follow you into the dark - carl grimes

X

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x.

different state of mind
"tonight i'm like everybody else"

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I saw someone die once. On the way to school one morning in sixth grade.

The SUV in front of us plowed right into an eighth grader on his bike as he was pulling out of the driveway of his house.

My dad slammed on the breaks and jumped out, like maybe he could help or something. But the kid was dead before he even hit the ground. From the passenger seat, I could see where he had been thrown into the ditch along the road, neck twisted awkwardly and his skull cracked open, crushed in on the side. He hadn't worn a helmet. I had seen this boy on the way to school often, he was usually further ahead by this time, and he always wore a helmet. One of his eyes was still open, staring blankly.

Just as quickly as he had gotten out of the truck, my dad hopped back in. "Don't look at it. Any of it." He said. His fingers drummed the steering wheel. The owner of the SUV was pacing along the white line, scrambling through her purse. I could see silhouettes of a backseat full of kids through the tinted rear window.

"What happened?" I asked, because it was all I could manage. It was obvious what had happened. Maybe what I really wanted to know was why or how. Why did this happen? How could this happen? To a boy who was just trying to get to school, on a cold morning, running late and forgot his helmet. And why wasn't she paying attention, why was she going so fast? Killed him fifty feet from his front door. Killed him. In front of me, my dad, her own children.

Suddenly, another woman came running down the gravel driveway, still in her pajamas. She was screaming. I'd never heard anyone scream like that before, like they just wanted to absolutely die. Guess the lady killed him in front of his own mother, too.

"Is that his mom?" I, again, asked a question I already knew the answer to. She was on her knees now, trying to put his broken skull back together.

The other woman stood there, one hand holding her cell phone flipped open to her ear, the other dangling at her side. Her whole face kept twitching, then she turned her head and vomited into the frosty grass.

Dad didn't respond to me. He instead restarted up the truck up and turned it around. He didn't take me to school that morning. We went back home. He called into work and called into school saying we were sick. Then he went to his room and shut the door. I sat on the couch hugging my backpack until it got dark out.

I am awake.

Wait.

What?

I am waking up.

In order to wake up, you must first have fallen asleep. I had been sleeping, I had been dreaming.

I blink my eyes and scramble a moment, trying to free myself from the cocoon of sheets, alerting my bedmate in the process.

"Nightmare?" Carl's voice asks in the dark.

I don't answer. I'm too frightened. How did I fall asleep?

My body feels heavy, warm. There is a certain drowse about me that I have not experienced in years and most certainly had forgotten.

Carl is on his back, face towards the ceiling. "I was beginning to think you were a freak of nature, you know, with all the not sleeping."