I stared at my Mazda, the front end ripped sideways, oil spilling on the street. The engine was exposed like an organ on an operating table. John and I stood in a state of dismayed amazement. Dismay because my car was totaled and amazement that we were alive.

            I knew we should have quit after the last bar, but the cocaine had made me feel invincible and my wife was in Maine, and I wasn’t going to get a chance to party for a while. So, we threw fate to the wind and went to Houlihan’s, and fate chewed us up and spit us out. After a few hours of drinking and drugs, we figured we would cap off the night with one more shot of Southern Comfort at a tiny sliver of a saloon with sticky floors and chipped wood bowls filled with popcorn. (The smell of Southern Comfort makes me sick now.)

             Driving in Jersey City was a slow burn—drive a block, stop, drive another block, stop. It took forever to get where we were going, and I was impatient and lit that night. I cruised past the stop sign and John said, “No, stop,” and then, the collision. It was in slow motion. I could see the car filled with teenagers, laughing and whooping as they slammed into the front of the car. We spun like a top and they barreled past us, like kids in bumper cars.

            I looked at the car, steaming and bleeding in the middle of the intersection, the hood crumpled and gashed. I began to come out of the fog of marijuana, coke and Southern Comfort and it dawned on me that a yard or two more…if we had entered the intersection a few seconds earlier, the driver’s side would have been crushed. I would be dead.

             The intersection became eerily still, and rain began to sprinkle, making light reflect off the dark road. I sat on the curb and a thought came to me. It was only a brief flare. A flashlight glowing, submerged in deep water. I had a vague sense that I wasn’t the captain of my destiny. I was a guy sitting on a curb waiting for the tow truck to arrive.

MICHAEL CANNISTRACI began his creative journey as an actor; he worked for thirty years acting in theatre and television. In mid-life he answered a new calling and completed a Master’s degree at Hunter College School of Social Work. He currently works as a clinical social worker and psychotherapist. His essays have been published in Entropy Magazine, Ravensperch  Literary Medical Messenger, The Evening Street Review, Bright Flash Literary Review, the Bangalore Review, The Dillydoun Review, East by Northeast, Stonecrop magazine, Glacial Hills Review, Iris Literary Review and the 34th Parallel. He was finalist in the Pen2Paper Literary Contest and The Good Life Review Literary Contest (he/his/him)