04-21-2021, 05:17 PM
The crash itself, the whole second-and-a-half of it -- or however long it took from first-domino miscalculation to conclusion -- was instantly blurred, like someone had dragged a hand across the wet paint of the experience as it was slapped down. So: driving headfirst into a malevolent night; Leroy Brown. REDACTED. Present. The same song was ending on the radio, so either the accident had just happened or it had been long enough for the station to cycle through again.
Screwed-shut eyes flickered open to an airbag vista.
Sore. His teeth were sore, that was what he noticed, though they exhibited (running his tongue across the back, probing) no evidence of having met with any real damage. Maybe not his teeth, maybe more of a displaced all-over sore. He found his hands. His feet. Wiggled fingers and toes to prove all or at least most of his pieces were still attached.
Any nascent concern for the well-being of his passenger was obliterated by said passenger’s shouting. It took him some mental recalibration and a dying-down of the ringing in his ears to pick out individual words. Did he expect “are you okay?” Idiot. Wishful idiot.
“The fuck did I do?” He asked back, foggily unable to match the kid’s volume, his level of outrage. He drew a hand to his face, traced a line down his chin to intersect a thin stream of blood trickling from a hole he seemed to have bitten into the corner of his lip. Out of the black tarpit sheen of the last few moments bubbled and surfaced the memory of a death-defyingly petty I told you so, which he had, in the moment, felt like nothing but an asshole for thinking. Less so now.
“Christ, they can have you …”
Screwed-shut eyes flickered open to an airbag vista.
Sore. His teeth were sore, that was what he noticed, though they exhibited (running his tongue across the back, probing) no evidence of having met with any real damage. Maybe not his teeth, maybe more of a displaced all-over sore. He found his hands. His feet. Wiggled fingers and toes to prove all or at least most of his pieces were still attached.
Any nascent concern for the well-being of his passenger was obliterated by said passenger’s shouting. It took him some mental recalibration and a dying-down of the ringing in his ears to pick out individual words. Did he expect “are you okay?” Idiot. Wishful idiot.
“The fuck did I do?” He asked back, foggily unable to match the kid’s volume, his level of outrage. He drew a hand to his face, traced a line down his chin to intersect a thin stream of blood trickling from a hole he seemed to have bitten into the corner of his lip. Out of the black tarpit sheen of the last few moments bubbled and surfaced the memory of a death-defyingly petty I told you so, which he had, in the moment, felt like nothing but an asshole for thinking. Less so now.
“Christ, they can have you …”