Bad Timing

Bad Timing

One day I saw a man standing outside a picture window looking in at his wife and child who were decorating the Christmas tree. How I got from that image to this story is all a blur. Enjoy!

     99 times out of 100, that is the cause of fucked up things happening to good people.

     Think about it. How many of the fucked up things that have happened to either you, or someone you know, would not have happened given a moment or two’s shift in how the day had unfolded.  Would little Johnny still be a hood ornament if the ball had rolled into the street ten seconds earlier, or later?  If uncle Vick had fallen asleep twenty seconds later, might not his car have plowed into the forgiving, open field just fifty yards past the telephone pole that left him all but recognizable.  Had I held my tongue regarding my future son-in-law’s glaring inadequacies until after the wedding, might I not still have an actual relationship with the daughter I love so dearly. 

     Moment’s…seconds…a few fleeting wrong steps, or bad choices…in the end, bad timing is all we have.

     Bad timing is what your husband had. That—and a little bit of bad luck—gets us here….

     The sun was fading slowly behind the long row of strip malls on my right. Dusk has always been an enemy of mine. The extra concentration required to process my vision puts me in a foul mood at best. As a result, I try to schedule my travel time, when possible, during either the full glory of day, or the darkest pitch of night. No such luxury existed today, as I had promised my wife to be home by six for dinner.

     Route nine, at the best of times, is a long, dull, exercise in patience and understanding. One lane winds its frustrating way up through the quiet blank of the pinelands. One-lane forces its way into the beginnings of intelligent civilization—Lanoka Harbor. One lane plunges back into the stunted hub of Piney culture—Bayville, and one lane pierces straight into the growing heart of overpaid, under-principled-America—Toms River, New Jersey.

     I started my evening drive in frustration, and met your husband in the hub of Piney culture.
A 7-11 lies in the heart of Bayville. You might think it oddly placed, if you had the occasion to pass by it enough to think of such a thing. It sits at about a 30-degree angle on the right hand side of Route Nine Northbound, which makes its parking area into a navigationally challenged acute angle. There is a light pole planted almost directly in the apex of this angle, around which both comers, and goers, must navigate.  I know I cannot be the first one to have thought about this, and it occurs to me now that you may have driven by this very spot. 

     It is very important for you to understand that it is not what your husband did first that gets us to where we are going. Bad timing is simply a facilitator of situations. The situations themselves are the sole product of the way we, as humans, live our lives.

     Think about it…if little Johnny had just listened to his mother every time she had yelled at him for chasing the ball into the street, well, he would still be kicking that ball around the yard. Likewise, had uncle Vick taken a break somewhere in South Carolina as his wife had asked him to his trip might well have had a happier ending. And—hindsight being what it is—had I exercised even the slightest bit of humility and bit my tongue for just one more day…well, enough said?

     I know he had to see me coming. Even with the pole to his left, he was far enough into the shoulder to see the headlights of my Jeep. The thing that really got me tangled was all the empty space behind me. He had to see that too. There was at least a hundred yards of open road between me, and the nearest trailing vehicle. He had to see it! I know he did!
He went anyway, tires squealing, directly in front of me. I can’t for the life of me understand how he could not have had the patience to wait the extra two seconds it would have taken to nestle safely into that open space behind me. Like I said, timing and choices—that is what it all boils down to.

     The time it took my mind to comprehend that he just could not wait put me right on his bumper. I hit the brakes just in time, the ass end of my 1994 Cherokee rising towards the sky as the two front tires searched desperately for purchase on the pavement before them. Slow now, down to ten miles per hour, I felt my temper begin to rise. I held onto the brakes though, and slowed my self down enough to begin to create some distance between my Jeep and his BMW. 

     Then the most incredible thing happened. As the distance grew between us, and my temper began to check itself, I saw the arrogant fuck that you call a husband raise his hand and give me the finger. He did this while glancing back through his rear view mirror to make sure that I had registered the gesture.

