Pain Killer

CHAPTER 1

Without a sign of warning, a shiny black car screeched off the road track and whacked Bernard on the side, tossing him from his standpoint and whamming him directly into the air, far into a nearby street.

Everything happened so fast he could barely understand. He slammed onto the hard, oven-warm concrete of the street and the rough surface tore bitterly into his skin like barbs. His face crunched tight as he groaned. He lifted his head to see, but sight was spiraling and drizzling out of order. He pressed his hand flat against the ground and tried to raise himself, and a groan escaped his lips as he did so.

He couldn't smile openly to the people that owned the feet that had surrounded him. But on the inside, he grinned the widest grin he'd ever had in a long time, that is, without being tipsy on alcohol. Finally, death would answer his prayers. It would grant him his sole, deepest wish. From the way he felt, he bet darkness would soon hover around his eyes, slowly blotting out the light of misery he called his life, fade away the pain he couldn't heal. If death could favour me, he thought, I'd be enslaved to it forever.

Legs scurried away from his side, and the rear under of a black car, and shining black tires rolled and stopping in their place came into his view. He heard the unbolting of a door, then the banging close of it.

Another pair of legs tapered over to him and the owner crouched down beside him. His nose was still fully working, so he inhaled every warm scent the woman emitted.

The scent was familiar, and it smelled terribly good.

"Oh my God!" the person's voice panicked.

The voice was female pitched. And again, it was familiar. As much as he longed to see who this person was, the greater part of his will was to stay put on the ground, not alter anything by moving, let death take its course over his body. But the woman's warm hand on his arm did not make anything better.

"Hey, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, are you okay? I'll get you to a hospital! Stay put okay? Stay put!"

The area of his arm covered by the woman's fingers compressed. Her grip had tightened on his arm, and she turned him over without much stress. For a woman, he was impressed at her strength.

She turned him over on the dry concrete. The heat on the floor from the sun was seeping fast through his shirt. He lay, face up, taking one last hopeful look at the blinding light of the plain white sky, a light that indicated the ironic glory of his life, waiting for the veins of darkness to creep over his eyes like scales, end everything.

Like he'd been waiting for, the light of the sky was cut off from his eyesight. His body relaxed as the shadow of darkness spread above his vision. His eyelids covered the white of his eyes halfway, the window to his soul. His nerves and senses and veins calmed, so much like the sudden peace of a ravaging ocean. The calmness on his inside nullified the aggravation that came with the violence of the accident. It soothed the throbbing on his temples and the twitching in his abdomen that came with the hit. His muscles loosened up as he accepted his fate, his deepest wish, his freedom; as he accepted death.

And just when everything was beginning to blackout...

"Bernard?"

His eyes suddenly bolted wide open like an electric surge. The name sparked awake something in his senses. It was so much like life, his enemy, who'd obviously thwarted his one chance to legally die, echoed harsh whispers of his name into the empty acoustic barrel of this soul, pounded against the drum of his ears with an angry hammer in place of a tender drumstick and his eyes had no choice but to snap open and let it all go away.

Or maybe, it wasn't his name that made everything ceased. It was the voice, the familiarity and the richness with which the voice came, a voice his mind couldn't just resist despite his earnest desire to float away into eternal darkness; a process he'd been waiting for and a process was just happening.