Geoff honked the horn again, then rolled down the window. “We gotta go! Now!”

Marsha looked to her husband from where she stood. His eyes were desperate and he was pointing behind him. “What are you…?” She followed his finger, saw the girl’s head rise and lower in the hatchback window, then felt her stomach jerk and twist into what she imagined resembled an unsolved Rubik’s cube. “Oh shit…” Marsha bolted forward but stopped when a tiny blue Mazda came to a screaming halt in front of her. She waved apologetically to the man behind the wheel, then charged ahead. She slipped on an unseen splotch of black ice but caught herself on the hood of a red Lumina and kept going until she was in the passenger seat.

“It’s about fucking time,” Geoff snapped, then threw the car in reverse.

Marsha snapped back. “How was I supposed the girl was awake?”

Geoff backed out of the spot, braked hard, and checked the rearview mirror. “What are you talking about? The girl isn’t awake.”

“Yes, she is, Geoff.”

“No, she’s not!”

“Yes, she is!”

“Do you have any idea how much of that shit I shoved in her face? Like a fucking lot, okay, so just relax, will ya?”

“Don’t tell me to relax, Geoff, I know what I saw—”

“She’s not in a trunk, Marsha. That’s why we rented a hatchback because we can physically see into it.”

Marsha didn’t believe him but checked anyway. Nothing. No movement, just an empty back seat and the motionless hatchback behind it. She focused on the rear window and the gray blanket that lived below. Nothing moved. “I’m sorry.”

Geoff checked his surroundings one last time, exhaled deeply, and then gave it some gas.

The bearded sales associate retrieved a three-hundred-page mystery novel and its just-as-thick sequel from the top shelf, then handed them to Tammy. He double-checked the list she gave him earlier, then returned it. “Need anything else?”

Tammy shook her head. “That should be it, thank you.” The salesman smiled, then stepped into the aisle. Tammy casually glanced behind her. “Sweetheart, we’ve got the…” she trailed off, saw only carpet, and forgot the rest of the sentence. “Zelda?” She asked louder, looking around. “Zelda, honey, where are you?” She dropped the books, frantically ran into the aisle, looked both ways, then ran to the other end of the store and checked the restrooms. No Zelda. “Zelda, baby, where are you—”

And at that moment, time ceased to exist.

Not just for Tammy, but everyone else in that one-mile vicinity.

The event that followed could only be described as a cosmic disruption. An intense reverb brought on by an earth-shattering crash near the back of the parking lot. An overwhelming burst of abnormal destruction that unnaturally rippled outward in all directions like a cymbal that God himself had just struck with a rubber mallet. The foundation of the area shook like an earthquake, but it did not rupture. Every inch of concrete, grass, and nature within that one-mile radius trembled for what felt like forever. 

Three and a half minutes later, the tremors subsided.  

A man in his early fifties pointed at the back of the parking lot and cried for an ambulance.

Geoff woke up, coughing blood, in the back seat.

The airbags never deployed, but that was because the steering wheel now inhabited his rib cage, wedged deeply between the fourth and fifth rib on his left side. Doctors would later describe it as extracting a half-deflated monster truck tire from the pickets of a steel-framed fence. A damn near impossible feat even after breaking his rib cage.

Marsha was dead in the passenger seat, crushed like a rubber chicken between the cushion and the glove compartment. Her face unrecognizable from the shards of windshield glass and hood shrapnel. Geoff couldn’t see it, but the front half of the vehicle was no longer there. Well, it was. It had just inexplicably merged into a single piece. Everything that once lived beyond the steering wheel, including them, now existed in the backseat. The engine, the stereo, and the automatic stick shift had unnaturally fused on impact into a fragmented hunk of plastic, glass, and metal that lived where the center console once existed. The headlights and the tires had curled inward like the tentacles of an octopus gripping itself. The radiator, the front axle, and pretty much everything else had been shoved back, severing them both below the knees. The windshield shattered into a million pieces and dispersed inside the vehicle, plunging deeply into their skin.

From the outside, the Pontiac no longer resembled an actual vehicle. It looked like a chunk of elements crushed by a trash compactor or by a cement truck careening at ninety miles an hour. It looked like a giant metal wagon with wheels in the back.

Geoff stopped coughing blood and looked down. He couldn’t tell where he ended and the car began. Marsha too. Like him, she was just a piece of the Pontiac now. He swallowed hard, felt his esophagus bump against the rough rubber of the steering wheel, then coughed up more blood.

And for the first time in his life, Geoff prayed. But for death.

It didn’t come yet, but he knew it was close.

He looked in front of him, through the microscopic shards of glass in his eyes, and marveled in terror. Nothing was there. Not a vehicle, not an animal, not a wall, nor a fresh pair of skid marks. All he saw was air and the swirling red and blue lights of approaching police cars.

The last thing he thought before taking his final breath was “What the hell did I hit?”

“Mom, I’m right here,” Zelda exclaimed from the bookstore café, nibbling on a rainbow-colored sugar cookie at a table and kicking the air in front of her.