     I would hope that you could agree that this was not the right thing to do. So I ask you now—since you surely know this man better than I do—is he so fucking stupid that he could possibly have imagined this to be the right course of action considering what he had just done? Is he so self-involved that he could not see that his choice had directly caused my proximity to his bumper. Is he such a jerk-off that—even as I made a conscious decision not to escalate the situation, and backed off—flipping me off seemed like a good idea?

     I wish that I could ask you these questions in person. It would be of great significance to me to know whether these are his normal characteristics. It occurs to me, in hindsight, that maybe he was just having a bad fucking day. I have had those too. In fact, I am having one right now. I have been since bad timing brought us all together.

     This, however, is all beside the point.

     The point, as it stands, is that he made a conscious decision to be, and to continue to be, a jerk-off. You see, even after his inappropriate gesture I continued to back off. I resisted my baser nature to a fault. I wanted to put my Jeep in park at the next light, walk calmly up to his door, drag him out, and beat him senseless in the middle of Route Nine. I should have gone with my first instinct, but I did not. I tried to do the right thing and it ended up fucking us all in the end. Once again…choices! 

     I had increased my distance to three car lengths while the vision of a mid-street beating had danced around in my head. There was no possible way he could have felt any threat, or ire, at that point. He should have just left the situation be and focused on the road ahead.

     He did not.

     About a mile and a half past the 7-11 on rote nine northbound, your husband turned vicious. Now—with three cars worth of space between him and a bad situation—he decided to start fucking with me.

     Just brake-checks at first…

     With nothing, or no one, in front of him, he slammed on the brakes. Once again, our bumpers were within mere inches of a mid-rush-hour nightmare.

     Another finger…

     This time—lunging as close as he could to his rearview mirror without putting me out of site—as if to impress the fact that he was in charge, and that I was just along for the ride.

     Now swerving…

     He mocked my attempt to get around him at the light. There are two lanes and he swerved just enough to block them both.

     I wanted to pull up next to him at the light and put him in his place. I wanted to choke him. I wanted to nudge the right-hand corner of his bumper just enough to send him into oncoming traffic. All these things I wanted to do, and none of them I did.  Those things are not rational, you see. In addition, I am a rational human being. Unlike your Neanderthal husband, in all his retarded glory, swerving and breaking his way up Route 9, I know there is a time a place for everything.

     We played this game all the way up through Bayville and into beautiful, downtown Toms River. 

     All the way his antics escalating…

     All the way my temper rising…

     I prayed, when we reached the light at the river, that this exercise in lunacy would end. Surely, I thought, he will go straight while I made the right taking me along the river, and towards home. I could, and would, let it go. That was the hope. That was the plan.
In life, however, hopes and plans usually take a back seat to fate…and bad timing.

     I switched my blinker on about seventy-five feet before the light, still praying. At fifty feet, he still had given no indication of which way his path would wander. Still none at forty…at thirty…at twenty…

     At ten feet—with a sharp right-hand turn looming—he slammed on his brakes for the last time…

     …I reacted just in time, stopping, once again, mere inches away from his eighty thousand dollar penis extension. Unfortunately, the F-150 behind me was not so lucky. It slammed into the back of me with bone-jarring force. I heard the rear window implode, and felt its tiny darts peppering the back of my head as the front careened off of the steering wheel. Everything slowed down for a moment as my vision—aided by rage—refocused . I glared at your husband—through the haze of blood and snot that had become my face—as he stared back in disbelief.

     I do not think that the gravity of his actions—and where they could lead—had ever truly dawned on him until that moment. He sat there, shocked, in his—still unscathed—eighty thousand dollar car. He had seen the truck coming—because he was so intensely focused on 
fucking with me—and hit the gas just in time to avoid being the final link in a chain reaction…

     lucky him.

     Now—with grim reality setting in—a look of realization came over him. Once again, a choice lay before him. He could do the right thing, get out of the car, make sure everyone was all right, and get the help that everyone needed. Or he could flee like the spineless cunt that he had proven to be thus fare.

