Before They Were Night Vale #6: Happy Birthday

Welcome to "Before They Were Night Vale", our feature in which Night Vale creators Jeffrey and Joseph share writing from before their Welcome to Night Vale collaboration, along with commentary. Come explore their early writing, both good and bad.  

Joseph: Today we take a look at one of my earliest short stories. I have a file of my writing that I have transferred from computer to computer. Some of the last modified dates on these files are in the mid to late 90s. They include my Bar Mitzvah speech and my high school English papers. (Recently I found the one that my sophomore English teacher liked so much she read the whole thing out loud to the class. It was about how Joseph Conrad's The Lagoon was about our inability to see the whole truth about our own lives.)

My first short stories when I was 5 or 6 were all fantasy epics (or I wanted them to be epics. Each was only a few pages long). Most problems were resolved by knocking the hero out and having them wake up somewhere else. When I was ten (or eleven), I got a book on how to write from the library. In it, they had a prompt for a short story. The prompt was "There was a car crash at the corner of Sherman and Main." In response, I wrote this story. I showed it to the adults in my life (my teachers, my parents) and none of them knew what to do with a ten year old writing a story like this.

Incidentally, my mom is insistent there is another version of this story with some small but important differences. I can find no evidence of any other versions in my writing folder, but maybe some things even preexist that historical archive.

In any case, please enjoy: Happy Birthday, by Joseph Fink. Age 10 (or 11)

*****

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

John stepped on the gas harder.  His car sped up to 50, 60.  He ignored the speed limit of 40.  Hell to it, he was late for work at the Ford company.  Watching the streets speed by, he thought about the route he would take today.  Down Elm, a left on Maple, a right on Sherman.  Same old route every single day.  Again and again and again. He glanced at his watch as the car reached 70.  

Mary tried to ignore the screaming 4 year olds in the backseat of her car.  She still couldn‵t believe she was expected to drive them to day care on her 40th birthday.  Her husband hadn‵t even said anything to her.  Just rushed off to work like he did everyday, leaving her their twins.  She turned onto Main with a sigh.  

John looked up from the business report he was working on while driving. As the Sherman and Main intersection was coming up, he allowed himself a smile of satisfaction, almost there.  Suddenly another car sped around the corner.  His smile dropped from his face.  They were going to crash!  He noticed with a strange interest that he recognized the other car before they collided with a terrible force.  

John woke up from the blackness that surrounded him.  ‟What time is it?‶ he thought.  He looked down but his watch was broken.  Stumbling out of the car, he noticed that the police hadn‵t arrived yet.  Both cars were badly smashed up. Walking toward the other car, he called out, ‟Are you alright?‶.  No answer.  Hearing the sobbing of children, he started to run.  He looked inside.  ‟Oh god.‶ he mumbled.  There in the back seat were the 4 year old twins, scared, but alive.  In the front seat, however, was his wife, Mary, dead.  He suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to say happy birthday to her.