Definitely Dead

Chapter 1

My nightmare haunted me at work. The night consisted of tripping over my own shoes, a spilled serving tray of drinks, and a seer lack of tips. Serving seemed like such an easy way to make cash. Nights like tonight reminded me how incredibly wrong that naive idea was six months ago. All night I couldn't wait to get home, to attempt an actual rest where I may sleep through the night.

The road home was down a deserted highway curtained by trees on either side. The darkness of the night weighed on my eyes, the unlit roads blurring together. I turned the stereo up and sat straight in my chair, blinking hard. Nights like these put me in a black place. The numbing feeling through my body made me question whether or not to try being alert. In some ways, I liked feeling like I was falling into a pit of lonely despair; it made little mishaps like today seem insignificant. Actually, in these moods, everything seemed insignificant. I couldn't sing along to the radio, and I couldn't focus on the cars around me, if there had been any. Just blackness and white lines and my own headlights.

I had moods like this since as long as I could remember, as a child, learning about the word "depression" seemed to fit like a glove. Until the day when my Sunday school teacher didn't show up for Sunday school. We had a fill-in for several weeks. I remember asking my parents why she wasn't there, and them telling me she was sick and in the hospital. Not long after, we were attending her funeral. They explained to me how some hearts couldn't cope with everything in this world. How some people feel so sick, they take their own lives. They said she killed herself because she was depressed, and I felt horrible shame for ever thinking the idea of depression was something I could agree with.

It was difficult for me to understand. I remembered her always smiling, she would sing songs with us and she had a daughter and husband. It didn't make sense to me that she could do that to them.

In my child's heart, depression was just a word for feeling alone and out of place. I learned then, that it was much more, and I never claimed it as my own. On nights like these, it was easier for me to understand what she did. When something as small as a bad day at work caused me to question my entire existence. It made me feel weak, which made the feeling of dread worse.

My eyes blurred more, loosing the fight to stay awake. I tried hard to focus on the road, to keep my mind from wandering to places that made me think of my Sunday school teacher from so long ago. "Stay in the white lines" I thought. "Stay in the white lines. Your almost home." The headlights of my old Cherokee didn't do a very good job cutting through the darkness, and where there was nothing, there was suddenly a pair of round glowing eyes. I didn't have time to think, "a deer?" "A person?" I only had time to yank my steering wheel and swerve out of the way.

That's when I realized how fast I had been going. I lost complete control of the car, I gripped hard on the steering wheel, thinking that if it couldn't move then neither could the car. I squeezed my eyes closed and felt the world tumbling around me and whipping me in every direction.

When I finally stopped, wetness sprinkled onto my face. My front windshield broken, water spraying onto me and a loud wailing noise blasted out of the radio. I smashed it off and tried to move, but my vision blurred. I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe. I felt a shot of pain throughout my body, and then darkness.