     Since—once again—you obviously know him better than I do, I am sure there is no need for me to tell you what he chose.


     This is where my bad choices begin. Thus far—I hope you would agree—I had kept my composure about as well as any man could have been expected to. Sure, I had had some pretty nasty thoughts, but had acted on none of them. That was no longer an option.
As the smoke rose from his spinning tires, so did my anger. There was no fucking way this was going to end with his clean getaway.

     Seventy-five—even ten—feet ago that was an option. Now it was abso-fucking-lutely not.

     Raising a shaking hand to my face, I diverted the river of blood from my left eye. I glanced, quicly, in the rearview mirror to make sure the driver behind me was all right. Unlike your husband, I have a conscious. He was visibly shaken, but had left his vehicle and was walking towards me, presumably to return the favor. There was no time for that now though. He was all right and that was all that mattered…that and the growing distance of the BMW’s taillights. 

     My foot fell to the floor and the Jeep lurched to life. It was totaled, but drivable. Thousands of shimmering shards of glass littered the scene as I sped away. There was a horrible grinding sound coming from underneath the vehicle, and sparks from the dragging tail pipe lit up the night air behind me. None of that mattered now. The only thing that mattered was directly in front of me, and making every attempt to leave the consequences of his bad decisions as far as possible behind him.

     The impairment of my vehicle—while it had slowed me down—was the perfect counter balance to my rage. It kept me just far enough behind for him not to notice that I was still there. Besides—being the arrogant prick that he was—he probably never figured that I would continue any further after all that I had already let him get away with. The truth of the matter is, though, that—had the Jeep’s peddle been able to transfer even a fraction of the weight of my foot to the engine—this story would have had a completely different ending.

     I swear to everything I hold dear my foot would not have left the peddle until my rear liscence plate had come out the other side of his body. The story would have ended right there—and this letter would never have gotten written…

     …Timing is a bitch like that…

     He was still in the car, no doubt collecting himself, when I rounded the corner. My hand slipped beneath the seat and the console, finding the small maglite I had been too lazy to fish out when it had fallen down there a couple of weeks ago. It was small, but solid as a rock, and would be perfect for the purpose at hand. 

     Parking just to the outside of where I thought his peripheral vision would end—and barely sparing the time it took to throw the Jeep in park—I leapt into madness. Rage was the driver now, and we were both just along for the ride.

     The blows fell swift and without mercy. The first one, to the temple, rendered him all but unconscious. That is why you did not hear anything. He never had a chance to scream. After only two staggering blows, his brain stopped sending messages to his arms and legs. Limp and ineffectual, his only defense was the soft, gurgling, whimpers that were now issuing from his crushed windpipe.

     I wanted to stop for a moment and explain to him what an asshole he was. I wanted, desperately, to deliver a great oratory on the wrongs that he had committed, and the consequences he would reap. We were past that now though.

     My hand kept swinging. Now that he could not fight back, it was all about the damage. Like a child with a video game, I was looking for maximum gore.

     His nose, broke…

     His eye socket, shattered…

     A tooth—liberated from its life long home—slid down the back of his throat…gurgle…choke…

     The momentum of the flashlight’s final blow actually pushed the soft flesh of his cheek aside and allowed the but of the light to tear off a piece of the tongue inside his mouth…

     I let him slide, lifeless, to the ground. It would have been, should have been over then. Plenty of damage had been done, all the way around, and that should have been the end of it. My guess is that—because the entire situation had occurred in such a rage on both parts—there would be nothing to link either of us to the entire situation. Sure, there were witnesses, but, with the connections I have the Jeep would have been easy enough to make disappear. No information had been exchanged at the scene of the accident and I am sure—as far as most of the onlookers were concerned—there were only two cars involved in the accident by the river…your husbands’ car not being one of them. I could have reported the entire incident to the police had I sat calmly outside your house in my vehicle instead of beating your husband within an inch of his life. There was no chance of that now, and there was no way he had enough wits about him to memorize my license plate as I drove away from his broken body. It was over…

     …Over that is, until he decided to be a jerk-off until the bitter end.

