The airbags puff in a cloud of smoke. The world around you stops, but you keep moving. You think your life should flash before your eyes now. Instead, a haze. Not the smoke in the cockpit, the cab, whatever.

Your mind blanks. Your body blanks. And all you know is that your life stopped for an instant.

The smell of smoke then puts all frames on fast forward.

The brakes, yeah, the breaks.

Inertia got to you first. An object at rest, you in the car with all your crap and papers, binders full of your life, will stay at rest unless acted upon by the car in front of  the car in front of you that stops dead right in the middle of Dunlawton Avenue. Right in front of Chick-fill-a.

All your life papers fly into the front seat. That’s calc. That’s English. That’s bio.

The median grass under you, and you crawl away from the smell of gasoline. Your full tank of gas. Seventy bucks seeping through the asphalt and into the aquifer. In a movie, this would cue the explosion.

Blue light special. The cops come. They deal with the couple in the middle car first. Mid forties, maybe, and they ask them if they’re alright. You bawl in the median. In the crunchy grass sprinkled with reclaimed water that morning.

I hope you’re happy, you yell. Now you can’t take that test.

And of course it’s all your fault. You’re eighteen.

Were you talking on your cell phone?

No. Pig, you think, fascist.

Have you ever been to traffic school?

No. As if your testimony matters.

The car just appeared, and yes, you know how ridiculous you sound. But the pig would have believed you had to get up to 88 miles an hour so your flux capacitor could generate enough jigawatts.

But no. You tell the truth as if you really believed anybody got anything other than a kick in the ribs from the truth. Except maybe a fine.

Then you take your ticket and march across the street because they told you to get out of the median. Staying there would cause another accident. But maybe that’s what you want. You wanted carnage. You wanted shrapnel. Sicko.

That’s where blank is. That’s where your mind goes when your life hits pause. Before your object comes to rest you think, man, I hope this gets in the papers.