Broken

Chapter 5

He was driving nearly 70 miles per hour when he blacked out. One moment he was speeding, breathing heavily, his mind filled with chaotic thoughts that all blurred together to create a constant buzzing in his head, and then he was hanging upside down, screaming, his head feeling as if it were about to burst as blood pooled in it.

He blinked and stopped screaming, breathing heavily as he looked around, trying to make sense of what had happened. His vision was blurred and he felt like he was seeing things--surely the world outside his shattered windshield wasn't upside down? He could taste blood in his mouth and upon exploration with his tongue he found that he had lost a few teeth. He reached with a trembling hand down--no, up--to his seat belt latch and pressed the button, falling down onto the floor of his car--well, no, truly it was the ceiling of his car. He grunted in pain as he connected with the ground, feeling shards of glass puncturing his body in various places.

He sensed pain everywhere, but didn't really feel it--it was as if he were watching all of this happen in a movie, detached and apart from himself. He watched his fingers claw at the windshield, dragging his body out onto the glass covered asphalt of the road, but he didn't feel any of this, and he wasn't sure if his movements were due to conscious thought or just automatic instinct, trying to keep him alive. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, his breath fogging in the cold autumn air, and looked around, his eyesight clearer now, the buzzing in his head and the ringing in his ears fading down slightly, allowing him to properly focus on the environment.

His car was upside down. A light pole lay down in the street about a hundred yards behind the car, so Sam could only guess that his car must have struck it. His car no longer resembled an automobile, it was a twisted hunk of metal, its blue paint scratched, all of the windows broken, glass littering the street surrounding it. Sam stared at the glass before remembering the glass container that had been sitting in his lap, the glass container that had held his pills. He looked down at his lap, expecting it to somehow still be there, and felt confused when he found his lap empty. Where were his pills? He looked at the ground again and saw them down there, scattered all over the street amidst shards of glass, bits of metal, old, decomposing trash, and autumn leaves. He reached forwards with a trembling, bleeding, broken hand and picked up one of the pills from the ground, placing it on his dry tongue, savoring the bitter taste of it as it began to dissolve there.

He found he didn't care much about anything anymore, and started crawling around on his bloodied hands and knees, ignoring the stabbing pains of the glass shards further cutting his palms and knees. He picked out as many pills as he could find, ignoring the dusting of tiny glass shards that clung to the capsules, and stuck them into his pockets. Once he was tired of this, he stood up before immediately collapsing to the ground again. He found his left leg hurt quite a bit. He thought it might be broken.

He stood up again and started limping down the sidewalk, ignoring the pain in his leg. This was fine. He wasn't quite sure where he was but he eventually found himself standing in front of his apartment building. Was this his apartment building? He found he couldn't remember what the building looked like, or even what his room looked like. He also found he couldn't remember anything really, his address, the name of his apartment, the name of his job, what type of car he drove, anything. He also realized he didn't care much. He just wanted to take his pills. But, he had to be somewhere first to take them, somewhere safe, somewhere his body seemed to know but his mind couldn't remember. So, he let his body carry him into the building, let himself get into the elevator and press one of the buttons, and let his broken, tired body drag him down an unfamiliar but familiar hallway, stopping in front of a door that looked exactly like all of the other doors in the hallway. He patted his pockets and found some keys there. Would you look at that.