Yep, I got a job at a used truck lot. Well, technically a used car lot, but we all know which dirty beasts actually run their bottom line. I narrowed my eyes at the menacing line of Fords, Chevys, Dodges, and Toyotas. I pointed two fingers at my eyes and back at the multi-ton death machines, making eye contact with each of them in turn so they know that I was watching them.

They say to face your fears, and apparently I believed them, because here I was. Right dead smack in the middle of the valley of the shadow of death.

I rolled into the manager’s office and started the inevitable pile of paperwork that went along with every new job. After nearly five hours of writing the same ten pieces of information on slightly different papers and promising at least six times not to sexually harass anyone, the manager rescued me from my first day slog.

“Come on, that’s enough of that for now. Let’s show you around.” I leaned back, sighed, and exclaimed “SANTCUARY, SANCTUARY!” The boss chuckled and I asked “is that the right usage? I’ve never actually seen that movie.” “I dunno, me neither.” He replied, opening the door to free me from the tiny paperwork dungeon. “Hey guys, meet the new kid!”

A beefy bearded man with blond hair and the six-foot-two look of a modern viking stepped over and said “I hope this one’s better than that other idiot. I swear, that kid didn’t even set the parking break last time. I swear, can’t be operating heavy equipment while you’re stoned out of your damned mind. Gonna get someone killed at this rate. How’d you get the chair, military?”

“Stoned kid in a truck.”

“Whelp, I’m an ass. At least you figured it out early.”

I laughed, “nah, you’re good, I was just messing with you.”

The big man laughed. “You’ll fit in nice here, I’m Justin. Wasn’t a truck?”

“Wasn’t stoned, just stupid.”

“Whelp, prob’ly don’t make it feel no better.”

“No sir, it does not.”

“Well, geezus, you’ve gotta see this kid. Dumbest motherfucker I’ve ever seen. Seriously going to kill someone.”

“Dude, you’ve gotta stop, you’re giving me serious death flag vibes right now.”

“The hell is a death flag?” “Yeah, what is a death flag?” The manager chimed in.

“It’s a Japanese video game thing; like, there are these little flags that you can click on to talk to people, and some of them have a bunch of foreshadowing... you know what, don’t worry about it.” I tried to explain the labyrinthian world of visual novels, but then realized that if I continued on this path I was eventually going to wind up explaining Doki Doki Literature Club to a bunch of middle-aged men I just met, and that could end up very –JUST MONIKA-. “Look, the way you’re talking I’m 95% certain that this guy is actually going to get me killed today.” “Haha, you worry too much little buddy.”

At that moment I heard someone yelling at the top of their lungs “Look out! Move!” I looked toward the location of the sound and saw that a truck was rolling down the North-Western slope the dealership was built on. A shaggy 20-something in a camo shirt and cargo pants was chasing a pick up, half on the running board and half on the pavement, hopping along the ground trying desperately to swing himself into the cab of the giant full-size truck. A truck, which was heading straight for us. Straight for me.

The manager gave a shove to my chair as he launched himself in the opposite direction. For a moment it looked like I might just make it out of the way of the metal hell beast charging at me. Flying backwards, I frantically pulled at the hand grips on my chair to move myself even a few more inches away from danger. The combination of the push from the manager, my outsized thrust on the wheels, and an unfortunately placed, should be inconspicuous chunk of gravel, all conspired to make my chair tilt and begin falling backward.

Just as I began figuring out what my last thought would be, (I was leaning toward “who builds a used car lot on a hill!?”) I felt hands grab me as Justin dive tackled me backward out of the path of the Death-One-Fifty.

My wheelchair used the momentum of the event to flip all the way over and bounced nearly a foot in the air, directly into the grill of the oncoming Ford. There was a screech of bending metal and the crunch of six-thousand pounds of aluminum and steel impacting brick. A cloud of dust and fragments of truck, wall, and wheelchair flew into the air along with the curses of the three of us. The debris raining on the half of my face not covered by two-hundred-fifty pounds of sweaty repair technician. After a few moments of silence Justin and I looked at each other. “See?” I said. “death flag.”

The idiot kid stood up from where he’d rolled away after giving up his attempt at stopping the runaway automobile. “Oh my god, are you guys ok? I don’t know what happened, I got out of the car and it just started rolling.” “It’s a manual. It has a parking brake. You didn’t set the parking brake.” The manager replied from where he half sat, propped up on one arm on the ground. “From now on you wash the cars. You don’t get in the cars anymore.”

The burly tech carried me over to a wall about thirty feet away and set me down on the pavement, leaning against the brick. “I’ll go get you an office chair to sit on for now. You should be safe here away from that fucking moron.” “Death flag” I responded, checking over my arm, which seemed to be broken, for cuts and pulling bits of gravel out of my hair. “Ha, you’re making me a believer in this flag stuff” the manager said as he walked over to the site of the crash. “Are you ok?” He asked. I responded “it’ll take more than an F-150 to put this old dog down.”

I was so amped up on adrenaline that I was literally shaking. I grabbed my broken arm to hold it still. The shaking didn’t stop, but rather got even worse. I noticed that suddenly everything was shaking. “Shit, is it an earthquake?” Everything was shaking. The manager and the stoner both fell to the ground. Car alarms began to sound everywhere, filling the air with shrieks that still only barely drowned out the earth’s rumbling.

I heard a loud sound of metal on metal and something snapping. When I looked in the direction of the noise, I saw a horrifying sight. A truck-transport vehicle was parked at the top of the hill to the South. The earthquake had broken the safety mechanism that held the collection on vehicles in place. A dozen trucks were rolling off the transport and straight for me.

The manager tried to gain his feet to help me but was shaken down to the ground by the violence of the quake. I attempted to drag myself out of the path of the oncoming stampede, but my right arm buckled under the pressure, and my left arm alone wasn’t enough to move me away in time. I decided my last thought would be “who builds a car lot on TWO hills?”

“A dozen F-150s. Yep, that ought to do it.”