What the fuck?

Panic.

Everything spins.

Lost control.

What’s that scent of pain? Deep in your nostrils. Is there a name for it? Everyone has experienced it, but it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint or describe until some physical devastation has befallen you and the distinct smell draws through your nostrils.

My hand throbs. A sharp pain pulses through my fingers to my wrist. My fingers are a mangled, twisted mess. The tip of my pinky dangles by a thread of pink flesh, not completely unlike those wooden cork guns you get at a theme park or a carnival.

It takes me a moment to realize that the blood dripping up my arm is mine. Wait…up? I’m upside down. I can tell by the feeling of the blood rushing to my head. The blood. All over my arm, soaking my shirt and making it heavy. I crane my neck, painfully, to get a view through the shattered window. Heat waves blur the distant road. The scorching sun is nearly blinding, even with my sunglasses, which, I am now realizing, are broken. Fuck. I paid $80 for these. I cough deeply, a futile attempt to clear my charred black lungs. I suddenly feel no pain. In fact, I feel as if I’m experiencing some out-of-body experience. A very well-executed virtual reality. How did I get here again?

Immediately, it flashes into my mind.

Phone in one hand, steering wheel in the other. While I could divide my limbs to different tasks, I could not divide my focus. Fucking idiot. You always thought you were invincible. Grow up.

My thumb dances across the screen of the phone. The last thing I remember was the piercing swell of a truck horn, and the stunning shockwave that coursed through my body. It was an instantaneous change from one cloudy state of mind to another; precisely how I would react if I put my hand against a sizzling stovetop burner. A jarring, offensive shift. And in half a second my mind shifts from what fucking idiot just did this? To oh shit I hit a deer to finally coming to the gut-wrenching realization that I was, in fact, at fault for putting myself in this situation. Whatever this is. I haven’t figured it out yet.

Dumbass. It’s a car wreck. Get it together. Jesus. When I see the blood and realize that I am, in every sense of the phrase, completely fucked up, I open my mouth to scream, but a pathetic dry squeak is all that comes out. By completely fucked up, I mean that my brain is finally starting to connect the pieces and understand that now, the pain is starting to seep in. And by completely fucked up, I also mean I’m on a potent mixture of booze, weed, and a little bit of crack. Some ecstasy too, I think. At some point, you hit a threshold where it doesn’t really matter… your mind is gone and you exist here only physically. But I digress….I go into another fit of coughing at this point. My head throbs, every nerve ending writhing and searing.

When the roaring sound of my own coughing subsides, distorted and warped voices come into focus.

A woman wailing, a mix of terror and disbelief.

“Oh Jesus, call 911! Oh my God! No!”

Another voice, deep and diplomatic. His tone was calm, but I detected a subtle hint of dread, as if he already accepted the bleakness of this unfortunate situation.

“I don’t think she’s going to make it.”

“Did somebody call 911?!” A woman squawks.

“Hey, hey, watch out, traffic is still moving the other way. We need to get everyone off to the side.”

The distant sound of horns honking. Maybe not so distant. Hell, how reliable is my account anyways? I feel a calm breeze pass through the car. An intimate, if ironic gesture by Mother Nature, if there ever was one.

Though I could not see him yet, I could hear his voice. It was getting louder and he was approaching my overturned car. Overturned?! Holy fuck. Oh shit. Fuck! What did I do? What did I get myself into??

Fuck.

“HEY!! WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU?!” a voice roars, and I hear the footsteps coming closer. The voice was primitive and angry. I had pissed somebody off. But how?

I remove the broken sunglasses from my face. Through the passenger window, I see a Goliath of a man stoop to the pavement. A hand, as big as my face, gripped the passenger door and swung it open, effortlessly. Bits of glass fell from the shattered window to pavement with this movement. I catch a glance of him in my daze. His eyes move from space to space inside the car. Then his eyes, which I can barely see through his squint, meet mine. And he is one pissed off mother fucker.

I would be, too. I mean, I’m the one who put myself here. My whole life has been a series of bad decisions, with each subsequent choice edging me closer to losing my sanity. I cope with it by escaping through the intoxicating effects of drugs, just like every other cliche since the dawn of time. What started as a familiar concoction of a few joints and a shot or two of Jamison, then escalated to much harder drugs. But I would never get behind the wheel after a day of indulging, right? There has to be a line somewhere, right? There used to be. But over the course of time, that line started shifting, twisting, knotting, and now, it’s barely recognizable. I was lucky and drove many stoned and drunk miles unscathed and un-stopped by the law. It would appear that it has caught up to me, and it’s as if the consequences have been sustained until now, all the time snowballing into something worse. Something irreversible, permanent, and life changing…I deserve this.

