Andrew F. Sullivan
Dead Rider

Some idiot got it all on video, portrait mode.

Gracie Adams watches it every night for five minutes before she falls to sleep. The clip is thirty-two seconds long. In the blue glow of her phone, the gleaming white truck springs into the intersection just as she makes a left onto the avenue. Every time, she has the advance green. Her signal is blinking, bright orange. Pedestrians wait their turn to cross. Every time, the white truck slams directly into her door, shoving pieces of the car into her abdomen, piercing her appendix, skewering her gallbladder, even shattering her shin. The truck’s driver is hidden behind tinted glass, an invisible actor. A man or woman. A child. A dog. The dark glass reveals nothing.

Gracie keeps the video muted. She doesn’t need to hear the screaming, the shocked gasps, the shriek of aluminum. She watches the truck reverse, peel out onto the sidewalk and then tear off out of the frame. It takes out a mailbox in the process. Letters and flyers flutter through the air.

In the video’s last seconds, Gracie can see a hand reach out the shattered window of her Corolla, waving to the camera like it’s a parade, like another float is making its way to some summer festival further down the road.



There were surgeries, followed by weeks in the hospital, followed by months of physiotherapy. Gracie’s jaw still clicks. She‘s afraid to eat apples, afraid her teeth are too loose to withstand the bite. Her neck burns when she turns it to the left. The right is a little better. Every joint and hinge in her body is alive with fire by the end of the day, even when she stays in bed.

Donovan left her once she was mobile again. He told her he wasn’t built to carry this burden, but he was taking responsibility for that. This was his failing, not hers. This was his weakness. All their friends were going to blame him, even though he wasn’t the one behind the wheel. She didn’t leave him much choice. When she was in the hospital room, he knew it wasn’t the place to break her heart. When he said break her heart, he clenched his fists like he was pleading for some mercy. He couldn’t do it, not then, not there. Gracie threw his laptop down the concrete stairs of the parking garage. He screamed after her as he chased down the pieces across the sloped floor. Gracie climbed back into the elevator and then blocked his number on her phone. His emails never reached her. They gathered in a folder she couldn’t see.

The motel room is cold. Gracie throws her feet over the side and feels them hit the thin carpet with a thud. Sensation is important, almost sacred now. For a few weeks when she first came home, her left leg ignored all commands from her brain. It jerked and spasmed, kicking at the darkness while she slept. There was a hole in the drywall when she woke up one morning.

Gracie told her mother she was fine, she was just trying to reset her life. There was some money in savings, some initial cash from her insurance company. She had picked the wrong month to start freelancing again. Emails expressing disappointment and barely concealed pity clogged her inbox. Design contracts were declined, commissioned orders were cancelled. Gracie spent hours on the phone trying to explain her needs, biting the sleeve of her sweater whenever the pain bubbled to the surface. Her mother hired a lawyer, but Gracie only met him once. He told her the process would take months, if they even found the guy at all. The police were looking for him, but there was no front license plate in the video. Just a blank space where one was meant to hang, an absence like the tinted windshield.

Grasping her cane, Gracie teeters over to the window and looks out into the parking lot. Pink light edges its way into the sky. Her old car was a write-off, a silver Corolla harvested for parts. Outside, her black Impala is covered in a thin layer of dew. The windows aren’t tinted, but it has air-conditioning and the brakes are responsive. Gracie bought it from a used car lot north of the city, one with red balloons that makes the place look like a rundown county fair, a final resting place for carnies. Gracie doesn’t trust the Impala, but it will do. She only has one purpose now.

The Impala is just a tool.



There is no license plate in the video, but there are comments. Piles and piles of comments under the version that is up on YouTube. SILVERADO 07 SLAUGHTER. Thirty seconds instead of the original thirty-two second version. There are comments calling her a terrible driver, a stupid cunt, a waste of space. Others ponder if she is Chinese. She ignores them. The majority are still horrified and focused on the truck, its sudden lunge like a predator onto the scene. The collision is so abrupt it creates a shock to the system. A sudden jolt is all it takes to almost kill her.

PROBABLY ONE CHICK JUST TAKING OUT ANOTHER. MAKING THE SPECIES STRONGER. SHOULD GIVER A DARWIN AWARD.

Some of the comments give her clues. They peg it as a second generation Silverado from ’07, one of the first with a redesigned exterior, interior, frame and suspension. Basically, the exact same as a GMC Sierra Denali. She learns the names. Following their clues, Gracie knows it won a bunch of awards when it was first released a decade ago. She knows Motor Trend even named it their “Truck of the Year” at the time. She knows the model that hit her had an extended cab, four doors. A crew cab, but she knows there was only one person in there when it hit her. She feels it in her recalibrated bones and the looping, jagged spiral of scar tissue on her torso.

