After the crash, I wiggled my feet a few times to see if they were still working, and much to my surprise, they were. In fact, would you believe all ten of my little toes were doing every single thing I had wanted them to. Actually, they were working better now than ever before the little devils.
“Hurrah.” I said. “How bloody strange and borderline unnatural.”
This, however, wasn’t a special occasion here tonight. Not in the slightest. And I knew that. Right after it happened, and I mean straight away, I knew I had come real close to meeting Jesus, but God forbid I thought, don’t do me like that. Not so quick.
Not in a Nissan fucking Micra.
Here I was at 10pm, almost brown bread but very much, ya know, still alive – half wondering, at the same time, where all the pain might eventually come from in the end – my head, my shoulders, my knees or my toes?
Or better yet, my eyes, my ears, my mouth or my nose?
In this glib old town there’s an elite club for unfortunate events like this. They call it “The Almost Dead Club”. Truthfully, I did not want to become a member of this club but because I almost did, and the fear it put in me, I found myself balls deep in a second crisis.
“Imagine that.” I thought. “Imagine all the great and wonderful things I might miss out on in life should this scene here get any frickin worse. Who do I know that might actually spare me? Or better yet, who do I talk to?”
Thankfully though, my survival instincts kicked in once the water started pouring in through the roof. Of course they did. In a situation like that, the mind is going to go in all kinds of directions, and yeah, what a horrible fuck off sensation it was – feeling all that ice and debris trickling down your back like a gang of frozen cobras.
“Shitballs.” I said. “I suppose I should maybe think about trying to get out’a here somehow.”
All the windows in the car were fucked now. Totally busted. Actually, I think they were some of the first things to go. And to make matters worse I had a big thick line of blood pissing down the length of my face now. It was trickling over my nose, stinging my eyes and going into my hair.
“THE TYRES DID IT.” I told myself, over and over again, looking for the clasp on my belt. “That’s what happens when you mix a bad mechanic and Temu-bought 24-inch alloys. I’ve seen it all before. A million times. Christ.” I says. “It must have cost him a fucking fortune. Then again, what price does one need to be paying for mechanical incompetence this weather, eh?”. . .God only knows.
The collision itself, yeah, it was so strong in the end that, whatever way I hit that wall, the wheels kept on spinning for several seconds afterwards, and wouldn’t stop until the car had been well settled in the weeds.
Spinning and making loads of noise. And from where I was now, it looked as though they could have kept on in that vein until the end of time itself.
“Who drives a fucking Nissan these days anyhow?” I asked myself. “Well, it was the best of a bad lot in fairness. I simply hadn’t a lot of options. None of us had. In the end, we just had to get the hell out’a there FAST and for the most part
“I suppose we did.”
For a good while, yeah, I had no idea really where I was. I knew alright I was in a bad way. I could figure that out at least. Upside-down: Yes. In a ravine: Yes. In a car that wasn’t mine: Yes. Crashed: Ok. But, aside from that. Go on. Geographically speaking. I reckon I was just about as discombobulated as anyone could ever be.
I checked my phone immediately to see if it was working, and it was, kind’a, but it was wet.
Like really wet.
Wet as a damn lake.
And because of that, because of all the wetness, the screen started to go a bit live on me. A bit fucking funny. Sideways. Slowly dying –
like a dying man.
Then, just like that, as I held it, came the woeful jittery bits. “Ah yes. The strobe lights from China.” All of that infuriating nonsense, the flickering and the buzzing, shooting up into your face and it damn near impossible to fucking deal with, like a naggy schoolgirl.
I’d struggle to cope with it now.
“Work ya whoor ya. Work I said. I need to get out’a this mess at some stage.”
Stuck here at the bottom of this ravine (which I bet is lovely during the daytime), I soon realised that I may never, ever get a chance to leave. . .(at least, not alive). Here I am, at thirty-eight years of age, full moustache, stuck in the driver’s seat of a stolen Nissan Micra, mangled, looking up at the stars, and I’ve a real sore head on me along with a belly full’a questions that could do with some answering.
“Dad was right. The fucker. Maybe I should have stayed in school.”
