Snake Skin

Smooth Ride

"It's been 20 twenty minutes and we've gone maybe 3 miles" she told him. Sebastian slowly turned his head to her and looked at her with slightly crazy eyes.

"You wanna get out and push?" She shook her head, hiding a smile. "Then don't question the driving." He leaned forward and she braced herself. The ride was jerky and nauseating.

"Your not gonna puke are you?" he asked

"nope, I've got a gut of steel" She felt her gag reflex start to give way when they stopped harshly at a stop sign.

The intersection was dark, the only light were four dying street lamps in each direction and a single stop light, that dangled over the center of the intersecting roads. Kaarme braced herself again as Sebastian randomly moved the stick until the truck started to roll forward again. He took in a breath like he was going to say something but was cut off by the loud sound of impact.

It wasn't like in the movies. They didn't slowly fly through the air with dramatic opera music playing around them, the screen did not cut to black when the large truck smashed into their much smaller one, and Kaarmes life didn't flash before her eyes. She always thought that had to be some cosmic joke. Oh, your dying? Here's everything you're gonna miss or everything you've regretted, good luck. It's like the universe taunting you.

She felt them go through the air. She felt the sick feeling of weightlessness then the hard crashing of hitting the ground again, and again, and again until the truck tetered on it's wheels and came to a stop. For a fleeting moment she thought she was dead. She felt nothing, no pain, only shock and exhaustion. She turned her head to look to Sebashton. He was slumped over the steering wheel with his head on the dash. Shards of glass were embedded in his dreads but from what she could tell, he was only bleeding from a few places, his nose and a small gash on his lip. She had fallen to the floor board a bit and when she moved her arms to pull herself back up, that's when she felt it. A spasm of pain jolted up from her bicep and to the right side of her jaw causing her yelp out loudly, throwing her head back to where she had once been sitting.. Please don't be broken. Please don't be broken. She slowly looked down. A large shard of glass was embedded deep into the side of her right bicep, ripped through the soft leather of her jacket. Oh shit. She reached around her self and slowly pulled it out, the edges of the glass slicing into the pads of her fingers and palm. Kaarme tossed the shard to the side and squeezed the to placts of her fleash together.

Kaarme heals, and she heals fast, so fast that if she doesn't hold a bone straight after a break, it might fues incorrectly. It's happened more than once. She has many scars all over her body from old cuts and slashes that healed before she got the chance to hold them.

The skin of her bicep quickly stitched itself back together as she held it, leaving a new thin scar running about five inches down the center of her upper arm. She took a deep breath and went to hal herself back up onto her sit but found that she could barely move her fingers on her right hand. Kaarme was so distracted by the fragment of glass that was once sticking out of her arm that she didn't notice the strange way her arm slumped and how her collarbone was no longer symmetrical to the other.

"Easy" Kaarme whispered reassuringly to herself. She lined up her arm to it's socket as best as she could tell and leaned far to her left and rammed her right side, hard, into the passenger side door. It didn't work. She reared back again and slammed herself in to the door. The second time hurt more, the dull pain ached it's way up her side as she yelped out. She leaned over again and threw all her weight against the door for a third and final time. Not only had Kaarme slung her arm back into place but she had knocked the rusty, now battered, door swinging outward on its hinges. With help from her momentum, she came tumbling out of the cab and onto the cold hard pavement of the intersection. She threw her now operating hands out in front of her to break her fall. Shards of glass and small rocks of asphalt ripped into the heels of her hands.

She slowly rolled on to her back, feeling the cool wet pavement slowly seep through the worn leather of her jacket. She stared at the night sky breathless. Car doors and sirens a distant sound until slight groan coming from the cab cut through her stillness.

She called out Sebastian's name with no response. Kaarme rolled onto her side, her thick jacket protecting her arms from the bits of broken glass. She strained to pull herself from the ground.

She limped around the front of the truck. The sirens were getting closer now and she could hear the voices of the men calling out to them. She got to his side of the car, his door wasn't nearly as cavedin as hers was but it's rusty joints still screamed in response to kaarme opening the door. He only stirred slightly when she shook him.

"Sebastian I need you to wake up for just a moment" he, unsurprisingly, didn't respond. She heaved his large body back into his seat from the dash. He groaned and his eyes fluttered open then shut again, "Sebastian, I need some kind of sign you can hear me." he slowly nodded his head "ok, good, can you tell if any bones are broken?" he slowly flexed his fingers then arms, slightly rolling his shoulders and then gasped. He quickly shook his head.
"Can't... breathe..." she quickly slid her cold fingers underneath his thick sweatshirt and fell around his rib cage he winced and started gasping for more breath "Your ribs are broken, I think..." Thinking quickly, she raised her inner arm to her mouth "Sorry this is going to be really gross" Kaarme quickly bit deep and hard into the soft underside of her arm and placed the new gaping wound on Sebastian's lips. His eyes flashed open and he tried to pull away, he looked at her eyes wide.

"What the hell are you doing?" He gripped the sides of his head at the quick movement and wheezed. She could feel her skin start to come together again.

"Hurry and drink it." He stared at her "Trust me." He her arm slowly and drank. Her blood only poured for a few more seconds before it healed again.

"I- I- I feel better." He looked at her again "are you.... an angel?"

"What?! No!" Before he could countune the blue and red lights of an ambulance and a few police cars had finally met them. They were placed in the back and raced to a hospital where the doctors were astounded that no injuries were sustained, not even a concussion.