With a heavy rumble of thunder, the leaden skies burst into a downpour.
The sharp freezing sting of sleet served wake him up, but it was quickly followed by a
nauseating headache that almost made him pass out again. Darrel struggled to regain of his sense.
With some difficulty, he propped himself on his elbows to take note of his surroundings.
Darrel found himself in a shallow ditch with a small mound of earth at his back. Ahead,
the grass in front of him had been scraped clean leaving exposed earth to stretch some distance away from his feet.
"Well damn, must of came out like a bar of soap..."
Having been shot out of the debilitating experience he now assumed as some sort of a tunnel. Darrel had come
out of with all the velocity and inertia from the crash. And with that, into the hill.
Luckily for him , it appeared the slope had experienced showers preceding this current one. So the
impact was broken by the rain soaked mud. Had he slammed into packed soil. Well. The results might of been different.
So he was alive. Battered, yes. But alive.
Five minutes before he had blacked out, Darrel Veret had been driving his trusty old Chevy Silverado back from 'Dick's'* place up in
McKinney.
No, he wasn't drunk or, god forbid, high off on weed. He was weak to those things. Darrel was never really into liquor
or weed, plus smoke from marijuana just made him gag.
Rich, Dan, David, and a few others decided to meet up at Richard's place, since only Rich's parents allowed them to have the
meetup in their house. The reunion was mostly to talk about the flak that was life after high school graduation.
Namely college life, college babes they got their eyes on, and why the hell Fred Willman took to wearing a dumb little
fedora. There were no drinks besides OJ and sodas, 'Dicky's' mom made sure of it. Seeing as she had recently caught Rich coming
back drunk.
They talked, took turns on Rich's Xbox to play CoD Black Ops, talked some more, till it got pretty late and
everyone decide it was time to call it off. Darrel had decided to stay a bit and help Rich clean up. Probably as thanks for the help
even invited him to the family barbecue the week after next as thanks.
By the time he had pulled away from the driveway, the dashboard clock read 1:03AM SUN.
Tired and a bit glue eyed, Darrel wondered what the quiz for tomorrow's ART1301 class would be like.
As he was cruising down I-75 towards university campus near the outskirts of Dallas, Some dumbass going 90 had sped into him
an on ramp. T-boning his truck causing him to swerve and crash into the divider.
Now, the old Silverado was a hands-me-down bought at a used car dealership for eight grand. The place being so dilapidated,
he had his doubts. With exception of the air conditioners, which always seemed to be on heater no matter how he adjusted it, the
rest of the truck had worked fine. And, yet, in that critical moment, something gave away. The seat belt holder above his left shoulder failed.
The whole thing had been yanked out from the frame and hit his head. sending a dazed Darrel slipping thru the seat belt. Upon realizing what had happened, he struck out his hand to protect himself from the oncoming collision with the windshield.
Chances are, he would probably not survive. He has seen it on TV and heard it on the news warning seatbelt
safety. Even had some officers from a nearby station come thru his junior high to show the gruesome aftermath of people
flying from the windshield and becoming a mangled hunk of meat for their impudence. Chances are. He was dead, or so
to be in the next 10 seconds.
Time seem to stop to a crawl. He lived every millisecond of his remaining seconds as if each one year of his life.
Each precious heartbeat seemed to reverberate in his mind before it fades away. In his throat, a timeless yell built up.
His ears were pounding with pressure from his excited state. Everything seemed crystal clear yet so strange in those moments.
Just as the windshield reached his face, Darrel thought about his life. He felt remorse for not being closer to his parents, not having
had a girlfriend to call his own, that barbecue he'd miss with the Sandersons, and also the anger at how it was the fault of that
dumb*ss who caused this whole mess, and who would also get to live because he probably had his seatbelt to prevent HIM from
going superman out of his windshield.
"Superman out the windshield", heh. Chiding himself making a corny joke as that for what would probably be his last.
Darrel resigned himself and prepared for the worst.
After which, things from here started getting hairy.
There was no rush of wind. No blurred vision of the other lanes tarmac. Nothing. There was absolutely nothing.
Darrel suddenly felt his sense go awry. His body which had been bracing for impact was subjected to a skin
caressing sensation. As if he had been dipped, bare skin, in oil. Like he had been passed through some
typed of clinging film but remained dry.
His skin then experienced the worst tickling in his life. It was as if every patch of skin both clad and exposed was
subjected to the mind boggling torture of feathers, and lots of them.
Consciously and unconsciously readying for the input of pain stimuli, Darrel was shocked by the
uncontrollable tickling sensation. Yet for some reason. As much as Darrel wanted to ball up and cover himself from those feathers.
He could not move. His arm would not respond, nor the knees bend or his back curl. Strangely, he
still felt the rough cloth of his jeans on his legs and the machined cotton of his T-shirt. Unable to hold the insane laughter,
and even then his mouth would not budge, the lungs refused to even draw air.
This was frightening. At first Darrel had a nasty thought the this WAS death. And the though that he would forever be
suspended and so tortured. He was no superstitious man, but it had occurred to him maybe this was Hell. And if it was.
Well then, he was F*CkED.
Darrel tried to struggle, to go full-berserk and fling every part of his body in every direction. However, to his horror,
it was in vain. He realized could not even move his eyes. He was in the perfect sense, frozen, except only in thought.
