Roadkill

von Marcus Krug

Eliot was sitting in the back of the car while Lindsay, his mom, was steering the vehicle over the bumpy road. Her mother in law, Kathy, was in the car as well, in the passenger seat next to Eliot’s mom, taking care of his little baby sister Gwendoline.
Eliot had been picked up from the day care center by the three of them, because that day was his older brother’s birthday. Napoleon had turned ten – and the four of them were on the way to Bullets & Burgers to have a birthday party with him and his friends. Richard, Eliot’s dad, was already with them, taking care of them, giving instructions.
Usually a good and safe driver, Lindsay was shifting around on her seat, though; occasionally giving the odd glance over to Kathy, making sure the old lady was still comfortable. Lindsay’s hands were already clammy and had started trembling as soon as they had set off from home.
Eliot sat in his booster seat. His legs dangling around, he played with the seat belt in front of him, noisily clicking the fastener open and shut – over and over again. His baby sister Gwendoline was quiet, though. She had dozed off as soon as they had left from the day care center when the rocking car had started to lull her into sleep. Eliot, however, went on: click, clack, click, clack and click.
“Please, Eliot, stop that clicking.” his grandma said.
“Are we there yet?”
“We’ll be there soon.”
“How much longer?” Eliot clicked, clacked and clicked.
“Five minutes, maybe quicker, if your mother permits.” Kathy said, giving her daughter in law a look that spoke volumes. “And stop that clicking, El, will you?!” Kathy added, gritting her teeth.
“I have to pee!” said Eliot after a while. The clicking had stopped, since Eliot had peeled himself out of his booster seat.
“Get back into that seat and buckle up!” grandma Kathy shouted, turning around but also trying to put baby Gwendoline onto the dashboard, to have a hand free to put Eliot back into his seat. But the sleeping baby beauty Gwendoline in her baby carry cot always slid back onto her grandma’s lap. Eliot, however, wasn’t listening, at all. Instead, he climbed up, onto the back shelf where all his toys were lying around.
“Lindsay, you are his parent, talk to that brattish son of yours, will you?! He’s apparently not listening to his grandmother! And as you might have noticed, I have to take care of your daughter here.”
“Don’t you call my son a brat ever again.” Lindsay’s shaking voice was scarcely audible. “Or …” it faded out.
“Or what?”
“Or I will throw you out of the car! Then you can walk the rest of the way.” This time the voice wasn’t exactly booming but more stable than before.
“Dare you, bimbo!”
“You … you … I am going to stop now!” the shaking was back again.
“Pull over, go on. But you are too scared, aren’t you?!”
“I am going to be sick.” Eliot from the back shelf piped up again.
“I am not scared, Kathy!” Lindsay replied, distracted, not paying much attention to her son.
“Pull over, then!” Kathy said in smug complacency, but Lindsay didn’t do anything, just drove on.
“You are too scared about what Dick would do to you if I told him. Huh?!”
“Will you leave Richard out of this!” Lindsay said, clutching the steering wheel, with her slippery and now visibly shaking hands.
“Oh, I can see, you still remember the last time when he was in a rage, and his hands slipped, because of you. Go on then, pull over, if you feel fit to face the consequences, again.” At that Lindsay suddenly slammed on the brakes.
Unprepared for this unanticipated stop, Eliot, accompanied by most of his toys, slipped off the back shelf, flew over the back seat and sailed somersaulting down into the foot well.
“What are you trying to prove here, Lindsay? Don’t be a fool!” Kathy started, as soon as the car had stopped. And with a mischievous smile on her face and an uncanny calmness in her voice, she went on, “Get going, we’re running late, anyways. And besides, you don’t have the guts to leave me here in the middle of the desert?!”
Lindsay, not being a fool this time, channelled all her anger into her right hand and hit the car into the first gear, then put the pedal to the metal, somewhat oblivious of her son’s presence in the legroom behind her seat.
At that, Eliot quite alright with his new playground, had his eyes fixed on a shiny object that was quickly sliding towards him from under the driver’s seat. He picked it up and examined the cold and heavy item.
“That was a very smart move of yours, Lindsay.” Kathy complimented her daughter in law, smiling impishly.
To Eliot the new thing looked like a silvery boomerang with a wooden handle, a drum and a lever. Eliot sat himself up and played with it. Turning it around pulling here, pressing there, spinning the drum. Then he figured that the lever must have a certain function and focused on it.
“Lindsay, my dear, shouldn’t you have used the stop for getting your son back into his seat? What do you think?!” Kathy ridiculed her.
In his urge to explore, and with all the physical strength he could find in his three-year-old body, Eliot pulled the lever, which set an irreversible sequence in motion. The lever released a spring which itself had cocked the hammer and now released it. The hammer hit the primer of the shell in the drum. The hit primer ignited the propellant inside. The ignited propellant caused the gas pressure inside the shell to rise. The risen pressure expanded and fired off the bullet through the barrel. The fired off bullet eventually hit grandma Kathy’s butt.
At that, Kathy’s head whipped around. “Ouch! What the hell, you son of a fucking bi …” she tried to release her pain in the arse.
But Eliot, being a three-year-old, wasn’t fit to take all the gun shot’s blowback. While thrown back, he tried disastrously to hold fast onto something; the only thing he could hold on to was the gleaming boomerang; so he involuntarily pulled the trigger again. The bullet, this time discharged from a different angle, ripped grandma Kathy’s throat wide open.
What kind of thoughts go through your head when most of your blood doesn’t? At that stage we simply don’t know, because Kathy was already dead when the car eventually came to a standstill, after parking itself abruptly through the guardrail into the roadside ditch.
Lindsay in her motherly instinct had left the steering wheel and the pedals to themselves and had thrown herself over her still sleeping baby girl to protect her from all the blood that was gushing out of the horrible bullet hole in her mother in law’s throat.
Eliot, with his now red freckled face, was sitting up again, unharmed and almost relaxed, in the foot well. He was crying, though. Because when he was trying to touch one of the still smoking shells, he had burned his little fingers.

A couple of miles down the road, Napoleon wasn’t really waiting for his family to arrive at the Bullets & Burgers. For that he was too distracted, not to say confused. Pacing up and down the sidewalk, he was trying to make sense to the most recent events. He was too shell-shocked because his father just got his head partially blown off. A bullet had entered through his throat and had left Dick’s head through the roof, leaving a crater that to Napoleon, strangely enough, looked not unlike a bowl of stirred up chocolate ice cream with hot strawberry sauce on top.
Later on, the newscasters would say that Richard Vacca was accidentally shot in the head as he instructed a nine-year-old girl how to fire an Uzi, an Israeli-made 9mm submachine gun. As she pulled the trigger, the gun jumped out of her left hand towards Vacca, who was standing beside her.
“To put an Uzi in the hands of a nine-year-old is extremely reckless – to say the least.” law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes would also comment later on TV.