No one should have walked out of that alive.

The truck has extensive after-market modifications, but is looking worse for wear. The paint job is dented and rust is creeping up the right side of the body like liver spots. A decal of a bear skull is slapped onto the rear left passenger window, alongside a knock-off Hello Kitty with bright yellow fangs. There’s no sign of Calvin peeing on anything though, not even a prone Dodge logo on the tinted glass. There is no family sticker with three children and a dog.

LOL. Buy American next time.

Gracie parks her Impala around the corner from the house to be safe. Some of the comments point to specific people. Users claim to recognize the truck from their neighbourhood or call out a sighting in a high school parking lot. One guy says he saw it parked behind a Walmart outside Dallas, claims someone’s living out of it and keeping a kiddie pool in the truck bed for bathing. Another woman posits that it’s her Uncle Neil and that he probably just had another mini-stroke behind the wheel. People shouldn’t be so hard on him. He needs his license for his job.

This is the fifth house Gracie has visited. She doesn’t share her progress with the police. She wants to find the Silverado on her own. She wants to be sure. The first few houses weren’t too far from the city, but as Gracie expands her search, it has turned into a road trip. She smells like motel soap and a slightly mildewed towel. Gracie knows she needs to bring her own towel from now on, one of those things you only learn through experience.

DUMB FUCK SHOULDA SEEN HIM COMIN.

Usually, she just looks at the truck. Often, it’s missing pieces or a mirror is cracked, but there are no stickers on the correct window. Sometimes she takes a closer look, searching for residue or dirt clinging to where a sticker might have been hastily removed. With the third house, the owner came outside to see what she was doing. A forty-year-old woman who asked Gracie about her cane and expressed her sympathies. She had a limp too, you know. The woman wore a bright pink housecoat that said Mama Wanna across the back. She left it untied in the front.

Her truck was too clean to be the culprit.

“Hi, do you happen to own a white Silverado?”

The truck isn’t in the gravel driveway. The man who answers the door is more like a kid, his mustache pale and downy. He’s got no shirt on, just a pair of cutoff jean shorts.

“What? You all right?” he asks. “No one usually makes it all the way to the door.”

The yard is littered with stacks of plywood. A doorless refrigerator watches Gracie from the edge of the front deck.

“I’m fine. I’m asking if you ever owned a white Silverado?”

Gracie is tired of motels. She wants him to say yes, to drop to his knees and surrender the truck to her. Surrender the truck and let her do what she has to do. Leave it to her shaking hands.

“Well, no. No, not anymore. Sold that when the old man kicked it.”

Gracie pulls up an image on her phone. Zooms right in on the glass. “Did it have those stickers on it?”

The kid scratches himself and laughs. “Yeah, damn, ha. He was pissed when I put those on it, but he never took them off. I don’t know if he didn’t give a shit or just didn’t know how.”

Gracie leans in closer. Sweat runs downs her spine, traces the white fissures in her flesh.

“Where is it now?”

“Where is...oh, the truck, shit. Uhm, give me a sec, all right? You wanna buy it? I mean, it’s pretty banged up and it never really—”

Gracie whacks the doorframe with her cane. She can feel her belly twisting, turning in on itself like a pit of snakes, roiling around an empty centre.

“Just tell me who bought it.”

The kid pulls out his phone and starts digging through his email. The man behind the wheel lived here, probably died here. Gracie spots mounds of garbage bags and old flyers behind the kid inside the house. Cat piss wafts out of the open door to creep up her nose.

“Look, all right? This is the dude’s address. He paid cash, he kinda fucked me on the deal if we gonna be honest here, but I just wanted rid of the thing. It was no good. Front end was all twisted up, one of the headlights wouldn’t even work, no matter what I did. Truck is cursed.” Gracie takes a photo of the buyer’s details.

“It’s no good, I’m telling you,” the kid says. “It’s garbage. I don’t know why you want it.”

“You don’t need to know.”

Gracie turns and makes her way back down the gravel driveway, weaving around potholes and what looks like dog shit dried into something white and chalky.

“You wanna know what happened to him? The old man?” the kid calls after her.

“No,” Gracie says. “I don’t.”

Around the corner, somehow has carved DYKE into the Impala’s front passenger door.



The shower at the Holiday Inn Express has intense and steady water pressure, putting it above every other motel she’s stayed at on this journey. Gracie lets the pressure drown out every other sensation, lets the stream pound against her skin, lets the heat soothe her aching muscles, her tendons, her bones. She thrums with pain she does not bother articulating to anyone else. It would only come out like steam anyway, an ephemeral blast of rage.

