BLEED

The Lemon Given

     Through the sharpest smile, that bastard began to laugh. A cold high cackle like a maddening hyena, teeth, sharp and jagged as ones might be after gnawing on a few thousand decaying bones. His skin was taught, veins poking up from beneath the tan covering that seemed to just sit atop the bones, every feature on his face was sharp, jagged, an aggressive structure lined with purple lips, model nose, and haunting eyes like a cats. All the little reflecting prisms of their iris a silver dollar in the sunlight, even beneath the poorly made straw hat resting on the wavy mess of auburn hair on his head. I couldn't make out the color of the eyes, just that pinprick shine hiding beneath the brim. All I could do was mark every part of this figure down in my head as I felt the ichor of my life draining out of my face. My vision, half of what I used to see, with that stupid lemon car a shinning star behind him, as the endorphins pumped what felt like an acid trip straight into my psyche. 

   I guess dying is pretty cool, I couldn't really feel anything after it started, all the shock and adrenaline keeping my one eye wide, luckily keeping my heart pumping too. Pumping just enough to be pissed, just enough to know that this piece of shit was happy he hit me. Written all over his face like a bad joke, the grin, the laugh, the stupid car. As if It's specific shittiness was intentional. I'd wished I was thinking about all the good times, having the best parts of my life fitter across my vision like a flip book of the golden years. Maybe that time I was twelve and stole my Mom's car one night, high as a kite, giggling the whole time at every silly thought that danced through my head. "What if I ran over the mailboxes, or side swiped a car?" That just made me laugh more, the adrenaline of the experience being the most memorable thing about it. 

     Though of course at the time I was just hoping for a glimpse of that girl who drove up the interstate, a single snapshot of those few precious seasons we had spent together, silly how you can get so wrapped up in a person that the moment they're gone you've lost yourself. That really woke me up at the time, knowing how much of me was just a reflection of her, not any part of myself. Maybe that led her to leaving, that inspiring, burning heart of a romantic had just stopped being himself, simple as that. But I didn't get any of that lovely imagery, I couldn't even begin to think of anything pleasant as my face melded with the asphalt. No, I could only bare my teeth, bubbling with spit and blood. That honest burning feeling within my chest likely blood pooling but felt more familiar, like the sensation of turbulent rage that comes boiling up when you've just had it, you can't take any more. My body wanting to heave what little contents were left within me, which in all honesty just pissed me off more.

     Here I am laying face down with my legs dangling up and over me like a scorpion, blood pooling, life fading, and this bastard is just standing there, laughing. Where the hell was hotdog guy in all this mess, what about the people behind me in line? Certainly they've got something to say about all this, they've gotta be doing something right? If I can make it to the hospital I bet I'll survive, that's why I'm not seeing my life flash, I'm not dying. I'm horribly injured and laying here with a cosplay villain yucking it up outside his citrus mobile. Someone had to have called the ambulance by now, the authorities at the least!

     I mustered what I could to turn my vision away from the scum, who had stopped his laughter and now walked a full gait towards my thrashed form. I turned that throbbing optic within its socket, turning to see the miracles of humanity coming to my aid, the people of this begotten city rushing to keep this man from me, from doing anymore harm than they've done. But I turned and wished that I had simply lost both of my eyes in the crash. I looked and I saw not a soul staring my way, not even the guy behind me there gawking in shock. Not a single person on that sidewalk was looking at us, not me, not the lemon prius, and certainly not old Smelly who laid about as disastrously as me in a gutter just next to the hotdog cart. His thick belly and bald head shining in the sunlight. He looked as if he'd been twisted, like a chef rining out a rag he'd cleaned up pasta sauce with. His apron had caught up in the wind, and flown directly onto a passing businessman. He seemed to swat at it for a minute getting the pasta sauce all over his forearm before getting it down on the ground. Let me tell you that my heart raced even faster when he paid that sauce not even the slightest mind. A guy like that would throw a fit if a fly landed on his suit let alone that mess. What the fuck is happening?

      There's no way a hundred people and change didn't see us get blown out by that asshole's Prius! I'm bent over, imitating an arthropod, and the hotdog guys giving his best "weiner left in the microwave." How the hell were they just passing by, the taxis just go around his car! This is New York isn't it? Where's all the angry people standing up for what's right, how the hell is this happening? Its the adrenaline, must be wearing off, I'm panicking, my heart rates gone completely bat shit. I don't think I'm making it to the hospital, I'm certainly not making it to the damn interview, maybe not even home one last time. 

     That's when I felt icy hands throw my legs to the ground sending me totally parallel and out of that embarrassing position. My eye swirled in its place, back to the man who was now rolling me onto my back with no care to the damage he had done, or was doing. I could've sworn my lung had fallen from my torso with the pain I'd experienced. But the ice that gripped my heart next wasn't as terrible as the smile crossing his face as he lifted me from the crimson painting we had made. Lifting me up from this chaos into a totally new hell that began in the back of his shitty yellow Prius.