Glimpse.

She stared at the edge of the truck, the giant tread of the tires spinning so quickly that it sounded as if the truck was constantly running off the road onto the tiny, ingenious bumps that alerted swerving, drowsy drivers and annoyed the shit out of wayward tourists. Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" blared out of tinny speakers through the small, sliding back window. The passing cement of highway movement melted into a grey and yellow winding river when viewed through her crying, robotic eyes. She hesitated- wait- no, not a moment, and... jump.

Her feet hit first but her face hit hardest. Surprise. Mainly intense, tearing pain, but a good deal of surprise, too. Surprisingly. Surprise because of the feeling. All this talk of adrenaline overriding pain in these types of scenarios- nonsense. Actually, it was total bullshit. She thought momentarily that she simply had a low pain tolerance, and at once felt weak and helpless. Momentarily. Momentarily because this all happened in less than a moment. Well, to be fair- a short moment. But, alas, that portion of the moment had passed, and directly she turned her attention to the fleshy bone quite literally exploding from her cheek as she skidded and bounced, at once forwards and backwards, down the interstate at 60 mph, 59, 58, 57. Had gravity, friction, and flailing limbs not impeded this gradual slowing of one mile per hour at a time, it would have taken just over 4 1/2 hours to travel sixty miles, under the pretense that she traveled the same speed as the number of miles left.

This thought, however, never crossed her mind, and it likely never would have either, as she was not much of one for such heady, mathematical issues, but even if it ever had the chance, that chance was dashed as quickly as her brains, when, on the third tumble towards the shoulder of the increasingly still highway, she, probably unwisely, decided, or perhaps not, to use the back portion of her head as a slowing device, likely not realizing that her skull, while being one of the hardest pieces of continuous bone in her body, was no match at all for the reinforced concrete that the state of Ohio spent $2 million on in the last few years, in a tax funded initiative entitled "Rejuvenation: Ohio," spurned into quick action after a series of scathing articles in the Cincinatti Sun-Times by leading satirist Billy Rest, cleverly titled "No More Ohi-holes!," referring, of course, to the admittedly poor upkeep of roads that, in their day, opened welcoming arms to the weary western fortune seekers- those young adventure capitalists that shook the bonds of their eastern seaboard shackles, and pressed outward towards new life.