I first met her on a deserted back road. I'm a businessman with a severe case of flight anxiety. I've got a fear of heights which prevents me from even looking at pictures of a mountain. Therefore I get to travel the US by car and occasionally by train.

Again, I was traveling one evening down this road. It was July, so there was still enough light. The road had been cut through a pine forest and had never properly been maintained since. I knew that occasionally unwary drivers would come too close to the edge of the road and hit a tree growing on this edge of this road. Normally you solved the problem by driving in the middle of the road, and given that about one car passes every week, you never get any oncoming cars. But the laws of averages being what they are these days since Murphy came up with his "If something can go wrong ..."-law, I saw a car coming at me. I looked and saw no trees of as yet growing out of the road and started to swerve to the right. But by then my unfortunate opponent had the misfortune of crashing directly into a tree. The back of the car bounced up as it hit the tree and then fell back down. I slowed down and stopped about twenty feet from the car. I know cars usually don't explode like they eagerly do in movies, but my natural cautiousness made me wary of getting out. Then the more sensible part of my brain told me to go and help that poor, unfortunate motorist.

Armed with a fire-extinguisher and first-aid kit, I walked towards the wrecked car. The front part was neatly folded around the pine tree who was now bent at an angle as were a few others on this stretch of the road. I knew that at worst I would find a dead guy slumped over the steering wheel, but when I looked through the window I was quite stunned.

Indeed there was a head slumped over an airbag, but the orange color and rather rubbery consistence made me stare for a few good seconds. I bent sideways and saw that the head hung over the deflated airbag was shaped like a woman's. The plastic hands still clutching the wheel and the circular black and white stickers were all too clear. Somebody was concluding crash-tests hundreds of miles from the nearest facility. Neither were there any other people to check on it. Normally crash tests aren't performed like this at all. It's a precise science, done in factory hall-size labs. Then it struck me, how did the car get here ? Surely the mannequin didn't...

There are a few moments in life when you start to wonder if you're not going crazy. This was one of them. Just as I was wondering how the car got to crash with the tree I noticed that the mannequin was moving. Okay, no panic, it's mechanical perhaps...

It's remote controlled ! That was it ! I congratulated myself on winning the deduction Nobel Prize when the mannequin moved again. It turned its head towards me and seemed to stare at me with featureless plastic eyes. By now I hoped some guy would come up to me and tell me this was Candid Camera, but no, the bushes held no guy from Candid Camera to tell me I was on Candid Camera.

Just as I pondered about sending the people from Candid Camera a marvelous idea involving a surprised businessman, a crashed car and a female crash-test dummy, I heard the car door open. Still unwilling to admit that I was indeed going insane, I waited it out. Keeping calm just in case there was a guy from Candid Camera about to pounce on me. At least, I wouldn't have to worry about sending them the scenario I had just come up with, since they had already preceded me.

By then the mannequin's foot had touched the ground and was stepping out of the car. Convinced that ignoring something like this wasn't the best option, I looked down at the mannequin getting out of the car.

It, or rather she, had an orange body, well shaped, faintly erotic even. Her impassive plastic face stared at me for a moment before she brought her hands to her head. The plastic skull opened and a rather human head appeared. I saw very short white-blonde hair being shaken about and as the woman focused on me I saw deep-green eyes stare back at me. She smiled at me and threw her dummy mask into the car.

"You're wondering what I'm doing here, dressed like that ?" She said in a cocky voice.

"You're not working for Candid Camera I suppose ?" I said, still lingering on it.

"Nope." She popped a Velcro strap on her back and opened the breastplate. When it fell to the ground, I noticed the inside was metal.

She removed the plastic gauntlets on her hands and dropped them onto the discarded breast plate. Her body, completely dressed in tight black clothes surely was alluring enough. At least, what I could see of her body..

"There's a truck parked down the road, will you help me there ?" She asked in a sultry voice.

"Sure, why not ?" I answered, trying not to look too interested.

"You're wondering what I'm doing, no ?"

"Actually, yes." I heard myself say, much to my own surprise.

She licked her lips, smiled at me and waited the span of a few dramatic seconds and said. "Car crashes turn me on."

