Trouble

18

3 years ago today was the day I lost everything I ever knew. I remember it so vividly it scares me.

I was sixteen and we were on the M25 returning back home from a months long holiday in Guyana. We driving home from the airport- me my dad his girlfriend soon to be fiancé her 14 year old daughter Rhianne and her 5 year old daughter, Mya.

I remember there being a lot of traffic and I was fiddling with Mya's seatbelt so that it went appropriately around her booster seat. My dad had neatly pulled up behind a silver car, sandwiching it between ourselves and an enormous Tesco's lorry, joining the stationary traffic. I had finally managed to buckle in her seatbelt correctly to make sure she was safe and sound and when I had managed that I settled back nicely into my own seat trying to get comfortable because we still had a long way to go.

I looked out the window bored looking at the cows I could see on the green field, enjoying the odd English sunshine and the good music my dad was playing. It was different compared to the busy and polluted atmosphere in London. My dad and Cynthia were making small talk in the front and Rhianne had tuned us all out because she had got in trouble as we stepped off the plane for being selfish and grumpy.

Then there was this ear piercing screech- one I would never forget and it was followed by a bang and just like that my world had turned upside down forever.

W hen I woke up no one was making any noise and all I could here was a whoosh, whoosh sound over and over and over again. Every breath I took hurt and there was a burning sensation inside my nose. Overpowering petrol fumes dirtied each and every atom of air that entered into my aching, suffering lungs. It was so strong I could taste it.

I managed to open my eyes.

Cynthia was right in front of me, inches away from my face. How...? I was sitting behind her in the car yet now I was lying above her, suspended from the ceiling hanging from the seatbelt that had saved my life. The seatbelt reminded me of Mya. Mya? Where was she? Where was Rhianne? I moved my eyes as I didn't want to move my body scared it would hurt. My short leg was stretched awkwardly behind me, jammed into the radiator of the 38 tonne truck that had just smashed into the back of us. The roof of our car was gone.

I could now see a mass of flesh, my "step- sister's" dark curly hair was all mangled in the same radiator as my leg. Rhianne's body was imprinted with glass all over with the added blue flecks of paint mixed in with it. Her face was studded with so much it looked like one of those mosaics, a mosaic of glass. I remember her eyes staring wide in front of her. Frozen.

There was blood running from her nose, from her ears from her head. Everywhere really. Blood was pouring everywhere. She was wearing dark clothes and yet there was still this unstoppable bright red blood seeping out, neon against her navy blue Nike hoody. Her body was completely distorted, bones were sticking out of her arms and legs the steering wheel embedded into her chest her guts spluttered everywhere.

Her clothes had ripped and she had no dignity whatsoever. You could see her breast hanging out as they were quite big for a 14 year old. It was a gruesome gory sight and I don't think I'll ever be able to get that image out of my head. It still haunted me as it would anyone else.

I couldn't look away from her she was supposed to be my little sister and also I couldn't move my neck, I couldn't turn it. I later realised that it was because I had broken it.

The whoosh whoosh sound didn't stop and I soon figured out that it was the sound of the cars on the other side of the motorway. I moved my eyes trying to see outside the car flicking them nervously to the side. Then I saw my dad. Still in his West Indies cricket top. His favourite top that me Rhianne and Mya got for him one Father's Day. He had blood coming out of his ears and his nose and his eyes.