And then I was standing off the road, looking at the wreck. I must have fallen asleep at the wheel and veered into the forest. The car was unrecognizable, a mangled mess. Why am I not hurt? And why don’t I remember getting out of the car?
I was standing on the edge of the forest, where the gravel turned to grass. The sun had set three hours previously, but the forest still had its glow from the daylight. After a few seconds, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I saw the car.
The vehicle had been compressed to nearly half its original length by the force of impact. The hood looked like tin foil, and the left axel was pushed up into the car at an awkward angle. Debris from the crash was scattered as far as twenty feet, and the front bumper was a tangled mess resting on the ground to the left of the carnage.
I reached into my pocket to grab my cell phone, but my pocket was empty. The phone must fallen out during the accident. I hear a car door slam behind me, and I turn to look. A woman had pulled over to the shoulder of the road and was making her way down the incline, slipping and sliding on the precipitation clinging to blades of grass.. She must have seen the accident. “Hey! It’s alright, I’m OK! I was the only one in the car.”
The woman continued advancing towards the wreck as if she had not heard me. “Thank you for stopping, ma’am. Nobody is hurt. Please, could you call an ambulance?
Again the woman acted as if she did not know I was talking to her. She had not even acknowledged my presence yet. She looked to be about 28 years old, and her frizzy brown hair was fluttering in the brisk breeze in her wake. The look on her face was one of shock, and her movements reflected that. “Excuse me. Miss?”
The girl walked toward me, and continued past me, without missing a step. She approached the car, and circled around to the driver’s side. Then a sharp gasp, and the woman said, “Sir! Can you hear me!? Please, say something…sir!? Oh no…”
Who could she possibly be talking to? I was alone in the car.
I try to look inside the vehicle from the passenger side, but shrapnel from the roof of the car impairs my view. So I circle around the tree to the driver’s side and the panicked woman. I ask her, “Miss, who are you talking to? There isn’t anyone in the car, I was the driver. Excuse me.” I reach out to touch the woman on the shoulder, but then I see who she’s talking to.
Sitting in the driver’s seat, brutalized and bloodied, is me. My face is plastered with blood, but there is no doubt that it is me. My eyes are empty, and they stare off into nothing. A thin piece of metal is protruding from my abdomen, and the wound oozes blood onto my lap. Nearly submerged in a pool of blood on my lap, is the picture of my little girl that was hanging from the rearview mirror. The picture is stained red, and my daughter’s face is the only fragment of the photo not obstructed by my blood. Her kind eyes seem to look right through me. For a few moments, I am overwhelmed by fear. I stare deep into the picture and cry, until finally the blood overtakes her, and my angel’s face sinks into the pool of death.
This cannot be happening. I turn to the woman, and reach out to touch her face. My hand moves forward, but it passes right through her. Desperately I swipe at her body, but all of the strikes pierce the seemingly solid mass, leaving no signs of disturbance. And so I scream, “HELLO!!! PLEASE, HEAR ME!!! AM I DEAD!!! Am I dead…?” My attempts at getting her attention fail, and she runs frantically back up the incline to her car.
So here I stand, with tears streaming down my face and the wind howling. But I can’t feel it. I’ll never be able to feel anything again. Am I dead? Am I a ghost? What is it I am supposed to do now…
The woman is standing back on the shoulder of the road, with a cell phone pressed against her ear and her other hand at her hip. She looks scared. She is the first one to know of my death. A random stranger.
For years, I’ve always wondered to myself how people I know would react when they found out the news that I had died. I suppose I am just curious as to how important I am in their lives. Would they break down and cry? Would they say everything they wanted to tell me when I was still alive? Would they even care? People do not cry when they read in the papers about a man murdering his wife when he found out she was cheating. People do not cry when they find out that a teenager hundreds of miles away drove her car off of a bridge. People cry when death is personal. When a friend commits suicide, then people cry. When a family member dies of old age, or has their life taken from them, then people cry. You can tell how much someone cared about another person by the way they react to the news of their death. So now I find myself wondering…how will people react to the news of my death?
And then everything went black.
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