Rear View Mirror

Once, it was on an ordinary bright summer day, a man was driving down the motorway, coming home from an out of town  business meeting with a client when, looking in his rear view mirror, he saw a long black hearse travelling behind him, moving very slow just as if it were moving in a funeral cortege
"That's strange", he thought, "A hearse driving on the motorway. You don't see that every day".
But he didn't like having the sight of the hearse in his rear view mirror because it made him think of death and that always made him nervous so he took the first chance he could to over take the car in front of him.
"Let them have that morbid sight behind them", he thought, smiling with relief as he moved from the middle  back into the left hand lane.
But then the smile faded from his face as, looking in the rear view mirror again, he saw the hearse was still behind him.
"Bloody hell", he said.
And he hadn't even seen it overtake the other car and yet it was still there behind him; moving just as slowly as it had before.
"Oh well", he thought, "Let it drive behind me. Why should it bother me".
He switched on his car radio; maybe some music would take his mind off the hearse.
A man on the radio started to sing:
"Looking in the rear view mirror
I see a car of black
and it keeps on getting nearer
whenever I look back".

 

He switched off the radio.

 

"This is just stupid", he thought, "The hearse just overtook when I overtook thats all. Perfectly rational explanation".

 

He saw a stretch of clear road ahead, another chance to overtake and so he took it, overtaking the white van infront.

 

"There", he thought, moving back from the middle lane to the left.

 

But then he looked in the rear view mirror again, expecting to see the white van behind him and all he could see was that black hearse, moving slowly but persistently on.

 

He did something he normally would never do, something he criticized when other motorists did it,  and tried to quickly glance back over his shoulder before putting his eyes back on the road again.
But he wasn't sure, in that quick glance; the glaring sun had been in his eyes; had he seen it or the van?
Seeing the sign for it up ahead, he decided it would be best to pull over onto the hard shoulder and wait for the hearse to go past.
But when he did that, sitting and waiting all he saw was the white van and the other car he had overtaken, then another car go past but no hearse.
"Maybe it went by already and I just didn't see it", he thought.
But it had been travelling very slow, way under the speed limit; odd then that it should have gone by without him seeing it.
He pulled off of the hard shoulder again.
But no sooner was he back on the motorway when he saw it reappear, in his rear view mirror just as before and travelling at that same funereal speed.
He checked the mirror to see if it was alright.
"Maybe it's an optical illusion", he thought, "A fata morgana of the motorway; a reflection or a shadow. Maybe it isn't there at all".
But how could it be an illusion? It looked so real. He could even read its number plate.
"D34TH", it said.
Was that a personalized number plate? What kind of an undertaker drove about with joke number plates?
He tried to see the driver behind the wheel of the hearse but the windscreen was too dark although he thought he saw the shadow of someone in a top hat like a pallbearer.
"No", he thought, "I've got to have a proper look. I've got to know if its really there or if I'm just losing my mind".
Easing off of the accelerator and timing it, he turned round and looked over his shoulder, a longer look this time and his eyes widened.
It wasn't there. There was nothing there. Nothing. Had he been imagining it the whole time?
But then he quickly turned back to face the road and the back of a white lorry looming towards him as he smashed headlong into it.