"That's why you dress up like ..."

"Uh-huh !" She said removing more pieces of the costume, further revealing her sumptuous body.

"But isn't it dangerous ?" I asked her.

She smiled and bent down to pick up the breastplate.

"Kevlar, Nomex and titanium !" She said, tapping the plate. "It fits over my body like armour, very hard to damage and is kinky as hell !"

"Basically, you're bulletproof, fireproof and damage-proof." I remarked.

"Yeah, a few months ago I did a test and something went wrong. I think the gas tank was fuller than expected, because the car caught fire. I was so busy having an orgasm, I only got out when I was fully on fire. Had to put myself out by rolling in the dirt, but it felt soo good !" She seemed to relive it all on the spot.

There was something about her, a force which radiated out of her and grabbed, slammed you down and took you along, before long I was coerced into being her assistant.

She was the sort of person who had somehow made so much money they didn't know how to spend it. In her case it was wrecking cars. It was the masochism of being at the mercy of an accident, death or crippling injury. I would help her get into this disturbing suit of armour, help her to become something more and tougher than human. I saw her head and body hit car-windows and airbags continually. If she wasn't crashing, she was training, forging her body to steel-hard strength. She was tough, she had to be, but every time I saw the car crash and the dummy fly forward I never could associated the vision with anything human. I knew she was in the costume, that behind the orange head there was her angelic face and behind those blank eyes there were her fiery green eyes. But I never could accept it fully. Only when the dust settled, she would slowly enjoy her orgasm and then come to life again. Many times I expected to find her injured, or even dead, but every time she got out almost unscathed. This was mostly due to perfect organization and timing. She planned every crash weeks in advance, carefully putting together the scenario. She would test it all several times before with real mannequins and then do it herself.

Why does a dull businessman from Idaho get involved with a woman like her ? I still don't know, perhaps it was one of those chance encounters. But I always knew we wouldn't stay together. I knew she was pushing the limits. Even in her suit, filled with bracers to keep her body intact, the crashes became more violent, but so did her passion. I was in love with her, and she was in love with pain. I don't think whips or nipple clamps would've satiated her. Your average S&M was boring to her. And even the extreme acts couldn't hold her attention for long. She'd probably done it all before anyway, and I wasn't the guy to go around in a rubber suit.

Over the next two months I became her confident. She would tell me that her ultimate dream was to have a two-hundred miles per hour collision in a car hitting a solid concrete wall. She wanted her body to be impaled on the steering wheel, the engine forced into her legs, crushing every little bone. Her head would almost explode as it would hit the dashboard, slamming into it with a few thousand G's. She wanted to feel the laceration of the safety belt as it crushed her ribs, ripping apart her organs. She wanted the car to collapse around her with shards of sharp metal ripping her flesh open. Then on the moment of death would the car burst in flames. Whatever was left of her would go in one big blaze of glory ! She could tell how her flesh and body would be consumed by the fire as if she had been through it before. The way she told me the destruction of her body sounded like a poem of pure ecstasy.

I knew that one day she would have done it. I could see her prepping herself up and like a machine drive for that wall. I could see her feel the ultimate moment of satiation as her body would be torn apart and then relish in the horrible fire that would destroy what was left of her. I knew she'd probably survive up to the last minute to enjoy that moment. But she never did.

One morning I woke up and knew I had to leave her. This was the moment for me to go on with my own life. We said goodbye and I left, no words were spilled. It was a year later when I happened to be in the neighborhood and went to visit her. I don't know why, because up to the last minute something told me not to go see her. When I saw her in her bed, a frail decaying shell, I knew she'd never die in a blaze of glory. Disease had turned a powerful woman into an empty shell, unable to breathe on her own. Three days later she was dead. It was her own body, this Olympic body of grace and strength that betrayed her.

I still have the dummy costume and I know that somewhere inside is her spirit. I've had an old car wreck mounted on rails back in the garden. I install her in it and let her glide down the angled rails and hit the end with a bang. It's not as spectacular as the crashes she used to do, but it's the best I can manage, short of wrecking cars myself.

If there's something like reincarnation, she a crash test dummy now. Undergoing the most grueling tests.