     I turned my back to him and walked towards the Jeep, tossing the bloody flashlight through the open passenger window as I went. There were moist choking noises coming from behind me but I ignored them. What’s done is done, and I wanted nothing more to do with the barely breathing sack of shit lying in your driveway. Then the choking noises turned into, almost audible, words.

     `”fut…”

     “…Futc…”

     “…Futch oooh…” it sounded like through the grizzled mass of tooth, and flesh, and blood that now passed for his mouth. The last word almost whistled its way out of the sizeable hole in his cheek. 

     When I turned around, there it was…his favorite finger…the only thing standing between my befuddled look of disbelief and his gaze of miserable contempt. In his twisted, self-absorbed, mind I think he believed that gave him the last word. It seems lie that is what he wanted all along.

     NOT TODAY!!! 

     I navigated the ten feet between us in two deliberate strides. He had no time to react, and everything that happens next occurs in the span of one minute.

     I kicked my foot forward on the last stride. The tip of my shoe caught the tip of his finger and momentum did the rest. The finger bent so far back that I could actually feel the bone break through the skin at the joint underneath my foot. Stomping repeatedly, all he could do was gurgle and wease.

     Satisfied that his most offensive of digits could never be raised again, I sank both of my hands into his bloody hair and began to drag him towards the house. A lifeless body that size is not easily dragged by the hair, and the stress of the situation proved to be too much. The roots began to abandon their grasp and—unable to grab another tuft quick enough—his head dropped to the pavement with a wet splat!

     Even then, he breathed on, miserable bastard that he was, so I grabbed him by the hands and continued. The skin of his middle finger was so traumatized that it gave way to the weight and separated. Tossing the useless piece of flesh into the tulips, I managed to drag him the rest of the way to the front window by just the one arm.

     Standing now, in front of your home, with the large picture window before us, I was sure the remorse would flow like a river between his purple, dangling, lips. I was wrong. Standing above, and behind, him I reached over his right shoulder across his throat. I cradled his head in the pit of my elbow and used all of my strength to hoist him up. It was important for me that he see you there. I wanted him to see you and your child there and realize all of the good things that had surrounded him in his life. I wanted him to see you and repent. 

     He did no such thing. Instead, while you and your daughter hung the lights lovingly on the Christmas tree, he mustered all his strength to raise the finger of his functional hand in front of me. That was the last act of our “beloved” husband.

     I grabbed his throat with my free hand and, using every ounce of strength left in my body, I plunged my fingers into the soft and beaten flesh to the left of his Adam’s apple. When the flesh tore away, a torrent of blood sprayed the picture window before us. 

     Thank God for Christmas music.

     You never heard the bloody raindrops on the window not five feet away from you.

     You never registered the chaotic motion on the other side of that window as the death throes overcame your husband, and his life’s blood drained into the shrubbery. At least, in that respect, god was smiling down on an otherwise fucked up situation.

     The fact that you saw, and heard, nothing affords me the opportunity to sit, calmly, down the street and right you this letter.

     I needed to give you a luxury that most of the “left behind” never get…an explanation.

     And so it is done. You can give this letter to the police so that, at the very least, they can identify who it was that brutally murdered your husband. Though I know this will bring you no solace, it may permit closure.

     I hope that this is the last of my bad decisions. Likewise, I hope no one has bad enough timing to get in my way when I slam what is left of my Jeep through the guardrail and off of the Route 37 Bridge into the Toms River. 


P.S.—I had just bought the Jeep a couple of months ago as a commuter vehicle. You would not have known that though, as you have chosen not to speak to me since I begged you not to marry that worthless human being two years ago.

Love always,
Dad