Jessie is sitting in the backseat halfway between sleep and awareness. She's mostly awake, being in the car always makes her sleepy, but she's still too tired to open her eyes, so she just sits there and listens. Her Mother is in the front seat, driving, singing a song from The Lion King...what was it? Oh yeah, 'Hakuna Matata'. Her brother is sitting next to her, in his booster seat, laughing at the way his Mother changes her voice for the different characters that sing the song. She opens the corner of one eye and watches him. She loves the way he laughs. She smiles and closes her eye again. Underneath the singing and the laughing, she could hear her Father, snoring lightly in the seat in front of her. He had gotten a bad cold the last couple of days they were at Grandma and Grandpas and the medicine he had taken for it made him sleepy. 'That's why Mommy is driving instead of him.' She thinks. She hopes he feels better soon because she doesn't like when she can't be close to him when he's sick. She can't help but smile again when her Mother finishes the song and her brother starts bouncing up and down in his booster seat.

"Sing it again, Mommy! Sing it again! Please..."

Her Mother laughs and of course gives in, unable to refuse him. "Okay, Travis. Just one more time, okay, buddy? Mommy needs to rest her voice and be quiet for a while."

Travis giggles with happiness. "Okay Mommy, just one more time."

Her Mother starts singing again. This time Travis, or as she calls him T.J. starts to sing with her and Jessie is trying her hardest to keep from laughing at his interpretation of some of the words. Suddenly, her Mother stops singing and yells out. "Oh my God!"

Jessie could hear the car's horn blowing, in one continuous honk, and the sound of screeching tires. Scared, she closes her eyes tight, as she feels herself being turned upside down, then right side up, then upside down, then right side up, then...nothing. When she finally opens her eyes, she realizes she's no longer in the car, but lying face down in the grass. She puts both hands underneath her and tries to push her self up, but only gets halfway before she has to stop and cries out in pain. She rolls over on to her back and looks at her left arm, at what is causing the pain. She stares wide-eyed at the two, long, vertical, bleeding gashes that run side by side about two inches starting at her wrist. They are gushing blood and her stomach is so queasy she thinks that if she keeps on looking at it, she's gonna throw up, so she holds it against her side and unsteadily stands up. Looking to her right, she sees her Father's car and stumbles towards it. She stops midway and puts a hand to her head, feeling something warm running through her hair and down her face, and pulls it away covered with blood. She breathes quicker now, panic setting in, and runs to the car. As she gets closer she could hear crying coming from inside, so she runs faster. She stops at Travis' window and looks in to find nothing but smoke. Smoke is covering his entire booster seat and seeping through his window. She can't see him, but she can hear him and he's calling her name and crying. She tries the door but it won't open and his cries are getting louder and more desperate. Tears are streaming down her face and she moves to her Mother's window and looks in, horrified by what she sees. Her Mother is laying in a bloody heap across the steering wheel, her head turned at an awkward angle as she stares lifelessly out the broken windshield. Her Father was leaning forward, his head on her Mother's side, crying and stroking her hair. Fighting the urge to throw up, she manages to look away from her Mother and mumble for her Father.

"Daddy..." He looks up, his face wet with tears and then sits up."T.J. is crying." She tells him.

She notices five little red dots spread out on his shirt and she swears they're getting bigger, the longer she looks at them. Patrick looks into the back seat where Travis seemed to be engulfed by smoke and then looks back at Jessie. '

"Sometimes you just don't think.." He says. "Now, look what you've done."

She stares at him confused and scared and watches as the red dots get bigger and bigger. Blood. "It's blood." She says aloud and as soon as it leaves her lips blood starts pouring from the center of each red dot, like five miniature water fountains. What scares her the most is that her Father doesn't seem to notice the blood at all, he just sits there shaking his head, saying over and over. "Sometimes you just don't think. Now, look what you've done." He coughs and blood drips down his chin, she turns away unable to look at him any longer and tries to open Travis' door again. He is still crying and calling her name, and she can still see nothing but thick smoke. She pulls at the door and bangs on the window, yelling for him to reach for the door handle inside the car, but he just continues to cry and yell for her as if he can't hear her. She runs to the other side of the car to find that there is no handle on the other door and she kicks at it in frustration. Her Father is looking at her through his window. He rolls it down and continues his mantra. "Sometimes you just don't think. Now, look what you've done." He gurgles, as blood comes from his mouth when he talks. She backs away him and runs back to Travis' door, pulling and kicking at it...

"What the...hey..." John said groggily as he opened his eyes. Jessie had just kicked him in the leg. "You okay?" He looks over and sits up quickly. "Jessie!"