A moment after this chilling revelation. Darrel received the most traumatizing experience yet in his life.
The whole body felt as if the skin had been ripped from his muscles. The very weird sensation of it 'floating' above his
muscles did no less than further unsettle his grasp on reality. Relentless the force then set on his muscles, ripping them from the bone.
His mind had been partly expecting pain and somehow managed to prevent Darrel from blacking out. Not leaving anything out, the mind was
also being subjected to its very own torture. A pressure, like a vice, squeezed his mind from within and without. Everywhere.
The pain was so much as to be indifferentiable to where it was from.
A scream built in his mind, but to him,everything was denied but the pain.
The after math of which, he had been shot out of the tunnel like a gas propelled turd and into the present hill. Not a very fun
experience, nor one he could make any sense of.
The discomfort from being in the cold downpour eventually brought Darrel back from his thoughts. Looking around. Ahead was
a forest about a good hour hike across an exposed plain. Behind was the face of the hill and more hills. To his left were
some craggy features. And his right, a continuation of the aforementioned plain.
Wanting to get out of the rain, the rocks were his best bet. Perhaps he might get lucky again and find a cave.
For what he had experienced, fate might as well owe him for staying sane through the ordeal.
Getting up and brushing as much debris and loose mud from his clothes as he can. That's when he noticed his right shoulder
was strained, painful when moved. A busted or dislocated shoulder. Darrel sighed. Either way, it more pain to deal with
later. This experience was but a pain that keeps on giving.
He grasped his injured right arm to prevent it from moving. Gathering resolve for what might be ahead. Darrel trotted off
towards the direction of the rocks.
With the noisy squelches of shoes trampling through mud.
Darrel burst into the scanty shelter provided by the stony arch. By the time he had foun a suitable place to get out of
the rain, it became dark. Look like he'd have to stay the night.
It was pitiful shelter, but was nontheless.
Shivering and gasping with each shuddering breath. He looked around his ne abode.
The shelter, if it maybe called as such, was an overhead enclosure formed when a huge slab of rock
had toppled on to its neighbor thus bring both crashing down on to a third bigger slab to form this shallow 'cave'.
It was drafty and exposed, but served to keep the rain out, which was enough. He was in no place to be picky.
Sometime ago when he had been cleaning Richard's house he had found a pack of cigarettes and a cheap lighter that was
stuck into the pack. It had no belonged to Rich or any of the Sandersons, so he had been told he could keep it or toss it
in the trash. Darrel had put it in his breast pocket to grab four used cups, two in each hand, from the table and bring
it to the sink to be washed. After the cleaning. He had completely forgot it was still there until now.
To keep himself from getting hypothermia that might make him lose the second chance at life he was given. Darrel needed a
fire, in a hurry.
Taking the cigs from his pocket, he took a look and was quickly depressed. The crumpled container proudly bearing 'Marlboro:
Mint' had been completely soaked. It and Darrel both. Even if the lighter worked, the cigarettes will not burn in their
present state. Pissed at this mishap of events, Darrel was about to throw the cigarette's away, but thought better of it
and put them back into his shirt pocket. Checking his jean pockets, he found his wallet, some soaked receipts,
2 mechanical pencils. He did a double take when he couldn't find his keys before realizing they were still stuck to the
ignition of his now wreckt truck.
Sitting down, with his back against one of the slabs. Darrel placed the items infront. It was not a lot to work with.
Taking his wallet among these. Darrel emptied them of their contents. There were three $20 bills, one $5, and six $1 bills.
That and some loose change, his student ID, credit cards. and a photo. The photo was of a family trip to Yosemite National
Park and he had decided to take a photo of the mountains around Yosemite when they had stopped at a roadside vista spot on
another mountain. It was dry, but he held off on burning it. He liked the scenery.
Deciding to burn the bills, since they also happened to be conveniently dry. Darrel made a little pile by shredding the bills
, which were surprisingly resilient. Although the act of destroying money was reserved only for the Treasury and
punishable by law. Darrel was sure they wouldn't mind, since the government's motto was "Serve the People" anyways. And in
this case, he needed their treasury notes to serve as tender for some life giving warmth. If they come to arrest his butt,
he wouldn't complain as it would also be his rescue from this forsaken wilderness.
When it came to the lighting part, Darrel hesitated. It was quite a lot of money, $71 to be exact, and if he had ever wasted
money this was as wasteful as it gets. He would literally burn through his money. Another cold draft prompted him to be
quick about it and he grudgingly bent forward to start the lighter.
Picking up a piece of bill that displayed the top half of Washington's face, Darrel lit it using the lighter and tossed it
back into the pile. It burned, albeit slowly.
All of sudden Darrel got up. And with a curse, set to stomping out weeds that had caught on fir. With the danger
gone, he saw the practicality of using the dried weeds that littered the floor of the cave for further fodder. So he set
about gathering a pile and while at it, move his body to generate some warmth.
The weeds were perfectly suited. The fire grew to a small size and was able to light up half the cave. However with each
draft of wind, the fragile flame danced haphazardly, almost going out at certain times. Reprimanding himself silently, he
realized it would of been wiser to have built the flame at the back of the cave, along the wall.
With nothing he can do about it but hoping against hope that it would not go out. Darrel leaned back against the far wall
of the cave. Tired from the day's events and the frantic search for shelter amisdt the rocks, he close his eyes. Falling
into a deep heavy slumber.