Eli's knuckles were whiter than the lines on the side of the road. He gripped the steering wheel so tight, tight enough to stop his bony hands from shaking. He swore that when they shook, he could hear the amplified clattering of his bones rubbing against each other, a bitter sound you only hear in nightmares. In fact, he thought he could hear every sound his body was making; rattling, brittle bones, stretching, straining muscles, pulsing, revolting organs, pale, paper skin. He could hear the grinding of his teeth, clenching so hard that they threatened to crack, thousands of pounds of pressure forcing them together. He could taste blood in his mouth, after biting his lower lip to the point of bleeding, as well as both sides and the tip of his tongue, and the inside of both cheeks. He could feel his eyes pulsing, as if they had their own hearts, and his lower eyelids, swollen and stained red like his cheeks, ached and moaned. He was so sure that every single fiber of him, every little cell, was making some kind of sound. Every piece of Eli was crying out in pain. Or so he was convinced.
And then there was the noise of the hearse. Clanging, metallic sounds, beating against his eardrums. He couldn't stand to have music playing with everything so loud. The worst, though, was all the noise inside his mind that he couldn't stop. He felt his thoughts, little bitter words and cliches, sliding along the grey matter of his brain, and digging deep into all the crevices. Bouncing around inside his skull, all the words he'd said to her, all the things he'd said that day.
The most awful, everything she said, was the loudest of things. Just as clearly as he could feel her fingernails, painted sunflower yellow, ripping and pulling apart his heart, he could hear her voice everywhere. He could feel Clare Edwards and her voice, her giggle, her scream, her sigh, tearing his heart slowly into two jagged pieces.
He wasn't sure where he was going; he'd been driving for hours, and hours. It had to be morning now, it had to be, but there was no sun anywhere. Eli worried he would never see the sun again. Clare was always the sun. She was always the thing that brought light to where there was darkness. She always helped with his problems and brightened the shadows. She was always going to be there at the end of the night, and make everything clear and serene again. She was a medicine, a drug, a cure, electrotherapy, the answer. She was everything.
But now all the street lights blurred together and the lines wavered, becoming waves, like in an ocean, and suddenly Eli was drowning. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't see. The ocean was a dark, murky place. The surface was so far away. Why couldn't he remember how to swim? That was it, he was going to die.
Then he stopped moving. Abruptly, suddenly, but it seemed so slow, like a stop-motion video experiencing a glitch. He was above water, back in the hearse, or what was left of the hearse. He could smell smoke. Loud noises, everywhere. Things exploding, snapping, breaking, crying, screaming. It was like a war zone. Eli wanted to hide somewhere quiet and forget everything. But he realized he couldn't see. He opened his eyes, and there was fire. The car was on fire.
Eli wondered if he was going to die. And it seemed like the better option. The part of his brain that still worked told him he would be carried off to a hospital now. But he realized, he was in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing here. No one was coming to save him. He thought about what it would be like to lie on this wet pavement, after being somehow thrown from the seat of your most prized possession, and wait to die. How would it feel to finally be caught in the fire? How would it feel to burn alive, or be eaten by an explosion?
Better than Clare Edwards.