Kamber

Chapter 6

It was so stupid.

I blame myself for it every day.

Amber and I got bored of the party, which had started to dwindle anyway, so we decided to head home. She drove since I was the only one who’d been drinking, even if it were only one beer.

“Your turn,” I said. “Truth or Dare?”

“Dare, I guess? I don’t really know what you could think of that I could do while driving, but knock yourself out.” I looked over and saw her smiling as her eyes kept on the road.

“Alright.” I looked out the windshield also and, seeing through the illuminated path of the headlights that the road seemed to go completely straight for at least two more minutes, got the perfect idea. “I dare you to drive for five seconds without the lights on.”

“Are you crazy?” She shouted, though there was an amused sparkle in her eye; she’d always been an adrenaline junkie like that.

“I double dog dare you.”

“Oh gosh, now I’m really in for it,” she said sarcastically. “Okay…” she trailed off for a moment as she strained to see what I already knew; that the road was completely empty and straight and would be for much more than five seconds. “Here I go.”

And then the world went dark.

It’s truly terrifying to me, both then and now, how deserted I really felt then. There wasn’t a single sound to be heard nor a single beam of light to be seen. If I hadn’t been able to remind myself that I was riding in a car sitting beside Amber, who was beautiful even while invisible, I might’ve thought the world had ended and I’d fallen straight off the edge of it.

I guess somewhere in my thoughts I’d forgotten to count.

“Has it been long enough?” Amber asked me at once.

“Um-”

I never got to finish that sentence.

All of a sudden a sound pierced the air; the squealing of tires on asphalt and, somewhere beneath it, the wailing of screams coming from the left side of the road.

“AMBER!” I shrieked, using the mere split second I knew we had left to reach for the switch to the headlights.

I can’t say I remember whether it worked or not before I gave in to the insistent tugging of heat and a darkness thicker than the one we were already in.