The Death Of Our Friends

Stained Skin

  White lights of busy highways blinded eyes in the darkness of the night as people drove the roads. The night air was almost silent aside from the cars racing past, but in that moment all other sounds ceased to exist as metal crunched against metal. Wheels spinning out of control, an intoxicated driver collided with a motorbike. Metal scraped against the pavement as tires screeched to a halt, the burning smell of rubber filling the night air as each car swerved to avoid the collision. The car laying there with its scraped up belly facing the sky as the roof caved in and the driver crawled out relatively unharmed. Blood dripped from his head as he staggered across the highway clearly intoxicated with a hand to his head and the bleeding already ceasing. The biker was not so lucky. She lay across the pavement, helmet cracked as her skin was stretched across the road, the left side of her face laying down in the pool of her blood as her skin was stripped away, muscle facing the rest of the world exposed to the dirt and pavement below. Stones sticking in her skin as metal from the car door pierced her leg and the exhaust pipe from her bike burned a hole in her suit stripping the skin from her ankles, her fingers tangled in the wheel twisting at inhuman angles, wrists snapped and back twisted.

As she lay there eyes hardly open she saw a man step out from behind a car. He was unlike all the rest around her, he wasn't looking at her bug-eyed. He had a grim expression and a strange jacket. Through the slits in her eyes she noticed a marching band style jacket, black and white with black hair and eyes to match. He knelt in front of her and placed his hand on her head, his fingers cold almost like death itself. He spoke softly without a smile on his face he looked her in the eyes. "Theresa, I'm sorry it ends for you this way. You might live on but it will be painful and there's no way you will be independent again," he glanced behind him, looking at the intoxicated driver. "I know it seems unfair but that's why I'm here to give you a choice." Startled Theresa tried to move her hand to push him away but found herself unable.

She was paralysed and realised that the reason she felt no pain was from the window frame sticking from her torso and no doubt through some of the spine. Terrified she tried to ask him who he was and how he knew her name but she couldn't move her lips and lay there on the road skin still stripped from the sides of her face. Expression still stone cold he looked at her sensing what she wanted to ask. "My name was Mikey, but it doesn't matter who I was or how I know who you are because you're time is coming to an end. There is very little reason that you will survive so I offer you a choice."

Smile invisible to the world as lips refused to move she accepted. An ambulance pulled up and paramedics ran to the scene searching for a pulse as they bypassed the wreckage of the car and knelt beside the bike that only appeared to have Theresa's body sprawled out across it. As they attempted CPR she walked across the highway holding Mikey's hand as his expression remained cold, only a marching band jacket was slung across her shoulders as they left the highway lights dim and the night silent.