Crossing Lines: The Traffic Jam and a Visit from Lindelion

Bridget peered from the side of the highway. Cars rushed past at alarming speeds, and the winds of their wake tossed her bangs across her eyes repeatedly. Exasperated with waiting, she checked her watch again. Five-fifteen in the afternoon.

It was time.

Slowly, she rose from her hiding spot. Her short, shapeless dress flapped at her knees, and her hair continued to fly in the wind. Inside her mind, Bridget smiled, but the gesture did not reach her lips. She stepped barefooted onto the shoulder of the highway, her eyes trained on the vehicles and their drivers. She registered each face, each mind, as no human could given the speeds at which the drivers passed. Twenty… forty… two hundred cars passed, and only the most fleeting consideration was afforded the waif on the side of the road.

That is how she appeared - waifish. To the casual observer, Bridget looked to be in her late teens. Early twenties at the oldest. In fact, she was more than three thousand years old.

At last the smile lit her face. Without another thought, she moved rapidly from the shoulder to the center lane of the highway… which was five lanes wide. She didn't dodge the oncoming cars. She didn't quake in fear as she moved between them. None of the drivers actually saw her progression. One moment, she stood on the shoulder. The next, she was in the very middle of the highway. Dead center.

John Michael Conner was the first driver to pay Bridget much attention at all. En route home from the office, hungry and tired from a long day spent on the telephone with customers calling to complain about everything from broken links to the slowness of the server, Conner was on autopilot. It was with a near heart attack that he saw the young woman standing only yards from his car and he, rushing her at nearly eighty miles an hour, had no lane into which he could move. He was going to hit her, and that was the only thought he had time to entertain before he did hit her.

Inside the car, Conner hit the brakes futilely and cursed. Then he prayed. Oh please God, let her be all right… Please God… I didn't see her… Please God…Over and over he prayed, knowing even as he did so, the prayer would do him no good. Or the girl. All around them, traffic came to a noisy halt. No one moved. It was a scene from a B movie, a moment when hearts thudded against the unreality of experience. Conner raised his head from the steering wheel and groaned aloud. He had to get out of the car, had to check on the girl even though he knew he'd killed her, had to retrieve his cell phone and call the highway patrol.

Mechanically, his body obeyed his mind. His hand reached for the door handle and then fell away as he looked out of the window. She stood there glaring at him… the girl he'd hit. How was it possible? It couldn't be. He knew how hard he'd hit her. Her body should be laying in the middle of the road, fragments of what it once was with a soul already straining for heaven.

John Michael Conner was frightened. It wasn't a scene from a B movie. It was a page from Stephen King. Oh God… he began again. Then he heard her.

"That hurt! You really should be more careful, you know."

Bridget spoke from where she stood outside of the three-year-old Volvo.