Student
Mr. Maite
Writing Lab
21 September 2000

Blue Hog

”Slam on the breaks!” I heard Chris yell in his most authoritative voice. He turned to me, and I could see the sheer terror in his big brown eyes and ghost white face. Immediately I put my shaking foot onto the break and the car jerked forward and then back again. I was then startled by a loud smack that shook the entire car. I looked over to the passenger seat and saw Chris turned around this time, facing the car beside us. What was he doing hitting the window that hard? I thought to myself.
I was terrified from that point on. The next hour would be the most hellish part of my life to date. I thought that I was going to die and then I thought of all the things I was never going to be able to do. I thought of what I didn’t tell the people that I love and about what my loved ones were going to do and how they were going to cope when they found out that I was dead. That’s when my adrenaline kicked in and my survival attitude came to the forefront. That’s also when I started praying that I would live to see another day.
He wanted to see us sweat. The man was young, dark black skin, and he had a look of the devil on his face. He enjoyed doing this to us. His eyes were large, dark, and they stared deep into my soul. His teeth were a pale shade of yellow. His voice was rough and scratchy. A voice that wanted to sound surer than it was. He wore a white ribbed shirt and his hair in braids. I remember him well.
I was on my way to what I thought would be a fun day at King’s Island with my boyfriend. He came fast behind me though. I was in a dull red Corsica going about 70 in the left lane of the highway. I was trapped in lots of traffic all around me and I couldn’t move, but the irrational man behind me didn’t sympathize. Instead he flashed his lights and tried to pass us on the right. That didn’t work. This was when Chris gave the man ‘the finger’.
Slamming the breaks just in time to get hit by a pop bottle was not all that I had to endure. The next hour I was chased at high and low speeds by a mad man in a shiny blue Cadilliac. A brand new one with license plates “Blue Hog”. I tried everything to get him away from me, speeding up, slowing down. I even tried riding in front of the truckers so the man would drive past us. Nothing seemed to work.
Stopping him? Yes, this was the hard part. I tried to do everything I could to lose him, but he just would not leave us alone. There was only one thing for us to do: call 911 from our cell phones. That would have worked too if we would have sounded convincing the first time we called, but we didn’t. “Um, hello, there is a gentleman following us in a blue Cadallica, could you please send someone out? Okay, great thanks.” Chris said in a nonchalant tone of voice.
The time went by though, and nothing seemed to be happening. I felt the fear inside of me swelling up and I thought that I was going to lose it at any moment. I needed someone to vent to. I couldn’t yell at the situation. It wasn’t Chris’s fault this had happened anyway. I wallowed in my fear still, driving to my death. Then I thought of telling someone our story. I called 911 again, this time in my ‘I’m scared as hell voice’. “Send someone out here now! There is a guy that won’t leave me alone and I am afraid something is going to happen really soon! I need a cop out here FAST! Can’t they just pull me over?!”
Yes, screaming at the dispatcher really does work, so does being consistent. In the course of the next twenty minutes, I called back three times to find out the cop’s locations as they tried to find us. I thought for sure that the man behind us would leave us alone when he saw on my cell phone but he just wouldn’t give up. After describing my location in great detail to the dispatcher and after ten more painful minutes went by I saw a cop on the side of the road. My heart stopped when I saw him. I had never been so happy to gee a cop sitting on the side of the road. I waved him down and he chased after the mad man as Chris and I sat on the side of the road.
Chris was shaken up completely. We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t see anyone around us for miles. I couldn’t even look at Chris. He kept telling me to look at him and then I would and he would apologize for what he had done. I told him it wasn’t his fault and that he should not feel bad but he didn’t listen to me. He was completely shaken up by what had just happened, as I was.
“Don’t worry, there won’t be a shoot out or anything,” the short and plump officer told me as he walked away from my car. He was going to escort us to where they had pulled over the man, and I was afraid. I didn’t want anything to happen to me, or Chris. By the time we got up the road a few miles though, I knew that we would be well protected with the three state troopers that were carelessly parked along the side of highway 71.
As for the man, he wasn’t very happy. Inconvenienced and irritated is what the officer said he was. I was shaken up for life. What Chris and I went through on the road that day I hope no one has to face again. For an hour I was faced with death and I almost didn’t escape it. If that man had pulled out a gun instead of that pop bottle I probably would not be alive today. I have leered as a result, however, to appreciate fully every day that I have on this earth. I love being able to wake up in the morning and have another day to try to accomplish great things in my life. I hope too that my story is able to help other people do the same thing. So they don’t have to learn the hard way, as Chris and I did.