Goliath man looks back over his shoulder, though I can’t see who he shouts to. “This guy is fucking high! He’s high! And drunk!” His voice is deep and booming, cannons exploding. I need to wake up now. Wake up. Wake up.

Wake up.

This is real.

This is real! You aren’t getting out of this. You can’t rewind 15 seconds and undo this. Even though it all happened faster than a woodpecker’s peck, you can’t reach out and save the past. No matter how close it may feel, it’s already plummeting further and further from the present and fading into a memory.

How does he know I’m high? He notices the glaze over my eyes before my mangled hand and all the blood? Really?

The massive Hulk hand grabs me by the throat. Violently. He squeezes my neck so tightly I see flashes of light and floaters in my vision. If I get out of this alive, I will never take breathing for granted again. He’s not as strong as he looks. I’m suddenly dragged out of the car, throat first, and the first thing I see with my new perspective is all of the Vicodin scattered across the ground and a broken bottle of Jim Beam. Oh, so that’s how he knows I’m trashed. I’m laying on my side in the road. Cars rocket past me. With my one good hand, I clasp one of the white pills between my fingers and bring it to my chapped, bloody lips.

I’m disconnected, as I always have been. But this is far from a game. I just can’t accept it yet. Everything was okay just a second ago, how did it end up like this? I swallow the pill. Despite my brain being on cloud 9, I remain connected to the real world. This is now part of my timeline, and everything happening right now is barely being processed in the logical part of my mind. My control is unraveling. My brain cannot process what is happening fast enough for me to have any kind of reaction, aside from my instinctual fear and the adrenaline exploding through my veins. This is not a simulation. I shut my eyes as tight as I can. There’s dust and dirt in them, but I don’t care. I don’t care.

The wail of sirens gets louder, nearly deafening, and then stops. I hear a car door open and the crunch of boots on broken glass.

I realize that I cannot close my eyes and will myself out of this situation. When I open my eyes, the sight before me makes my stomach drop into some other dimension within my body. An short older man with a blue ball cap administers CPR to a girl no older than ten. The realization that I am responsible for this pierces through the layers of my drugged daze like a nail gun through Jell-O.

I suddenly taste the familiar, sour film of acid coating the inside of my mouth. Nausea. My heart pounds inside my chest and can’t keep up with my breathing. Desperately, I gasp for air, but I am inhaling less oxygen with each shallow breath I take. A desperate attempt to fend off the inevitable. All at once, I feel my insides churning and twisting, turning against me. I’m unsure if I’m going to void my bowels, puke, or both. As if this entire situation didn’t unfold fast enough, time seems to accelerate even faster now. Using my one good hand, I shakily climb to my feet. Primal instincts kick in, and I’m focused on getting away from the immediate danger…which at this time was the sculpted 40-something policeman training his Glock on me.

The officer squinted and tightened his grip on the pistol. I didn’t second guess his intentions. I twist my body, plant my left foot into the ground kick forward. I’m running, my feet pound against the pavement. My lungs are scorched and my tongue is dry as bone. I would slap a child for a sip of water. No matter how hard I push myself to run harder, I still feel like I’m running up against the downward current of an escalator. I hear nothing. For what feels like five or six seconds, the only sound is the tinnitus ringing in my ears. As I sprint across the street, I turn my head just in time to see the disbelief on the face of a bus driver. Our eyes lock, his face displaying a look of complete horror. At first, it doesn’t even dawn on me that I am in the direct path of the bus as it barrels toward me. But then it hits me.

And by it, I mean my brain finally caught up with what was happening. A force, stronger than any I’ve ever felt, crashes into me. Actually, crash is the wrong word. It blasted me into an endless black unconsciousness. The force was so traumatic, my body shut itself off. For a moment, a deep breath, I am nothing. I do not exist.

The sensation of sinking into quicksand.

Slipping away.

Is this the part where I’m supposed to go toward “the light?” Well, there’s no fucking light here. I thought to check my condition and suddenly realized I can’t see. When I say I can’t see, I don’t mean like sitting in a dark closet. I didn’t see black. I just did not see.

Perhaps I died. If I did die, this isn’t so bad. But if I’m dead, how am I having these thoughts? I don’t know where I am or what happened to my earthly body, but some flicker of light remains. I do not taste, touch, see, or smell. Upon making these observations I notice I’m not breathing either, though I don’t crave oxygen. The only thing I hear is the voice in my head, questioning what this is. Purgatory. Must be…if Heaven is a real place, there’s no way in Hell I was getting in. So where am I?