Prologue
In the movies, death is portrayed as graceful, or heroic. Mine was neither.
My death was a simple coincidence, a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn't a bad death, just a normal one. What happened to me happens to people all the time, and I don't remember much of the actual event, but the preceding moments are all clear.
It's an average evening, sometime in early January, and school is going to start soon. I drive along cautiously, conscientious of the softly falling snow and the light frost that lay upon the road. I smile as the glow of my car's headlamps glimmer off of a carefully frosted tree. It's beautiful this time of year and the cold is no longer the harsh, unforgiving creature that it had been over Christmas. I pull over at the convenience store and park under a tree, so that there isn't a lot of snow on my car when I come back. I pull my black leather jacket straight so that the edges of my long sleeved indigo shirt aren't visible, and then I get out. It's the end of sunset, but you can't see it, because the clouds cover the dark orange-red.
I step inside, my boots drip half melted snow onto the floor that looks like it was polished enough to be used as a mirror. I grab a box of Cheerios and a carton of milk, preparation for the morning after of tonight's sleep-over. I pay. The man smiles, neither of us realising my life is going to be cut short in a few finite minutes.
I step outside, my boots crunching in the layer of fresh snow, now white rather than the untrustworthy greyish yellow that it had been at the beginning of the winter. It's clean now; all the pollution has been washed out, a stain that has been eliminated. I climb in my car and turn the key. The engine purrs to life and I slowly back out of the parking space. I turn my car around, and I'm mostly on the road when I attempt to yank my seat belt across so that I can fasten it. I'm just a few moments too late with my seatbelt. The next details are blurry, obscured by five minutes of panic and then by what felt like a life time of pain.
When I see the headlights, I realise that they're coming straight towards me and that they're moving at one hell of a speed. I have five seconds to panic. I let go of my seatbelt and attempt to reverse away. It's a bad idea, the worst I've ever had. I hit the tree that I parked so carefully under. The car hits me.
Flash.
There is pain. So much pain. It's white-hot and blinding. It's a bright violet, the same colour as lightning. I lose focus, the world blurs, and then it becomes painfully clear. My entire life is now transparent, ghostly. Before you die, your life doesn't flash in front of your eyes, like they say it does. Rather, the scene in front of you - your death scene – is thrown into a bright light.
I realize that I've catapulted through my windshield. At first I think: Wow, you really can go flying through a windshield. Then I think, and it's with icy regret: What are my friends and family going to do when they get told that I'm dead? I feel let down. I'm not even seventeen yet! Then, everything becomes more colourless and hazy as I slowly bleed to death, and I watch as the pure white snow falls into the steadily growing pool of my blood, and then disappears into that crimson sea.
I lose focus again, and I don't really regain it. I hear the sounds of shouting and crying. Loud voices, irate voices, stunned voices and then, a quiet, calm voice. He tells that I'm going to be okay, that I'll be at the hospital in no time, but I know that he's lying. I then hear the voice of the drunken driver, the one who had cut my life so very short. I want to get up and hurt him until he's feeling the same pain that I am, but I cannot. All I can do is stare as the substance that has kept me alive for almost seventeen years treacherously flows out of me. The world dims. It turns dark, and then, it disintegrates completely. I am gone.
A/N: Thanks, to a certain someone who put up with me today while I was bugging her for help with the imagery for this scene. I probably couldn't have done it without you, because I can't remember how I did the original. *raises Korean aloe juice* To CarbonatedMilk!