Pinball Journal Entry

As my car climbed the hill, my heart sunk into my stomach. I parked as far away from my friends as I could and quickly exited the car, not once looking at them. Now it was every man for himself. Emerging into the open air, I suddenly became aware of myself. I could feel my puffy, blood-shot eyes. My palms became slimy. My fingers clinched into a fist and my nails dug into my skin. My sight blurred and my tunnel of vision tried to focus on the front door. Every step seemed more awkward than the last. Eyes pierced me from all sides. I felt naked. My body trembled like a sheep in the midst of wolves.

I’d skidded to a stop, my left sneaker just barely missing the front spokes. I hadn’t touched it. I hadn’t even really breathed on it, I don’t think, yet the cycle began to teeter. Wobble. To tremble and to shake apart. One minute it was an aluminum road racer the next a heap of tiny gears and cogs littering the pavement. I’m not exactly sure why, but I think it was my fault.

It was a bright sunny summer day when I stepped outside of my friend’s house. As I hopped on my bike and began to pedal, harder than usual, I began to groan as I peered down at my front tire and saw that it was flat. So then I jumped off my bike and grumply began to walk home. As I was walking I noticed something unusual, two men in suits, one in front and one behind me and as I began to think of a way out of this terrifying mess, a black van pulled drove up screeching against the side of the curb with its wheels and before I knew it the same men following me had put a black bag over my head and they tossed me in the van.

I knew this was my only break so I made the most of it. I spotted the house across the street and the cover it could provide. I left my bike on the ground as I ran over to the house quickly, not looking back the entire way. It felt as if my feet weren’t even touching the ground, the second they did they leapt up again in fear, as if the asphalt were lava.

As time seemed to slow down around me, I saw things I never thought I’d see. Because of our speed, I saw how the tail end of our car would swing out far enough to hit the small hatchback, injuring the mother and teenager in the front seats. I also saw the bullet fired from the NYPD police cruiser behind us, the glass from the passenger window seemingly floating in mid-air, as it just barely missed my lifelong “friend.” But as time around me slowed, I did the worst thing possible; I thought.

The ramp was getting nearer, I passed a red line of chalk, there was no turning back now. Then I hit it! The bike shot up in the air, i felt as if everything had gone into slow motion. It felt amazing to be soaring high above everybody's heads like this. Suddenly i realized something, i had to hit the ground eventually, i looked down and noticed that the road just happened to be coming closer to the bike. Finally, BAM the bike slammed into the ground (i needed to work on my landings…) the force of it knocked me unconscious momentarily. That moment was just enough time for the bike to veer into a mailbox.

I was fearful as the car seemed to be traveling much too fast to be considered safe. As our car passed over the crest of the hill and down towards a left curve, our tires lost traction, and the road became a glass plate. We slid left across the water, hydroplaning as we neared the shoulder. Our tires touched the gravel on the roadside, and our car spun down into the bowl like median with thick trees in our path. The car spun three times, then shuddered as the side was crumpled in by a large pine. The window to my right imploded as crystalline stars filled my vision and the world slowed down, then blacked

I was anxious, frightened, and excited all at once. If I don’t do this now I will never convince myself to ever do it. As I stood at the top hill with my bike and a million thoughts running through my head. Pleased with myself that I was finally going to do it. This is it, at a slow, gradual pace I started to pedal at an agonizing slowness. Beads of sweat poured down my forehead. Realizing how frightened I actually was, I no longer want to go. Never the less, It was too late. Quickly picking up speed, as I zipped down the driveway. Suddenly, all control was gone, the gavel was too loose. Trying to stop, I squeezed the brakes as tight as I possibly could. Nothing seemed to matter though, no longer did I have control of my bicycle. Drifting from side to side, I’d never felt so much panic and fear in my life. All of the sudden my tire struck a large rock that was sticking up and sending me barreling over the handlebars, onto the jagged gravel, the bike still clutched tight in my grip. As I was falling, the though to let go of the handlebars never occurred to me until it was too late and the bike landed on top of my ribcage. Pain shot through my body. What I feared most was no longer a fear, but a

This day gave me scars. It began as any day would, with breakfast and a healthy swig of water, with toothbrushes and a change of clothes. I stepped out of the door to a beautiful, warm, Tuesday morning. The Washington sky shone brightly blue as I pushed my bike out of our musty garage and onto the driveway. It felt amazing to get out of our dustbin of a garage and into the fresh, crisp morning air. As my right foot slammed its full weight onto the right petal, the petal seemed to groan with the weight and then respond and transform the raw power to movement. My bike chain strained as I accelerated. The surrounding atmosphere felt refreshing as I coasted down our driveway and approached my hill.

