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Car Crash

The accident

By Alan JohnPublished 2 years ago 3 min read
1
Car Crash
Photo by Ian Murphy on Unsplash

Tracy’s heartbeat stopped. She sat deathly still in the near silence, listening as the engine choked. She breathed out and began to notice how her hands were shaking, still clutching the steering wheel. She had always thought of white-knuckle-grip as just a thing old people say, but hers were actually white. She noticed there was also some red, like blood, starting to trickle down her wrist and onto her arm. She didn’t know how that had gotten there. Tracy began to turn her head, trying to look around, but her neck hurt when she moved it. She ran her hand along her neck and rubbed where the pain was but it didn’t make it feel better. Her hand found the seatbelt and traced it down to where it was buckled in. She tried to press the button but her hand started shaking and she missed. Her shaking hand fumbled with the buckle and finally pressed the latch in with a ‘click’ and the pressure on her shoulder and her chest went slack. The seatbelt slowly started winding itself up but stopped halfway. Tracy turned her whole body to look out the driver’s side window. There was smoke rising in the light of her headlights and the engine was still choking out sounds. She realized the smell she’d been aware of was from the engine and she thought about switching it off. She didn’t really like the idea of sitting in the dark, but the engine worried her. With a trembling white hand gripping her cell phone she pulled on the handle of the door and pushed it open.

Tracy walked around the car with the flashlight on her phone. The passenger side door was wrapped around a tree, and now that she was standing out in the open air the smoke from the engine was more apparent. Tracy liked less and less the idea of leaving it running. She took a deep breath to try and calm her shaking hands and gagged on the smoke smell. She doubled over coughing, twinging her neck in the process. When she finally stopped coughing and stood up she had to hold her head at an awkward angle to keep it from hurting. Her whole body shook once. She was cold. She shook again. Slowly she righted her neck and didn’t feel pain like before, but she was stiff all over. Tracy went back to the driver side of the car and reached in and turned off the car. The keys fell from her hand and landed on the floor of the car and Tracy took another deep breath as a shiver shot through her body. It wasn’t cold out. Her hands shook and Tracy ran them both through her hair, feeling the tangled mess it had to be. Tracy leaned heavily against the car and felt herself breathing quickly. She didn’t want to hyperventilate but couldn’t slow her breath down. Involuntarily her eyes roamed back over the trail of debris leading from the road to her car. She looked from the crushed grass and flowers leading like a trail down to where her car sat, windows broken, passenger’s side crushed and warped around the trunk of the tree which had finally stopped her. Tracy mindlessly ran a finger across the back of her hand before pulling out her phone.

Tracy dialed the numbers one by one, slowly, finding it hard to remember the number. The phone rang. She checked the time, and her battery life. 3:30 am, 37%. The phone continued to ring. Tracy let out a held breath and leaned on the car’s back bumper. Her body shook again. The phone picked up.

“Hey mom,” Tracy said, her voice beginning to break. “Can you come pick me up?”

Short Story
1

About the Creator

Alan John

I'm a Virginia based writer/musician looking to find my place in this wild wild world.

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