There are texts from her mother that she deletes. Emails from former clients politely prodding her to see if she’s ready to work again. An ad campaign for a local BIA that wants a new logo for their safe streets initiative. Gracie doesn’t laugh so much as snort when she sees it. Glowing from her spam box is a new message from Donovan. He’s been making new email accounts to try and slip past the safeguards she’s enacted. She gives him a chance and opens the email, a pile of apologies stacked in perfect little paragraphs, detailing all his faults before transitioning into questioning his worth and then berating her lack of devotion. He even brings up the laptop, as if that matters now, a shattered relic. It wasn’t even his good laptop.

I didn’t know you were so far along.

The words are there, but she doesn’t read any further. Gracie deletes the email and turns out the lights. The Food Network sputters off the television. Down in the parking lot, the Impala patiently waits for her. It will not abandon her. It will not question her decisions. It only knows what she wants it to know. Gracie wishes she knew more people like the Impala.

Lying in her Holiday Inn Express queen-sized bed, before she falls asleep bathed in her phone’s cold blue glow, Gracie watches the video one more time, waiting to spot her hand waving out the crumpled window, its tiny presence confirming once again that she is still alive.



The truck is behind an ancient apartment complex, parked right near the dumpsters and oversized recycling bins. A few crows observe from a balcony above. One of the blue bins is scorched brown and half melted. The parking lot is mostly empty, the asphalt gray and crumbling. Gracie doesn’t bother hiding the Impala this time. She parks it across four spaces in the middle of the lot. Nobody questions her. The sun is too hot. It sits directly above the parking lot. The air smells like meat and old vegetables. Gracie breathes in deep and savours the taste on her tongue.

She circles the truck, making note of the rust patches on its right side, confirming one door handle on the passenger side is missing. The Hello Kitty sticker is gone, but a dirty patch of residue marks its old location. The bear sticker remains. It has to be the truck. The front bumper is bashed and dented, but there is a license plate now. A fake identity. Gracie doesn’t care about the license plate. She doesn’t even need to speak to the owner. He won’t understand what she is going to do, what she has to do.

In the blaring heat, Gracie stomps back off toward the Impala with her cane. She pops the trunk and drags out a black duffle bag, throwing it over her good shoulder. Slowly, she makes her way back to the white Silverado, its buckled grill smiling at her.

Gracie uses one of Donovan’s old knives on the tires. She takes her time, making sure to pull the blade away from herself in case it skips up out of the rubber. Once all four tires have been punctured, she opens up the gas tank. If it was a newer model, she would have a problem. The funnel trick she saw online seems to work. An entire bag of sugar descends into the belly of the truck, filling up its gas tank. Gracie adds another just to be sure. She is using icing sugar, the finest she could find. The funnel goes back into the bag. A tire iron comes out.

Each swing is calm. Each swing has a purpose. Glass explodes around her, scattering the sun. Gracie gets the driver side window to crumple and unlocks the door with a free hand. The raised truck presents a struggle, but she hoists herself up inside. There is no alarm, and if there was one, no one would come running. No one answers car alarms anymore, especially not out here, not in this parking lot surrounded by all the trash and the crows.

“What are you doing? Hey! Hey, you! That’s my fucking truck!”

The inside is eerily clean. The kid must have vacuumed the interior before he sold it.

“What the fuck are you doing in my truck?”

He also removed the airbag. There is no airbag. It didn’t explode in the video and it’s not here. Everything else is here except the airbag. She can see where he pried it out and pushed the steering wheel back together. He kept part of the truck from her. He kept it from her.

“Girl, what the fuck are you doing in my—”

The tire iron collides with the man’s face. An old man, a man with a beard that hasn’t been cleaned in weeks. She can see the stains on his chin after he hits the ground. Gracie climbs down out of the cab and heads back to her Impala. She pulls out a red gas can and returns to the truck, dousing the interior until puddles form on the floor. The matches are her own.

“What do you think…” the man groans and so Gracie hits him again. She doesn’t want to hit him, but he hasn’t given her much of a choice. She hits him again until her cane breaks and the flames have consumed most of the truck. She drags his body back to a safe distance, leaves him slumped against the wall of the building. Glass glitters in her hair.

“I don’t.”

Gracie staggers back to the Impala without her cane. She will need a new one. She doesn’t look back at her work, the flames snarling and snapping at each other. Gracie knows she isn’t finished. There is still an airbag out there. The kid will have to tell her where, who he sold it to or what he did with it. Part of the truck is still out there, waiting to atone. Gracie starts her car, shifts into gear. The Impala does not question her. Every piece must answer for the whole.

Andrew F. Sullivan lives in Hamilton, Ontario. He is the author of the novel WASTE (Dzanc, 2016), and the short story collection All We Want is Everything (ARP, 2013). His fiction has been shortlisted for the National Magazine Awards and has appeared in Hazlitt, PRISM, Joyland, and other publications.