South 5

South 5

Consequences evaporate under the scorching heat of emergency. So, with Jace bouncing in the backseat, I sped through town in a car that was not mine, booming past stop signs and under red lights. My worry kept me from staring at the road for too long. Every few seconds I would risk a 180 degree glance to the bundle of clothes and alcohol poison behind me. Seeing him relieved me, but it worsened my state all the same. I wanted him to be well, but every time I saw his bloated face smushed against the seat, I was reminded of just how far he was from fine. Another rude reminder came when I suddenly heard the sound of stomach fluid bursting, gurgling from an unaware pair of lips.
"JACE!" I looked back, screamed, and turned a sharp right all in one breath. The hospital wasn't too much further now, he could make it. I looked at him again, and I saw the toxins stewing against his cheek, and I felt sickened and dropped from a high place. When I turned back to the road, a man was between my headlights.
I heard the collision before I felt or comprehended it. Screeching metal against the hood, a crunch, the stomach-wrenching snap and crack of a spine and skull on machinery. My feet choked the brake peddle. My hands choked the steering wheel. My eyes choked my heart. The door creaked open. I threw the gear into park and inched myself forward on liquid knees. About fifteen feet away, his face aimed at the endless everything before him, a black man dressed in rags lay sprawled in the grass. Now I vomited.
What was happening? Everything was spinning, no, revolving, no, falling around me. Did I....did I really just kill someone? No, no I couldn't have. I meant to ask if he was alright, but I ended up simply screaming at him and then cracking at the ankles into a sobbing mess. What was happening? What was happening? Jace. He was my anchor, he was what made sense, and right now he was in the backseat and unconscious. Ok, Jace. Just thinking his name softened the blows against my will. I got up onto my pathetic feet and took many short, shallow breaths, all the while watching the dead man. I did kill someone. That thought almost brought me back to the earth, but I guess I'd started accepting it already. Might as well.
Police. Police would be here, and I'm standing over a dead body. I screamed internally at my own fatal carelessness. I should call them. Anonymously. Yeah, ok, I pretend to be someone else and tell them what's happened and that I was passing by, that's why I'm no longer at the scene. I dialed 911 slower than normal thanks to my seizing fingers.
"Erexville Police Department what is your emergency?" The automated person asked.
"Uhm," I stumbled and fell over my words back into that dirty lying ditch. "Uh, I just wit-witnessed an accident."
"Where are you? We'll have a squad car meet you."
"I, I uh, I was just driving by, I didn't-" then I saw the hand clutch the edge of the canal, and my heart dug itself ten feet deeper.
A young boy who looked like and was dressed similarly to the dead man suddenly clawed his moppy way into the brightness that my headlights created. At first his baggy clothes hid his features, but then he moved his arm, and I recognized the crippled boy I had seen some 24 hours earlier. My phone dropped to the ground, along with my belief in anything other than disbelief. I hardly felt that I was seeing his matured youth etched in shadowed circumstances before my eyes just as I had last night. He didn't appear to be able to see me, but he was trying to see nonetheless. I had to get out of there. I scooped up my phone, quickly assured the person-machine of the location, and half jumped half ran back into the car. Just before I closed the door, however, my heart went from beaten and bloody to absolutely shattered.
"CAN!" I could feel the boy's wild desperation when he screamed the word, and it felt like sharp steel to me. "CAN! Where ya'at?! CAN!" I tasted tears in the corners of my mouth, and everything felt like broken glass.
Pity, remorse, shame, and fear are crushing weights, and when one sets them upon themselves, they seem to drag down to hell itself. I peeled out of that damned grass and continued on my blackened journey; however, I couldn't stop yelling and gasping and crying until I slammed to a stop at the emergency room.