Prologue

A story of a woman who is lost in grief who meets a man determined to pull her back to reality

Chasing Time

Ella Frank

 

Prologue

 

 2001 
  

 “Mom was all over you tonight don’t you think?” 
  

Carly laughed rolling her eyes. She then launched into the exact imitation of our mother’s high pitched, voice with a hint of the innocent inflection she would put into her probing questions. 


 “So Lena, when are you going to meet a nice boy and settle down? You spend too much time with your head stuck in a book studying.”


 I laughed turning my head to look at her. She grinned and stuck her tongue out at me so I reached over and smacked her leg playfully. 


 “Thanks for driving me home sis. I swear to god if I don’t get a car soon I am going to go insane.”


 I focused back on the dark road in front of us as we waited at a red light.


 “Go insane? That’s impossible, you’re already there.”


“Ha-ha loser.” 


 I grinned watching the road and then slowly started to accelerate as the light flicked to green. We had moved two inches forward when the blinding light came hurtling toward us and tires squealed in protest right before a bone crunching noise splintered through my ears and everything went black.

 

2010

Sitting up suddenly I felt the sweat drip down my spine as I clutched my chest tightly. I glanced over to the clock that sat by my bed and watched as the red numbers flicked to 3:21am. S**t. Every night the nightmare was the same, it was like a bad scene in a movie that was stuck on repeat and wouldn’t stop. The only major difference was this was my reality and no matter what I did for the last nine years of  my life I had been living with the ugly truth that I had been behind the wheel of the car the night my younger sister Carly had been killed in under twenty seconds. Leaning against the headboard I squeezed the bridge of my nose and inhaled deeply. I looked over to the picture hanging above my stark dresser of Carly and myself on her 21st birthday and sighed deeply. Closing my eyes I slid down into my bed staring at the ceiling fan as it spun slowly making that irritating, thwump, thwump, thwump with every rotation. Just another thing I had neglected to fix, I snorted softly to myself and added as a mental note, kind of like the rest of my life. With that sobering thought I rolled over onto my side and squeezed my eyes shut willing myself to get at least one more hour of sleep before I had to get up and go to work at 7am but as the seconds turned into minutes I knew sleep was beyond me and as I did every morning I woke up with the sobering thought of, well s**t.

Author's Note

I really value, honest and constructive reviews. I am not a professional so I know there are plenty of mistakes. Please be honest and helpful.