Prompt: Fear
—
“Mm, mm, mm, good vibrations!” I sang. I gripped the steering wheel with both hands and swayed my head side to side.
My wife, Marlene, sat in the passenger seat, clapping and stomping her foot against the floorboard. “Sing it honey!” she said.
My boy Mike sighed from the back seat. He looked miserable in the toddler chair that he claimed not to need. “Quiet!” he said with his hands around his mouth.
We laughed and I put his hand on the back of my wife’s chair and turned to smile at Mike. “Sorry little buddy, but you’re going to be hearing my voice for the whole four-”
“Look out!” Marlene screamed.
My shouts were drowned out by the pickup’s tires squealed. Then an enormous sound of metal hitting metal at incredible speed broke the air. Our car was pushed the entire length of the intersection. The impact was chaos and force made it impossible to do anything but hold on. I tried to reach into the back seat, but then everything went dark.
I opened my eyes to sirens and people shouting. My head swirled and it took me a second to remember where I was. Marlene’s head was facing out her broken window and I could see the impact was on her side. I shook her leg. “Marlene?” she didn’t move.
I turned to check Mike. I screamed as I did. Something was broken, probably a rib. Mike’s head was down and I couldn’t tell if he was breathing.
I didn’t know if they were dead or alive and I cried. From the pain. From my helplessness. I couldn’t move anymore.
I closed my eyes and yelled for my wife and child to wake up. I yelled until my lungs filled with fluid and I slipped out of consciousness and into a nightmare of darkness and screams and death.
