Logan was speeding. Not too bad. Roughly fifteen over the limit of 60 on a highway. The music was loud. He was very upset. Do you know what it's like to walk in on someone you love doing things with another person and see the smiles on their face. Hear the noises. So loud, so unreal, so animalistic. He knew.
He's listening to the radio, scream singing Traitor by Olivia Rodrigo, and viciously wiping tears away. The track ends and then it's a commercial break so he decides to cut off the system. He'd think about playing music on his phone but he doesn't like to because it's not loud enough on his speaker to really feel it.
Anyway a car came around a corner and their bright LEDs prevented him from being able to see the curve. He sped right into the ditch...
Fingers felt the fabric of his britches. Eyes opened and smoke was billowing up on the hood of his car. The tire was somehow in the windshield. Is that his? Shaking vehemently he manages to push open the door and the window just shatters.
Across the street, stopped in a group, were some guys from the richest house on campus. Cameras out, laughs roaring, a beer can was tossed at him and it wasn't empty. Typical of a frat house. The sirens wail and they speed off out of sight.
An ambulance? Perhaps one of them was decent.
No, it's only the police.
She walks up to his window with her tight clothes, her tight hair, her sunglasses in the middle of the night, and a name tag so bazaar, "Officer Cuntini"
"Sir, do you know it's illegal to park here?" She asked.
He was bleeding. A head wound. Things were spinning. He felt like he was going to be sick. He tries to speak but something unintellegable comes out.
She mocks him for stuttering and then laughs, "Fuckin pricks like you make my job so damn hard. You're mother should have swallowed you. Liscense and registration, asshole come on. I don't have all night. Important things are being overlooked because your privileged white spoiled pieces of shit decide to go drag racing and make messes. I should book you but I'm pissed off at a guy I got at the lot and he'd have too much fun butt fucking you like the hole you are."
He pops open his glove box and realizes that his wrist is broken. It's black and blue and the pain of shutting the latch back was enough to ring a gong in his head.
The officer takes the papers and then THWACK! She smacks him up side the head, "Don't roll your eyes at me boy."
She mumbles something about how her tits aren't even on display and this dog of a boy needed to have his balls cut off and she's walking back to her patrol car.
He trying to breath. It's almost impossible. There's a thousand bricks on his chest and a needle in his throat. Why does it feel like people are grabbing him in places they shouldn't? His speaker jingles as his girlfriends ringtone plays out and then, as he's trying to reject the call, the officer returns. His finger slips and the calls accepted.
Only a few seconds in and the officer back hands the fuck out of his left cheek and complains about the blood on her hand, mentioning covid, and says, "You perverted little fuck. Playing porn on your phone while you're driving? That's fucking nasty."
She throws all of his shit on the ground crumples up the ticket and throws it at him. Then she's leaving and when she's driving away he's forcing himself out of the car onto the ground to get his things. When he returns to his beat up car he cannot seem to find his phone. The moans are loud and she's calling him daddy. Even has the audacity to answer the question, "Am I better than your boyfriend." with, "Yes! God! You're so much better than Logan ever tried to b-"
He hits the end call button and gasps as air seems to fill his lungs. Then the car dies.
An hour on the side of the highway and he collapses. His feet are caked in mud, the shoes torn on the broken hunks of metal he tripped in. A piece of debris is lodged in his left leg. His chest as pieces of glass in it. The rings around his eyes have gotten darker.
An owl vomits a dead rat in an oily black blob from up the trees surrounding him. The highway winds through the mountains. It's getting cold because it's later in the year. The slime it oozes and the entrails glop down on the underside of his throat. A deer pisses on his open wound and the pain is enough to sting his entire body and he gasps awake scaring the creature away.
He manages to get his phone out and sends a text; "Help me"
After about ten minutes of staring into the seemingly starless night he finally gets a response from his friend James, "Dude. I'm about to get laid. Fuck off."
He drops his arm and continues to lie there. What is going on? People don't talk like this. Not to him. Things like this don't happen. Not this bad. Why him? Why now? Why this much?
So slowly he falls into sleep.
Two hours later, Carlos Garcia, a running athlete at the local high-school, veers out onto the highway during his morning run. Strong silent type. Avoids people because in this world they lack something. He just doesn't know what that is? It's just so very weird. The conversations, the constant power plays, the excessive, self serving, egotistical individuality. Every thing is a nail and all anyone is every handed is a hammer. Beat or be beaten. Eat, fuck, prey, that's the life.
Not for him. Silence goes a long way when it feels that for some reason everyone is laughing at you. Or about you. Or about someone. There's an entire entity missing from the world and he doesn't know so he's going to stop stressing about it. Then his eyes spot the body on the side of the road. Usually he'd have to snicker or shove someone or turn and walk away but no one's here. No one's going to punch him in the nuts for feeling something. No one's going to piss in his food during lunch period for this. No one's here. Except him and a body. If the guys alive he might try to do something weird, or stupid, or violent.
This is a situation he is entirely unprepared for.
So he approaches Logan and kneels down. There's a deep paleness to this white boy that shouldn't be there. It's probably death. Something Carlos envies very much. The idea of it all stopping. He's never had the misfortune of having parents. No one gave him a chastity belt, no one pumped chemicals in his ass when he wanted to experience things, no one embarrassed him, walked in on him masturbating, heard him go through food poisoning and filmed it. He's never let anyone close enough.
He spent time bouncing around in group homes. He's seen the alcoholics that run them. Manged to avoid a beating for two. Got known for speed in highschool and now he's got status enough to where people leave him alone, mostly. Carlos does something radical. Because no one's here to tell him he can't. He slides a hand up under the boys shirt and presses his palm firmly to the indent between the two halves of the rib cage. A heart beat.
"Let's get you somewhere safe. The hospital isn't going to help you." He mutters as he lifts the boy into his arms. They'll let you die and tell everyone they did everything they could because it's in the job description but in reality they were fucking your mom behind the curtain while you coded.
Through the trail he makes his way until he comes to an abandoned shed he goes to a lot to sit in silence. The couches are dusty but they'll do for now. He pulls out some of the wrap he uses for his joints as he runs and covers up the open wounds on the pale boy and decides that's all he has the wits to handle. In the meantime he would finish his run. Get to school and sneak some stuff from the nurses office who's probably blowing the principle beneath his desk and come back out here after making an appearance in home room. Students left all the time to dunk the heads of freshman into toilets, fuck under the bleachers, or watch Logan Reese curb stomp someone that hit on his girlfriend, but never have they left early to save someones life.
As he continues his run all he can think about is the way it felt to feel that skin beneath his hand. The small amount of warmth. The strangeness of the contact. The... indecisiveness.