September
by Holly Day
Two cars are traveling towards each other at exactly the same speed. An airplane, flying at 400 miles per hour, flies over the second car 7 minutes after it flies over the first car.
On the plane, a woman stumbles back to her seat, her hand clutching and gently massaging her abdomen. "Are you all right?" asks her husband, getting out of his own seat in order to help her back into hers. She nods weakly, unable to speak, and stares out the window at the checkerboard of farmland passing below. The thing that would have been their son plummets to the earth, away from the plane, in the heart of an icy blue crystal, blind eyes gaping fishlike at the empty space around it, paws curled up and held against its chest like those of a chipmunk's.
Car Number One see the meteor and swerves out of the way just in time to avoid being hit. The blue chunk lands hard on the asphalt where the car had been, loud enough for the driver of the car to hear the impact from behind rolled-up windows. "What the hell was that?" he asks aloud, staring for an instant too long at the rear-view mirror.
Car Number Two sees the other car just in time and swerves into the opposite lane. "Fucking lunatic!" he shouts of his window, waving his fist and honking the horn as he passes. He completely ignores the newly-formed pothole in the middle of the road, focusing instead on getting safely back onto his side of the road. In his own rear-view mirror, he sees Car Number One return to its proper lane, waving unsteadily between the two lanes before righting itself. "Damn drunk," mutters the second driver, shaking his head. "It ain't even noon yet." An airplane scrolls across the sky, directly overhead. A thin finger of smoke trails behind the airplane, leaving illegible graffiti in its wake.
What is the distance between the two cars?
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