Shattered

I don't know what happened. One second, I was on my way home from school for the weekend, driving down the same forest road that I've always taken. Now, my head is throbbing, my ears ringing and all I can remember is the screeching of brakes ... perhaps a dog barking? Was it a dog? I wonder where is it now? I hope it's alright. Wait, where am I now? Am I alright?

I try to open my eyes and try to blink away the black spots in my vision, only to shut them again when a wave of pain hits me. After waiting a few more seconds for the throbbing in my head and ringing in my ears to subside, I try to open my eyes again. This time, I'm not met with pain but with a fuzzy darkness as my eyes try and fail to refocus. With a sigh of frustration, I give up on trying to see and, instead, to try and use my nose and ears to figure out where I am and what happened.

Lifting my head slightly, I take a deep breath through my nose. Gasoline, or maybe oil is the first thing that I'm able to smell, followed by the stench of burning rubber. I come to a relatively certain conclusion that I must have crashed and hit something on the side of the road, most likely a tree of a telephone pole. There's also something else. A familiar and oddly metallic smell that I can't put my finger. I try to figure out what the smell might be and where it might be coming from but come up with a blank.

Now to listen. I tilt my head slightly and focus on all the sounds around me while trying to ignore any normal night time noises. The first thing I hear is my engine popping and crackling like I'd expect after a car crash, but I also hear a feeble squeaking sound, like something spinning. Is that my tire? I hear something else off in the distance, too. Forcing myself to focus harder, I hear the faint cry of a scared dog. My heart stops as my memory begins to rush back.

It was just like any other night until the eyes of a dog were caught in my headlights. Desperately, I tried to avoid hitting the dog but it was already too late, it's black fur made it nearly invisible against the dark asphalt this late at night. As the tires screeched against the road, I knew I wasn't going to stop in time and hoped that it would run but the damn dog stayed frozen in the middle of the road. I knew couldn't hit it. At the speed I was going, I would have kill it for sure. So, I did the next thing I could think of in that split second of panic. I turned.

While I try to wrap my mind around the stupidity of what I just did, I attempt to open my eyes and see just how bad of a situation I've gotten myself into. This time, my eyes open to a significantly clearer picture and I start to understand how big of a mistake I made. In front of me but is a completely shattered windshield and the trunk of a giant tree, one of its branches impaling the passenger seat beside me. Well, this confirms that it really was my spinning tire that I heard. I must have been launched up the tree by the ditch on the side of the road. Man, my dad is going to kill me when he finds out I treed my car trying to not hit a dog. At least the tree branch missed me.

Now that I can see again, I decide it's now or never to get out and see the totality with which I'll be skinned alive by my parents. I start mentally preparing myself for the impending end of my life as I move to unbuckle my seat belt. Before I even cross my arm over my body, a shockwave of pain shoots so violently through me that I'm suddenly struggling to remain conscious. Bright white flashes across my vision as start become overwhelmed with nausea and panic. Looking towards my seatbelt and finally understand fully the situation I'm in. I guess I know what that metallic smell from before was.

Just above the seatbelt across my lap, a large, jagged piece of something is jutting out of my stomach with steady flow of blood all around it. Shakily lifting my arm once again, I go to reach for it, trying to figure out what it was and where it could have come from. I usually know not to mess with injuries like this but panic and the desperation to understand what happened overrule my common sense. I'm only able to brush my fingers against the object when the same pain from before threatens to knock me unconscious again. Clenching my fists hard enough for my nails to draw blood, I fight to stay awake. Finally, the pain lessens just enough for my brain to recompose itself. With that moment of mental clarity, I come to a morbid realization; I'm not going to make it home tonight.