liquored up. They was whoopin' and hollerin' like a couple of morons, showin' off their bottles like trophies. I watched them stumble into an old Dodge, peeling out, wheels spinning and spitting gravel everywhere. And I got a real bad feelin' about this in my gut right then, somewhere deep down by my belt buckle, that I was gonna be seein' those fools again. Sooner than later.
"You keep drivin' like that, there's no way in hell we'll be dragging your sorry ass from a snowbank tonight," I mumbled to myself, disgusted by the boneheadedness they paraded around.
Tom shrugged. "Not your call to make, buddy."
But I knew it was coming. Could feel it in my achin' bones and in the greasy diner coffee we was sippin'. In the way the bare trees creaked and groaned in the wind. There was something wicked coming down that lonesome road, I thought. And I was right.
Sure enough, just a few hours later the alarms went off, near scaring me and Tom half to death. Word came in over the wire ‘bout a nasty smash-up on Old Mill Road. Head-on collision with entrapment. My gut seized up somethin' awful.
"It's them," I said. Didn't know how I knew, but I did.
We tore through the back roads, ice be damned, got there in seven minutes flat. And Christ almighty, what a scene it was. Crumpled metal, broken glass, blood… and other stuff…looked like a war zone. That all too familiar Dodge was a mangled mess wrapped around a Buick. And them boys...well, it wasn't pretty. One was ground up like hamburger meat on that steerin' column. Other was wailing for his mama and his hurting leg. I was almost tempted to tell him that his leg was enjoying a little break from the action, just lying there on the road beside his car. But I figured he had enough on his mind already. They was still liquored but feeling it now, you bet.
That Buick had an older guy in it. Salt-and-pepper beard and desperate eyes peerin' through a mask of blood. He was in rough shape but alive. Me and Tom cut him out, loaded him up in our wagon while the other techs scooped up them dumb boys.
Later on I found out that Buick fella would actually pull through, by some miracle. But it wasn't ‘til years later that I got wind of what really went down that night. At first there were just whispers, rumors spreading through town about something more sinister taking place before that crash. The details came slowly over time - bits and pieces, speculation mixed with fact. Folks started talking about the man having a body in his trunk, dead before the wreck ever happened. Never did find out if he was the one that did the killin’ or just tryin’ to cover it up for somebody else. I wrestled with those questions for years, never able to get the full story. So where's the justice in that? Those boys got what was coming to them that night, but sometimes the wrong ones walk away clean. And there I was left wondering, with a nagging feeling that the dark truth was still out there somewhere, just out of reach.
I saw one of those other guys later on, when I was transporting patients to the nuthouse upstate. I recognized him right away - the loudmouth from the gas station that night, toasting and hollering at us. Now he was slumped in a wheelchair, neck bent forward, a line of drool running down his chin. Eyes fixed straight ahead, staring into nothing. The crash had shattered more than his bones; it had shattered his mind. He was little more than a breathing corpse now, trapped in that chair, trapped in his own nightmare of that night.
That winter stuck with me. All these years later I still feel the cold in my bones when the wind whips up. I still see them crippled cars, smell the blood in the air. It stays with you, this job. The things you see that can’t be unseen. The people you meet that leave a mark on your soul.
And it leaves a man questionin’ whether justice was ever real in the world, or if it was all just some fairy tale we tell ourselves to feel better about all the darkness that lurks in men’s hearts. Maybe there is no point at all to our suffering and violence except to keep the cycle going - the wolves feeding on the sheep, us feeding on each other. The world ain’t ever been fair, and it ain’t about to start anytime soon. None of them stories we tell ourselves around the campfire can hope to change a thing. In the end, we’re just bodies drifting along together into the void, waiting for that final crash that takes us down.
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