Jessie is kicking and struggling with something in her sleep. Hyperventilating and covered in sweat, she yells. " It won't open! It won't open!"

John puts his hands on her shoulders and tries to hold her still. "Jessie, wake up!"

...A car screeches to a halt next to their car and Jessie is relieved for a moment, thinking that now she would have some help. A man gets out of the car and walks towards her. "Help me! Help my brother!" She yells at him. As he gets close, she freezes up for a moment. She knows him but can't remember how she knows him.

"Don't worry kid." The tall, lanky man says. "Your Uncle Roy is here." Her eyes go wide and she backs away from him but he grabs her and pulls her to him. "Where do you think you're going?" Roy Langston asks smiling.

She can see all his teeth. There's too many of them and they are pointy with jagged edges, like a shark. It feels like he has four arms and they snake around her, his hands touching every inch of her. "Daddy, please help me!" She cries out to him.

Patrick leans across his dead wife and sticks his head out the broken window and smiles. Blood covers his mouth and teeth and she cringes. "Sometimes you just don't think. Now, look what you've done." He tells her.

She's crying so hard now, that it's getting hard to breathe, and she struggles desperately in Roy Langston's arms, pushing his hands away from her. "Don't touch me! Daddy please, make him stop!"

Patrick smiles, his bloody smile. "Everyone's gone now, kiddo, you'll have to stay with your Uncle Roy. He'll take good care of you, I promise."

"Yeah, you'll be my very own little girl." Roy Langston laughs and pulls her closer.

"Nooooo!"Jessie screamed and struggled even harder against John.

John was having a hard time controlling her. Her body twisted and turned violently, her arms were swinging wildly and she kicked at the air, as she tried to break free of him. He had re-opened the cuts on her wrist, so her left arm was now slick with blood, and he was having a hard time holding on to it. "Jessie, wake up!" He yelled shaking her. "C'mon, wake up, it's just a dream!"

...Jessie wasn't sure who she was scared of most...Roy Langston or the crazy looking man with the bloody smile, that was her Father. She tried one last time to reach him. "Daddy, please..." She begged.

Still smiling, that bloody smile, Patrick repeated what he had been saying to her all along. "Sometimes you just don't think. Now, look what you've done."

Her body, hitching with sobs, as she tried to catch her breath, she turns towards Roy Langston and pushes at him and punches his chest. "Let me go!"

Her hyperventilating scared John. 'She's gonna give herself a friggin' heart attack.' He thinks, as his mind races frantically. He picks her up, getting hit and kicked as he does so, turns her around and wraps his arms around her tight, pinning her arms to her side. He pulls her with him, as he moves to sit up against the wall, and puts his legs over hers, pinning them to the floor. She's still struggling against him, bucking like a fish out of water, but he squeezes her tight and leans over to rest his chin on her shoulder. He rocks her back and forth, slowly, as he talks to her. "Jessie, wake up...it's okay, you're okay...I know you can hear me, I need you to wake up, right now...it's just a dream...you have to let it go."

Jessie stops. She hears someone calling her name but can't make out who it is. She turns away from Langston and faces her Father again. He changed. It was a good change. There wasn't a trace of blood on him and he was holding a sleeping Travis in his arms, rocking him gently. A calmness ran through her and she took a deep, quivering breath and smiled at them. "Dad-" She stopped, suddenly. She felt funny. She was flickering back and forth, from a twelve-year-old to a twenty-one-year-old, as the voice calling her name got louder and closer.

"Jessie, wake up, honey...it's time for you to go. There's no one holding you here anymore...Langston's gone."

Jessie turned around. He was right Langston was gone. She turned back to her Father. "I can't stay with you?"

"No, Jess, you can't. You need to go...wake up and go. John needs you...he's scared for you."

"John?"

"Yes. He needs you to wake up...you have to let go...he's calling for you."

She listened. She could hear John's voice so close now, it made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. "But I-"

"Shhh...honey, just go...we'll be okay. I love you...don't ever forget that, okay?"

She nodded and reached into the car towards them, as they faded away...

"No! Don't leave me! Please, don't leave me!" Jessie cried out.

"Shhh...I'm right here, Jess. Wake up and you'll see."

"Stop..." Jessie groaned. "Stop rocking..."

John stopped rocking her. "Hey..." She stopped hyperventilating and fighting him, so he loosened his hold on her and put a hand on her head, so he can stroke her hair. "You really scared me there for a minute."

She opened her eyes, they were red and stinging with unshed tears, and turned to look at him. She saw her Father in his soft blue-green eyes, and she opened her mouth to say something, but couldn't. She wrapped her arms around him, buried her face in his chest and cried.


Tbc...