Mike Dies

I had been driving home from the north, coming from Harrisonburg or a little farther away, and I had gotten to Grandmamma's house. Em and I were walking up the sidewalk to the back porch. Just as we got to the back porch, my cell phone rang. I answered it, and it was mom. She asked me something about whether or not I had heard about the accident on the news. I told her I hadn't, and she said "Your dad was in an accident and died." I think I may have asked her, "My dad?" implying that I wasn't sure who she was talking about, and she clarified by telling me that it was Mike (former step-father).

As I was walking through the back door into the kitchen, I asked her what had happened. She told me that he had been going for some job interview to be a guard somewhere, and the woman that was interviewing him had been driving him to and from the interview. They were going across the Blue Ridge mountains, and evidently had some sort of freak accident where they ran straight into a vertical portion of the mountain, broke through, and feel several thousand feet into the depths of this hollow mountain. I saw it in my head as she was describing it.

They were in a nondescript car of some nondescript dark color, and the road took a sharp turn as they were going up the mountain. The mountains were very steep compared to how they are in real life. They were almost like they were in a video game. They were very tall, and extremely pointed near the top, almost like they were perfect cones or something.

Anyway, I saw them hit the mountain head on, and they broke through the mountain surface. Both Mike and the driver were thrown from the car and I watched them fall into the mist below. The inside of the mountain was illuminated, and I could see trees and large rocks near by, but the farther down it went, it just turned into mist, which I saw Mike fall into. I wasn't particularly sad, but I knew that Eric and Matthew (brothers, Mike's sons) might be. I also thought briefly of Carol (Mike's current wife) and their two kids (Robert and Elizabeth). I wondered, also briefly, if it hadn't been Carol that had been driving Mike to the interview, but I realized that if it had been, mom would have mentioned that, too.