Welcome to a World of Pain
'I'm pretty sure this is what it's like to drink hard liquor,' I thought with a grimace.
'Warm and tingly in your mouth, though it burns like a bitch down your throat, to your stomach where it sits like a warm rock."
I stared down at the cup of apple cider in my hand while the old hags continued to chatter around me. Their words fell on deaf ears though, because I had no interest in what they had to say.
I was pulled out of my thoughts by the oppressing feeling of someone's gaze on me. I angled my head up enough to look through my curtain of hair to see that the attention of the matriarch of the group had been shifted to me. Glancing around, I noticed that everyone else had also decided to pin their attention to me, like a bunch of hungry vultures just waiting for their future meal to give up and die.
At this new discovery, I lifted my head up even further until I was at the 'suitable angle for conversation,' as my mother called it. This was the position that I so lovingly referred to as the break neck angle, because for my normally slouched nature, it felt like I had to crane my neck up so far that I was almost positive it would snap and break.
I started to feel like that would be a great alternative right then, because they just kept staring, which was quite disconcerting. I glanced around me again, in futile hope that some where around the room I would be able to find the reason for their scrutiny. My search sadly turned up no results, though I did find that not just the old hags were staring at me, but everyone in the room.
The silence of the room was almost enough to make me sweat, so I nearly crapped myself when the self-proclaimed Matriarch cleared her old turkey looking neck.
She cracked open her mouth to reveal cracked, yellow stained teeth that stirred within me the reaction to lean away, though I quickly squashed the urge down.
I forced myself to listen to her scratchy voice as she said, "Dear, it's impolite to not respond to a question when you're asked one."
She might as well have sneered at me and said, "Girl, you speak when you're spoken to."
I felt my face heat up in an unbidden rush of blood as I realized that I'd been caught daydreaming while they were clucking like the old hens that they were. Suddenly the idea of hard liquor was much more appealing to me than it had been a minute ago. Maybe it would at least be able to ease the tension that I was now over come by.
To my humiliation, I heard myself say, "I'm sorry, but I didn't hear the question,"
I could practically feel the waves of happiness rolling off of the old woman at my humiliation. I was thankful when another one of the women whose' names I hadn't cared to learn made a noise in her throat that faintly resembled a horse choking on something.
As everyone diverted their attention to her, I briefly entertained the idea of making a run for it. It seemed that I wasn't the only one, because I felt the familiar grip of my mother on my arm, pulling me up and to the side of the room where the door was while everyone else in the room jumped up to get the woman some water.
'I knew there was something shady about that apple cider,' flew through my head as my mother hissed at me to out my coat on. I quickly complied as she hastily pulled me through the door before our presences could be missed.
I shivered as I followed my beloved mother (sarcasm, gotta love it) out the door while shrugging on my coat. Glancing over to the left, I was met by my reflection staring back at me. I almost didn't recognize myself, because it was a rare occasion when I dressed up, and it was never because I wanted to.
My dirty blonde hair was normally kept wrangled up in a sloppy bun, though now it was left untied to flow down my back almost to the bottom of my shoulder blades. My blue-green eyes stared back at me from the depth of a sun-tanned face. Glancing down, I noticed that my gangly legs that boosted my height to an astounding 6' 2" were cut out of the reflection, though when I gazed down even further, I was met with the sight of the black tips of the fake leather boots that I was currently wearing.
My attention was grabbed from my toes and reflection by the screeching of tires on asphalt. I glanced around me and saw only the retreating back of my mother down the street to where our car was parked. I figured by the amount of echo that was tagged on the sound of speeding cars, I judged that they were a few streets over.
I quickly disregarded the thought as I followed after my mother. My black boots made soft scuffling sounds on the worn and cracked cement that made up the sidewalk as I walked.
My attention was nabbed from the poor excuse of a walking path by the sound of a child talking. I glanced to my right, across the street to where the sound was coming from, though I could only make out two figures standing in the darkness. One was the average height of a full-grown woman while the other was about half her height. They were standing in front of what appeared to be an old and worn down one story house that looked as though a party was going on inside.
'They must be leaving,' I thought to myself. The party made sense, because it was only a few days till Christmas, which the thought of caused a smile grow on my face.
My attention was yet again yanked from my thoughts as the sound of squalling tires grew louder and closer. It sounded as if there were multiple cars that were driving now, while there had only been a few earlier.
I froze on the spot as I heard the kid across the street say something else as a small spherical shape fell from his arms and bounced into the street. At that same moment, the door to the party house and the supposed mother turned back to face it.
It was in this moment that everything seemed to happen at once. The sound of the crazy cars and their drivers grew to a nearly deafening decibel. Several beams of light all shone around the corner of the block, giving me a heads up that their owners were right behind them.
Just as the ball came to a rolling stop, the boy stepped into the road and slick forms of the first few cars of the pack came careening around the corner. Their slick forms shot under the faint glow of the streetlights that were placed sporadically down the side of the road. I was completely and utterly confused to see that the car leading the group was a police cruiser.
'WHAT! I thought the police were supposed to be chasing the speeders, not the other way around,' I though in confusion.
I completely forgot about the speeding forms as I turned to look back at the kid, who was now almost to the middle of the street where his ball lay. My brain numbly informed me that the ball was still partially wrapped in Christmas paper, though some of it had come undone during its trip into the road.
Just as the boy reached his prized gift, three, no four more cars shot around the corner, though there were still a few more cars behind them. In the dim light I was able to make out to my amazement that two of them were Corvettes, one looked like a Camaro, and the last one was some unknown model to me.
I numbly felt myself step into the street, while at the same time I opened my mouth to scream at the boy to move, though my voice was lost to the sound of the roaring engines. It was like my body was on autopilot, and I was simply along for the ride.
My feet no longer shuffled along, but were now stretching to their extent as I ran into the street where the boy was. I heard in front of me a shout that sounded like a man, which was quickly followed by a feminine scream.
'Great timing guys, so you finally noticed your kid's in the middle of the street, facing off with some wanna-be Nascar drivers' I thought with a grim face.
I finally reached the boy, who seemed paralyzed in fear. I couldn't blame him, because if I was in control of what I was doing, I would've been frozen to the sidewalk like I was glued there.
"Kid, you gotta get outta here," I screamed over the roaring of the engines. The light of the headlights was now over us and bathed us in light. I knew from earlier that the cars would be right behind them in just about 3 seconds.
1 Mississippi
"KID" I yelled again as I gripped his arms in an iron grip.
2 Mississippi
My body suddenly acted on its own again and lifted the boy up, his miniscule weight not even registering to my adrenaline-flooded body. Not even bothering to warn him, I tossed him back to the edge of the road where his mother was frozen. At least he'll escape this with just a few scrapes and bruises.
3 Mississippi
Time's up.
My last thought was, 'Well, this is gonna hurt.'
It was at that moment that my legs were suddenly gone. The front bumper of the police cruiser hit me right under the knees and crushed the bones while ripping the joints apart.
My torso was smashed into the hood of the car, though my head was what smashed into the windshield.
The sound of screaming tires was the last the last thing I heard as I drifted off into a world darkness.
It would be several weeks later when I was thinking back on the events that night, that I would find to my confusion that I didn't see anyone in the driver's seat.