Remembered Tragedy

Home : Stories by MystikHeather : Dead Martin Series : Remembered Tragedy

Summary: Kyle recounts his biggest mistake.

AUTHOR: MystikHeather
EMAIL: mystikheather@cryptoffic.com
RATING: PG
CHARACTER: Kyle Busch, Martin Truex Jr, Kyle POV
SERIES: Dead Martin Series
CHALLENGE: Manda’s Drabble Challenge – Round 2
WORD COUNT: 540
DISCLAIMER: For entertainment purposes only, if you recognize it, I don’t own it. I own NOTHING and am affiliated with NO ONE mentioned here. Not the drivers, not the teams, no one. This is all fiction and fun. In other words...NOT REAL, NOT REAL, NOT REAL. ;-)
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“Tragic Accident Ends Career of Promising Racer.” 

Those words and the picture underneath are still burned in my memory, even now, two years later.  An image printed in muted colors on the front page, red sheet metal torn and twisted, wrapped around the trunk of a large oak tree.  The windshield nothing more than shattered glass, half gone, broken pieces widespread across the ground.  I stared at that picture for a long time…not even reading the article below…not needing to.  At first glance my eyes had already picked out the only evidence I would ever need that it was his car – a  set of gold dice still hanging from the askew rearview mirror.  Nothing more than a cheap gag gift I’d picked up a few months earlier and hung in his racecar…a simple “welcome to the big leagues” kind of gift.  They’d come out of his race car, but had been in his truck since that day.

I finally dropped my eyes to scan the article below, having to blink rapidly as the print blurred and ran on me, picking out a phrase here and there.  Slippery roads…open bottle of alcohol found on the floor…extreme speed…dead on arrival.  Those last three solidified the reality, and I’d sunk to the floor and sobbed.  Minutes, hours…it could have been days before I’d finally managed to climb to my feet and stumble to the couch, my thoughts in disarray.

We’d never been close, never really been friends…and yet his death has affected me more than any other moment in my life.  It rocked me to the core, made my soul cry out in anguish…and in guilt.  Guilt more so than anything else because I could have saved him…and instead I let him walk away.    

I remember my mind drifting back to the night before the accident…the two of us walking together, trying to avoid the media after one of those rare Busch races that he had run that year, walking past the closed Cup garage, hearing the grunts and the moans.  Watched as his eyes narrowed, watched as he stormed into the garage, his initial thought to stop whoever had the balls to be fucking around on Dale’s car.  Watched as he froze in his steps, his face draining of all color. 

I’d stepped in after him then, my curiosity sparked, and froze as well.  Shook my head as I watched what he watched…Dale, his idol, his mentor, his lover…buried deep inside a writhing figure. Who it was we couldn’t see and it didn’t matter…all that mattered is that it wasn’t Martin.  My eyes locked on his as he turned back to me…and I had to swallow hard past the wave of emotion that ran through me at the pain and betrayal I saw there.  I stepped forward, reached for him…I remember murmuring for him to come with me, some part of me just wanting to get him away from it.  He’d shaken me off…told me he was fine…and I’d let him go.

I’d let him go…and that was the last time I’d seen him until I’d picked up my newspaper that Sunday morning, the horrific image in muted colors assaulting me.  Nothing has been the same since that day.  Nothing ever will be. 

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MystikHeather - mystikheather@cryptoffic.com