The accident

Ethan was perplexed and dumbfounded. All he had been doing since was trying to drive carefully and one imbecile had almost run him off the road. He had looked into the side mirror in shock and surprise as the headlights rushed up to meet him and had quickly swerved off the road as the maniac who had been driving so recklessly swerved in the other direction. It had been a shocking experience, to say the least. Why anyone would be driving so recklessly, especially in this weather and at night, was beyond him.

He did not think he had come this close to death nor having an accident since the day that Mildred had died in that accident. His heart was beating very fast and he tried to calm himself down, but his hands were shaking very badly, and so he pulled over to the side of the road and waited for it to stop beating so fast. Once he regained some calmness, he continued his slow journey, hoping that there will no longer be any unpleasant surprises. He did not know how wrong he was.

***

Chloe looked in her rearview mirror and sighed wearily. She was terribly tired but took comfort in the fact that she was almost at the end of her journey. At any moment now, she would arrive on the outskirts of the city, and then she would find a hotel to crash in for the night and the few days that it would take her to get an apartment of her own. There had been a lot of bends on the road recently and she took great care in driving, even though she seemed to be the only person on the road. There was no such thing as being super careful and it was better to be safe than sorry, she thought to herself.

No sooner had she finished this thought than she came upon another sharp bend and suddenly, headlights blinded her. The driver was driving on the wrong side of the road, in her own lane. There was no time to do anything other than to take a sharp breath and before Chloe could even do that, she heard a terrifyingly loud bang and then did not hear anything again, as it all went black and silent around her.

She came to slowly, not up to ten minutes after she blacked out, and immediately wished that she hadn’t. Her head was pounding fiercely, and it felt as though a dreadful war was going on inside it, with troops marching to battle. Groaning and afraid to move her body, Chloe opened her eyes to see that she was still inside her now mangled car which had already begun smoking. Terror gripped her and her first instinct was to struggle fiercely, but she knew immediately that that would only compound her problems. So she tried to look around and take stock of her situation, even though her body was pushing her to go to sleep and ignore the pain. The driver’s side, where she sat, was, for the most part, intact and she silently thanked God for that fact. The passenger’s side was another story entirely and she realized that the person who hit her must have tried to swerve to his side of the road but had not been able to do so in time. Had she been carrying anyone on the passenger’s side, that person would be a mass of mangled flesh and blood by now.

She unlocked her door with a trembling hand and opened it, sighing in huge relief when it opened. For the most part, she did not feel much pain, except for the ache in her body from before that was the cause of sitting in a position for long and the pounding of her head. Slowly, she moved to get out of the car and screamed aloud when a terribly blinding pain shot up her left leg. She knew that she did not have much time, so she gritted her teeth and tried to ignore the pain, even though it was a very difficult task, and dragged herself out of the car. Once she was on the ground, she began to move away from the car by dragging her butt and using her hands to propel herself forward. As soon as she was a safe distance away from the car, she lay down on the ground, totally spent. Despite the pain, she did not think that the leg was broken. The most likely thing was that she had dislocated it.

After she had caught her breath, she sat up slowly, her head pounding unbearably with the movement, and looked at the wreck of her car in disbelief. Had she not crawled out of the car herself, and was a passerby, she would have sworn that nobody had come out of that car alive. Even the driver’s side that she had crawled out from looked terribly damaged now that she viewed it from outside the car. She felt herself becoming faint and looked around slowly, shaking her head a little to clear it. At the same time, she became aware of groaning sounds and moans of pain somewhere in the darkness. It was then she remembered that someone had hit her. She had seen bright headlights and had tried to clear from the road, but the other person had been moving too fast, almost as though they had lost control of their vehicle and she had been unable to avoid the disastrous impact.

“Help me, please. Is anyone there? It hurts real bad…” the voice, a male one moaned faintly, and Chloe felt pity for whoever it was. She could not help herself in this state, talk more of helping someone else. She only hoped that help came real soon, otherwise, with the way she was feeling, and the way the other guy was sounding, there would be no hope for her and its occupant, or occupants if the guy was not alone.

She tried to speak and immediately realized the folly of doing that as another raging pain exploded inside her head. So she snapped her mouth shut and slowly looked around for who was talking. She gasped as she saw what was obviously once a beautiful car, with the mangled body of a man inside it. No, it wasn’t a body, as the person was still alive and moaning for help, but in this state, it would have no doubt been better for him had he died on impact. The front part of the car was gone, and in the moonlight, she could see the unrecognizable face of a man. The face was mostly blood and gore and Chloe immediately began to heave, throwing up the burger that she had eaten when she stopped earlier all over the road. Her head felt like it belonged to someone else and she only barely registered the fact that her car was smoking seriously and looked like it would catch fire anytime soon.

“It is a wonder that that man is still alive,” she thought hazily and then slipped into unconsciousness.