A voice, screaming my name.
Her name.
Over and over and over.
“Tek! Tek! Tek! Oh fuck, oh fuck fuck!”
I try to answer but all I can manage is a grunt that sounds more like a death rattle. My teeth scrape together. I swallow, and the taste of metal gets thicker.
“Tek!” My seat back jars.
“Anaise?” It’s a whisper, but she hears me.
“Tek!” she screams again from behind me. I feel her pawing at my shoulder, weak and trembling. “Tek! She’s not moving… She’s not—”
My brain finally sparks to life.
I lean forward, teeth bared against the searing pain in my chest, and I shout her name too. "Miri!"
The wind rips through what’s left of the windscreen, slapping against my face.
I twist, forcing my body to do what I need it to do, even though every cell in me is screaming bloody murder.
There’s a faint gurgling, and for a split second all I see is her crooked smile.
I jerk my arm out, sweeping at the empty space to my left, searching for her. That’s when I realize the car has flipped. It’s on its side. Anaise and I are in the air and the driver's seat is mangled. The whole left side is folded like a pretzel and it’s so dark I can’t tell what is body, and what is car.
Still, I reach for her, calling out her name, again, and again, louder each time, my voice scraping up through my shredded throat.
My hand slaps against something, and I flinch. It’s her arm.
I move along her wrist to her fingers.
They’re cold. So fucking cold.
I grab her hand and squeeze, but there’s nothing coming back to me.
I hear Anaise cursing and sobbing at the same time, the sound so raw it slices straight through me.
Again I try to move, this time pushing harder, trying to wedge my body towards the center console, but my legs are too trapped by the dash. Letting go of her, I reach beneath it, as far as I can in the space between my legs. There’s denim and jagged plastic… and then there’s skin—the denim torn away. It’s wet and sticky, then hard and sharp. Without eyes on it I can’t decipher if my bone has broken through or something is stabbing me.
Anaise’s voice is getting thinner, like it’s being pulled away by the wind. “She’s not moving, Tek. She’s not moving…”
I grapple with my seatbelt but my hand is too slick with blood to get a grip.
With everything I have, I scream and pull at my legs until my vision goes black at the edges. The pain is white-hot, and I start to fade, but then I hear the sirens.
They're faint, so small I might be imagining them.
Soon they swell, swallowing the sounds of the horn and the wind, and for a second I feel lighter than air. Like everything is going to be alright. They’ll pull us out, staple us back together, and we can be just as happy as we were an hour ago.
Now the siren's howl is so loud, so oppressive that it feels like they’re shaking the car.
Brightness floods in, the ambulance’s headlights drowning us. That’s when the world tilts and everything dissolves into a single, high-pitched wailing note…
I can see her now.
A mangled mess.