It was sudden. Everything was moving forward in slow motion, as if someone kept pushing the pause button on a T.V. remote. Then the play button was pushed. I hit the seat in front of me and started spinning. Everything stopped and was quiet. The seconds moving along an eternity each time. Knowing that I was just in a car wreck scared me more than I possibly could’ve imagined. The silence was only deepening my worries as my door was opened abruptly. It was my sister, Karolana, who had sat in the passenger seat in front of me. She looked like she was saying something, but she wasn’t talking to me. My heart felt like it was racing one-hundred miles an hour, which didn’t help me in this situation. I wanted to sit down, for the scene to stop spinning,

was driving home from physical therapy for my knee. It had been aching for the past few days. I had never felt a pain like it before, so I played it off as nothing. As soon as I hit the highway, I went underneath the Lowry Hill tunnel. I lost reception on my radio and I soon realized that it wasn’t just the tunnel that was making me lose my reception. A massive storm had loomed over my head. The sky was green and looked like it was turning sideways. Rain splattered against my windshield. Not just droplets of rain, but the ones that look like they had been shot out of a paintball gun. I immediately felt the wind blow my car to the right. I had to swerve hard to the left to avoid clipping a jeep that was next to me. Boy, were they in trouble. The jeep had it’s

It all begun when I strolled down a main street into an obsolete gas station and felt that it was somehow eerie, eerie to the queerness of having a shadow dart in front of me and disappear as fast as it emerged. I was roughly two blocks away back home when I suddenly got hit by a stiff object on the back of my head. I fell to the ground, unable to breathe evenly anymore. I gasped for air, but that didn’t seem enough. Whoever was after me was undistinguishable, I tried to gaze around but there wasn’t anything to be seen, just the sound of footsteps impending to where I stay still. I considered dashing to the nearest doorbell to seek succor, but the voice in my head overcame the sound of my fiercely throbbing heart that echoed within my ears,

The lights of the highway flickered as I jogged my way down the long narrow street into the dim lit alley. Mom told me to be back at eleven o'clock on the dot, I thought to myself as I checked my watch. It was a dark and chilly winter night. There wasn't much of nothing going on nobody outside just every now, and then a dog would let out a loud and frightening bark. It was starting to get cold as my clock hit 10:30 pm, as I enter the last ally from my house a white van drove past me going real slow. I thought nothing of it as the van speed passed me. I was out of the alley and stopped to take a breath, when smack! Shocking pain and ache flew through my body like a wildfire.

The May Day Ball was to start at five p.m. that afternoon and end at midnight, Allie was not sure if she could last that long; she’d only gone to one ball as a debutante and that seemed so long ago that she could not really remember whether she enjoyed it or not. Of course, it was after she had met Thomas and he had been there; he was her escort all that night and she had not danced with any other young men… At the time, she only had eyes for Thomas and he was an excellent dancer. He was very attentive and made sure that everyone there knew he intended to marry her. Many of the other debutantes seemed jealous of her because of Thomas‘s handsome charm and his complete adoration of her… When Allie tried to picture his face in her mind, she always

He told me the night in the hospital what had happened. On the last frame of the late afternoon game, Frank trailed Joe From Accounting by eight points with one more bowl. His competitive spirit took over his rationality. As he walked to the lane, the waitress set down the pizza that he ordered 3 frames ago. The pizza was the best in town. “The greasiest,” Frank would always brag. But, with the looming possibility of a loss, the hunger escaped his mind. Grabbing the twelve-pound ball, he fired it down the lane, hitting seven of the ten pins. “I couldn’t wait to win,” he told me. Because of his stubbier fingers, Frank was the only man on the lane using the heavier ball. With the hungry competition brewing in his body, his impatience led him to grab the eight-pounder. Long story short, he didn’t win the game. Instead, we lost a marriage.