Impact
October 25, 2006
He was coming fast and in the moment before he slammed into the car, one thought coursed through my head over and over again: I am safe, I am inside and I am safe.
I was coming from the town where I went to look for a certain book, the third volume in a 7 volume story written by a famous American author. I had other things to do besides that, but the book was the main reason I went out.
A few hours and a movie later I jumped into a cab and set for home, the book safely packed in a bag that I was holding. I couldn’t wait to get home and start reading.
I stopped a taxi. The driver was old and he seemed somehow dwarfed by the car he was driving, the kind of guy you just hope it will drive you safely home before he has a heart attack. But then it wasn’t the first taxi driver I’d seen that looked like that so I hopped in and gave him my home address.
The traffic wasn’t at his usual horrendous crawling best yet, it was still early, only 4 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, and I even managed to doze a few times only to wake up every time the car lurched forward. Sometimes I think that Thai drivers do it intentionally, all that braking and starting and stopping and braking again, it kind of puts your stomach in the mood for some cleaning, if you know what I mean.
“Almost there”, I said to myself as I saw the street where I live getting closer and closer. The taxi driver maneuvered the car to the right the moment the car coming from the opposite direction had stopped. And then I saw him coming and he was fast and without a helmet on and then time seemed a bit stretched, fast and slow at the same time. I had time to see him, even to think that I was safe, a selfish thought, that his reckless action will cause me no harm and in that second before he hit the car, I turned my head in the opposite direction and I waited, yes for a second I waited for the sound of impact. Then I heard the noise and felt the car move in an unexpected way but I must admit that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Nothing broke, no sound of breaking glass, the only thing that shook for a moment was my galloping heart. I felt things shaking inside me, like jelly, but other than that I was fine. I don’t think the taxi driver saw the motorcycle coming.
This was not the first experience of this type that I went through. A few years ago, on New Year’s Eve, me and my husband were going home after an evening out in the center of the city, where we had seen the fireworks and the crowds gathered in front of a big shopping center, celebrating the New Year with lots of noise and music. This time it was a tuk-tuk, and not a taxi that took us home. And that night, just like today, I saw it happen, saw it coming towards me, only then it happened much faster. The motorcycle slammed in the side of the tuk-tuk and crashed to the ground. There were two people on it, but they were miraculously unharmed, picking themselves up, while the motorcycle went skidding on the pavement and stopped in the middle of the street, which was luckily deserted at that time of the night. The motorcycle driver got up, the girl that was with him following. They looked a bit dazed and confused but they were not visibly harmed.
Today the guy was lying down, with his head near the pavement and he wasn’t moving. I looked at him and there was no blood and I felt relieved, if there is no blood it means he’s still alive, that’s what I thought in those moments.
Other motorcycle drivers from the opposite side of the street came to see what happened. The taxi driver came out of the car and everybody started talking fast. Two people lifted the guy from the street and put him on the pavement. He had opened his eyes and started moaning and even managed to half lift himself up a bit. I looked at the car and it was the back part of the taxi that the motorcycle had hit, bending it, sort of crumpled it if you like.
The motorcycle was lying on the road on a side, a slipper next to it. Its pair was nowhere in sight.
When I got home I realized that I had paid for Stephen King’s book with something more than money. I had paid with a fright.
- September 16, 2006 -
We all have stories to tell. Sometimes we bring them forth and sometimes we keep them buried. Here are my stories. I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. 
