I saw a man die tonight E-Book

S.R. McKenzie

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

I saw a man die tonight

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not exactly the way I wanted to begin this story, morbid, grey, but honest and true.

Every week the same drive to work, four hours, Okanagan to Vancouver, on the old number five and ninety seven. An hour of Gods perfect road, three hours of Hell. Steep inclines, fast declines, snow, ice, rain, winding roads…

Leseprobe

S.R McKenzie

I saw a man die tonight

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Chapter1

I saw a man die tonight

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not exactly the way I wanted to begin this story, morbid, grey, but honest and true.

Every week the same drive to work, four hours, Okanagan to Vancouver, on the old number five and ninety seven. An hour of Gods perfect road, three hours of Hell. Steep inclines, fast declines, snow, ice, rain, winding roads…

It’s like driving through the Artic for those of you who have never had the displeasure of driving it in the winter, pure hell. Growing up in the prairies, I was very accustomed to winter driving, but very little up and down hill, the prairies are as flat as flat land can get!

Also the high winds can take you from one lane to the middle of another one without warning, or almost right off the road if you aren’t careful.

Oh ya, and the cold, again I am from the prairies, used to the cold. But beginning stuck on the side of the highway in the middle of winter is completely different, and then being stuck in a big city, the difference is literally life and death. Cold like the occasional minus thirty degrees Celsius, or minus twenty two Fahrenheit for all you ‘Mericans.

Needless to say, it’s one of the worst pieces of highway in the modern world.

Five people lose their lives on that road every year. Ya, only five! Doesn’t sound like a lot considering I am sure more than that has died in Africa since you started reading this. But all life is precious, has value, and all premature loss is tragic. Five less people that were just making their way to work, on their way home from work, moving, transporting good, visiting the lower mainland or the Okanagan… just driving on the road… dead. And I had the misfortune of seeing one of them, and it was the worst things I’d ever seen.

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Quite often I finish up work really late, or early, depending on how you look at it, then drive straight home to the Okanagan for my kids. I figure why short change them on my time, when I can just short change myself on a bit of sleep.

So there I was driving on the road from Hell at the tail end of winter, still treacherous, still on my toes, and a bit more uncomfortable due to my exhaustion. Driving home after pulling an 11 hour shift and zero sleep since the day before.

I started driving home at 3am, figured I would get home by about 7/8am to drive my kids to school, make their day and put a big smile on my face.

It was a pretty clear night, little traffic, and the odd trucker driving late. Being late winter, there were still huge piles of snow on the side of the highway, they wouldn’t disappear for months yet.

I was driving in my usual almost speed limit fashion, I always go a bit under in the winter, just in case I hit ice, snow, fog, or a crowd of tired slow truckers.

No radio, since I am way up in the mountains, so I am jamming to my tunes on my headphones. There is also little cell reception, since I am way up in the remote mountains, but who needs to talk to anyone all the way up here.

Driving, minding my own freaking business is when it happens. I drive to a separation in the oncoming traffic, and there is a steep embankment between the two roads. I am driving in the middle lane, not the fast lane, since I like the freedom to change from the slow to fast lane going around different corners, like an Indy car racer.

I am just driving, minding my own business when I see a huge snow drift in the fast lane, completely covering it. I slow just in time, dodging it by about 100 feet, and move to the far right lane to avoid it.