Tammy’s heart returned to her chest and she ran to her. “Oh my god, Zelda, I was, I was, I was so worried about you.” She knelt in front of Zelda, gave the tightest hug she had ever given, and then gestured to the cookie, “Where did you get that?”

Zelda took another bite, then gestured across the table, “She got it for me.”  

Tammy followed her finger. “She?” The woman in white stood beside the table, smiling. She was just shy of 5’4, but at that moment, Tammy could’ve sworn she was in the presence of a bright white giant. “Oh my god,” she whispered, clutching her silver-plated crucifix necklace and rising to the woman’s level before realizing that the lights of the bookstore had been playing tricks on her. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

The woman in white smiled, then shrugged understandably.  

“I just, uh, I just wanna say, uh, thank you, you, you have no idea what, uh, what this, uh,” Tammy was rambling, but she didn’t care. She meant every word even if it sounded like nonsense. “You’re an angel, that’s what I’m trying to say. And thank you so much for—” she cut herself off, then dug a hand into her purse. “How much do I owe you for the cookie?”

The woman in white shook her head, then waved the wallet away.

Tammy retrieved a five-dollar bill and held it out. “Take it. Please. It’s the least I can do.”

The woman studied the bill, then stepped into Tammy, curling her open palm into a fist. She considered revealing what she had just done, but changed her mind before the words formed in her mouth. Telling her was well within the boundaries. The One who sent her had given her the option to do so.

The woman in white released Tammy’s fist and stepped back.

Tammy took the hint and, without looking, slipped the now-fifty into her pocket.

Zelda yawned, then suddenly remembered what had happened before the reunion with her mother. First, the unicorn. The way it jumped across the bookstore carpet, then fell over on its side. Next was the palm over her mouth, and the weightlessness that followed. The woman in white sensed this and looked to the girl as the memory of waking up in the hatchback resurfaced.

 Zelda watched the rest play out in her mind, her gaze gripping the yellow spine of a picture book in the Young Adult section. She felt herself crawling on her stomach toward the back window and pulling herself up—

The woman in white snapped, and the memories disintegrated.  

Zelda blinked, then never remembered it again.

Tammy thanked the woman again, sat with her daughter, and for the first time in what felt like forever, relaxed. Truly relaxed. Her little girl was safe, happy, and surprisingly untraumatized. Nothing else mattered at that point. Suddenly, a thought dropped in. “By the way,” she said, glancing in the woman’s direction, “any idea what happened…”

The woman was gone.

The paramedics and the police spent the next ten minutes debating how to proceed. Pulling the car apart there was out of the question. Too many onlookers and, God only knew how many, children were in the crowd. They eventually agreed to clear the scene, tow it to a local junkyard, and handle the stickier issues in private. A pair of rookie cops manned the cameras, photographing the damage up close while four officers scoured the surrounding area for evidence. Oddly enough, the damage wasn’t unlike anything they had ever seen. Interstate wrecks and multi-car accidents had paved the way for some pretty atrocious outcomes. However, the crime scene itself didn’t make any sense.

The deceased: Geoff and Marsha Blaylock.

Time of Death: 2:47 pm (assuming they died on impact).

Officer Shankman with the Rust-Wick County Police Department finished gathering what he could from his team, then approached the crowd—which had tripled in size—beyond the yellow tape with his palms in the air. “Did anyone here see what happened?” He expected two maybe three people to step forward.

The crowd was silent. Not even a peep.

“Anyone see anything? Anything at all?”

Still nothing.

Officer Shankman speechlessly stared back at the growing crowd, then turned to his team. “How? How the hell did this happen?” he asked flabbergasted, receiving nothing but mystified stares and bewildered shrugs. “Come on, guys, there’s gotta be something here.”

The woman in the white dress, still barefoot, moved through the parking lot to the front of the crowd and ducked under the yellow police tape. She walked across the pavement with ease. The shards of broken windshield glass surrounding the vehicle seemed to move out of the way on their own, like two positive ends of a magnet repelling each other.

Nine-year-old Max Foreman saw the glass part on its own from atop his father’s shoulders. Eight-year-old Naomi Cradle, clutching her mother’s hand, saw it too. They both pointed out the phenomenon, but their parents were too distracted by the unnatural shape of the Pontiac to notice.

The woman approached the driver’s side of the vehicle through the back seat window.

She looked at Geoff, took a deep breath, and blew the bloody hair from his forehead. She studied Marsha, felt a twinge of sadness for the soul that had been led astray by the broken men in her life, then remembered how many times she had been given a chance to leave, but remained. Empathy wasn’t in the job description. She redirected her thoughts to the blue flyer that now lived within Marsha’s swollen yellow liver, then resumed her stare on Geoff.

She leaned in, touched a fingertip to Geoff’s left temple, then closed her eyes.

Six seconds later, Geoff’s eyes opened.

He picked his head up as far as he could, saw the woman in white, then started to tremble. It opened his mouth, but nothing came out.   

She locked eyes with him. “You didn’t think we’d let you off that easy, did you?”

And when the woman in white grinned, Geoff’s larynx returned, and he started to scream.

The End