Glass Nightmares

The Girl’s eyes opened, and she groaned. There was a… wetness around her, and a sharp, almost unbearable pain in her arms. Blinking a few times, she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes with her left wrist, and let out a small, strangled cry of pain as something pushed deeper into her wrist. The wetness lingered at her eye, and she tried to blink it away, but it only irritated her eye further. Struggling to sit up, The Girl found she’d been laying on the ground, in a small puddle of blood, and a much larger field of shattered glass.

The strangled cry she’d let out crept past her lips again, but quickly turned into a scream when she looked down at her arms. “What…” was the only coherent word that slipped out. Both of her arms were torn to ribbons, shards of glass large and splintered sticking out of her skin like obscene bits of rock candy. A wave of dizziness struck her almost as fast as the metallic scent of blood hit her nose. There was so much… and so much to explain. She remembered having a few drinks… more than a few, maybe. But then, that was her issue. The Girl was prone to falling a lot when she drank, but she didn’t remember falling through the gorgeous wood and glass cabinet her fiance had made her. But, according to the evidence; the glass, a familiar chestnut wood frame sitting a few feet away, that was what had happened.

She was in a familiar place, sitting on the floor of her fiances’ garage, and she thought it strange that nobody had heard what had been sure to be a very large sound. With a shaking hand. The Girl started trying to pick shards of glass out of her arms, one by one. Tears started leaking down her face as she stood, still picking, and a whimper passed her lips. The garage door was slightly ajar, and she heard muffled music coming from outside. The Girl pushed the door open with her foot and shuffled through. Soon enough, the source of the music was revealed; she saw a picnic going on outside, with what looked like her fiances’ whole family in attendance. Why hadn’t they heard? Come to see where she was?

The Girl took a deep breath and tried to call out for him, but nothing but another little whimper came out, and more pain shot up and down her arm. The glass wasn’t coming out, and her skin was peeling off. What was going on?

She stumbled again, unfortunately right when her fiances’ stepfather turned the corner to see her. He didn’t seem concerned, which was confusing in itself. They’d all see her drunk, blackout drunk, hell, her fiance had been there when she’d gotten arrested for public intoxication. So while they were used to her being a bit fall-happy, shouldn’t he have been worried by how much blood was down both of her forearms? “T-Tim…” she whispered. The stepfather looked at her, rolled his eyes as if he still couldn’t see the blood, and opened the sliding door for her to go outside with him. “Drinking again,” he grumbled, placing a hand on her lower back to steer her over to a picnic table. The Girl fell down onto the bench next to her fiances’ mother, and blinked into the blinding sunlight. “Adam…?” she croaked out, meaning to ask where her fiance was, but the mother ignored her and continued talking to his sister. A heat spread over her cheeks, and The Girl looked back down at her arms and continued trying to pick, well and truly embarrassed.

The pain was fading, which was a slight relief, but her arms were also going numb. She needed to get to a hospital. Why couldn’t they see she was losing blood? That the skin on the back of her thumb was dangerously close to sliding off her bones entirely? After a few minutes, she finally got almost all of the larger pieces out, but then there were the tiny splinters to deal with. The Girl blinked, and reeled when she opened her eyes. She was… in a car? Her fiance was driving, and his mother and sister were in the back seat. Surely she hadn’t passed out again? She tried to speak, but the pain was back as she squeezed tiny pieces of glass out of her arm.

All of a sudden, she heard a loud car horn breaking through the rushing in her ears, and The Girl turned to see an SUV veering into the side of their car. There was a crash, and she felt the impact as the driver started to try running them off the road. Finally, finally, she managed to scream as the car started rolling. It skidded, mercifully through a few red lighted intersections, but also caused a few accidents as it went. The Girl turned her head to see an 18-wheeler catching fire, and she passed out. This was it, she was sure of it. Nothing about any of this had made any sense. But… that didn’t matter now.

The Girl’s eyes opened, and she groaned. She shot up, but there wasn’t any pain. Her chest heaving, she blinked a few times and as her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the television, she saw.

She was on her friend’s couch. The clock read 12:48, and the end credits to the comedy special she’d fallen asleep to were rolling.