Deja-vu on the Turn

When I was younger, I took part in street racing. Every weekend I’d head out to the mountain pass with my buddies and we’d speed around and around it. This pass was especially famous for street racing, and every weekend you’d fine all sorts of people gathered there.

Street racers always had all sorts of mods on their cars, so you could tell them immediately at a glance. We’d chat and then race each other, good times were had.

One weekend, my buddy and I drove up there as usual in our cars, and one car was already there. As we got closer we saw that it wasn’t a street racing car but a normal car, so we ignored it and stopped at the small open area nearby, grabbing some drinks from the vending machine.

“Nobody’s here today, huh?” my friend said, taking a sip of his coffee.

“If we drive around for a bit, someone’s bound to show up,” I said. I took off first, and my friend followed about five minutes later.

As we approached the foot of the mountain, I reached the large curve and suddenly slammed on the brakes. That car we had seen earlier was there, stopped in the middle of the road.

I got out of the car to give them a piece of my mind. Stopping in a place like that was dangerous! There were two men inside.

“What the hell are you doing stopping in a place like this? I could have hit you!”

“A car just drove over the edge!” they said. “Was it your friend?”

“No,” I said, “he left five minutes after me. There’s nobody out today, so there shouldn’t be anyone down here.”

According to the guy inside the car, they were driving down the mountain pass when another car overtook them at high speed. The car wasn’t able to turn in time and went over the edge. Before long I heard the sound of a car suddenly braking behind us, and then my friend’s angry voice.

“What the hell are you doing stopped here! I thought I was gonna hit you!”

He came over to join us, and we shone a light over the edge to see if any car was there.

“It’s probably just a misunderstanding,” I said, but the man insisted.

“I saw the lights in the curved mirror, and we heard the sound of a car crashing.”

The other car then left. But for us, our race was more important, so we ignored what happened and got back in our cars to start again. This time, my friend went first, and five minutes later I followed him.

“If that car is stopped on the road again, I’ll hit him this time,” he said before taking off down the mountain.

Five minutes passed, and then I took off towards the bottom of the mountain myself at full speed. I rounded the corner nicely, and then as I approached and even bigger curve, lights flashed at me from the other side. This time it looked like a street racing car, and they were flashing their lights as a sign of danger.

‘Again?’ I thought, disappointed. I slowed down as I approached the curve and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“A car just drove over the edge. Was it your friend?”

I was at a loss for words. I looked over and the guardrail was destroyed. Something had clearly gone through it, and there was a car lying at the bottom.

The police and an ambulance arrived, and according to them, it was indeed my friend who drove over the edge. He died instantly. Even now, I still can’t forget what the officer said to me.

“There have been a lot of accidents here lately. After some of you street racers forced a normal car with two men over this same corner, this marks the third such accident.”

I couldn’t tell him about the two men I’d spoken to earlier.

I stopped racing after that, and I haven’t been back to that mountain pass since.