I never meant to hurt anyone.
When I first woke up, there was only pain. A dull, sore pain at first that slowly became worse and worse, as if I had been run over by a train. I woke up trapped in a car that was not mine, surrounded by police officers who never spoke, and did nothing but methodically work on getting me out of the crushed metal cage. The car was red with tinted windows, and looked faintly familiar. It was a strange sensation, not being able to remember when and where I had seen this car. The pain was slowly numbing, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a body being pulled away of a gurney. Fear shot through my body as I realized there was a possibility that I had killed someone. Someone who had a family, a life, could be dead because of me. I became so swept up in the idea and what it could mean that I didn't even notice I had been freed from the car. Quickly, I glanced around my surroundings to try to recall anything that had happened. The red car was so demolished; I was amazed I had survived. The front bumper was folded in all the way to the front seat, and passenger seat was crushed under the car door. I was standing in the middle of some kind of field, the car crushed beside me. It looked like the kind of crash they show you pictures of to warn you away from drunk driving.
Glancing around, I could see no other vehicle that had sustained damage, just a lot of police cars and flashing lights. I searched again, taking in more details, but I could still not see the car I had crashed into. Suddenly frantic, I ran to the ambulance to see who had been in the car with me, who was on that gurney, dying, because I had been driving. If I hadn't hit another car, that means the injured one had to have been with me in the car. As I headed towards the ambulance, I heard two men's conversation with an officer who had been helping me get out of the car.
"So, she just crashed in the middle of a field with no cars or things for her to crash in to?" A taller suited man asked.
"That's right; we figured it was it was a hit and run." The officer shook his head and sighed. "Poor girl, died on impact it seems. It's a good thing she was the only one in the car."
Only one in the car. Died on impact. Those words pushed me into hysteria and I collapsed on the ground, gasping for air over and over again. But no one came to my rescue. No one asked if I was all right. They all seemed to walk right by me.
I was dead, and no one could hear me. Without another word, I ran to the ambulance. This couldn't be right, that officer was wrong. Someone else had been in the car. It wasn't me. I was not dead. Thinking I had hit someone seemed a much better alternative.
Jumping into the back of the ambulance, I saw the same gurney as before. Same sheet covering the face, same body lying there. Pulling back the sheet, I let out a shriek and jumped back. My hand covering my mouth and, breathing heavily, I stared down on to my face. It was covered in blood and cuts, but it was without a doubt me. This was the final thing to push me over the edge. My mind went numb, and I leaned against the wall of the ambulance for support.
After what seemed like hours but had probably only been minutes, several thoughts pushed their way into my brain. One, what had happened to me? The officer had said a hit and run, but that seemed so unlikely since I was found in the very center of a field. Two, who was going to tell my family? My mom and my dad were going to be worried sick. What were they going to tell my sister? What were they going to tell her? I needed to see them, to try and get through to them.
I left the ambulance with the purpose of finding someone who was going to talk to my family. That was how it worked on television, so I hoped someone was going to go. As luck would have it, as soon as I walked outside I heard the shorter one of the suited men say they were going to go ask my parents some questions. I followed them to their car, a black Chevy that seemed out of place in the mixture of emergency vehicles. When I reached the car, I quickly discovered I could just walk through the door without opening it. So, sitting in the back seat, I began to listen to the two men's conversation to learn what I could.
"Do you really think this has anything to with the deaths in the other town?" the one driving seemed skeptical.
"Of course. Look, Dean, each of the cars were found in the middle of nowhere, with the same injuries on the victims and everything." The taller one pointed at several pictures on his computer.
"Car crashes just don't seem like our kind of thing, Sammy." The one the other had called Dean said.
"Well, maybe it's like that truck that was haunted by a ghost back in Cape Girardeau. This is at least worth looking into Dean." Ghosts? Haunted truck? What kind of things were these two into? I suddenly remembered my situation and they seemed a little less crazy..