Sin (Wattys Winner)

Chapter 03

Sometime after, I don't know how long or how far, I stopped and vomited again. As my breakfast that morning had been the usual two slices of toast, undercooked eggs and tepid coffee (they know how to look after you in that mental home), my previous efforts at throwing up had relieved me of the contents of my stomach. Dry retching was about all I could manage, but my body had a good attempt at more.

I'd left the beach behind a while ago, not noticing as the sand gave way to rough brush, which in turn transformed into grass. At some point the grass had met up with a road, maybe for a few drinks and a pizza, and I'd automatically turned along it, my feet taking me along their own path without actually letting the rest of me know. Perhaps they fancied pizza as well. Pepperoni, probably. Or maybe a meat feast. Just no tomato on the base please. I hate tomato.

I walked in a daze, feeling amazed, phased and, sadly, not erased. For a long time, I didn't actually think anything. I didn't notice flies on my face, though I perhaps brushed the odd one away. I didn't hear squirrels scooting along branches of trees or rabbits scurrying through the long grass. I never noticed any cars driving past, except for the one with the music blasting out. Music, nowadays, is a phrase that gets thrown on any pile of notes chucked together, however loosely. This particular harmonic car crash consisted of a bass beat I could feel in my bones, and someone swearing in rhyme, shouting to be heard above the relentless drums. The car was a pale metallic blue, small but with a rear spoiler so disproportionately large that, if the car hadn't have been doing 80 miles an hour, it would surely have tipped backwards. As it was, I expected it to achieve lift off at any moment, its escape velocity taking the vehicle into near orbit.

I didn't see the driver, but I assumed he wore a baseball cap, the peak curved down, frowning at the fact it covered the head of an idiot. He'd be on his mobile phone, shouting to be heard above the guy on the CD who was swearing at the top of his voice above the beat. He'd drive like this whether he was on the open road, or whether he was driving past a primary school. It was cool. He was invincible.

I vomited again at that point. Or tried to.

I hadn't seen the small dent on his bonnet. But I knew it was there.

I hadn't seen the single strand of strawberry blonde hair that was still, no matter how well he'd tried to clean the evidence away, trapped in the arm of his wiper blade. But I knew it was there.

He hadn't seen the girl. He was reading a text message on his phone from one of his drinking-smoking-drugging buddies. He hadn't felt his car hit her. The only thing he could feel was the beat driving its way into his soul. It wasn't until he'd pulled into his mother's drive and was walking away from the car that he saw the dent and he saw the hair and he saw the blood. I think he probably vomited then, but it was a club I didn't care to share membership of.

Up ahead the road curved to the right around a small copse. I saw the blue car with the enormous, phallic spoiler take the curve way too fast. The driver drove this way normally, so he could, most likely, have handled the skid. He would have laughed as he turned into it and accelerated away. Adrenalin, food of the yobs. Except he wasn't laughing. He didn't get chance. I'm quite sure the tree didn't leap into the middle of the road. I'm equally certain its branches didn't reach down, snatching the car off the road.

I didn't see the crash, but I heard it. I couldn't smell the smoke but I knew it was there. I couldn't see the strange angle his bloody head was hanging at, or the way his right arm didn't seem to be fully attached at the elbow anymore. But I knew. I knew.

I didn't run to the accident. I didn't believe it was entirely an accident. And when I rounded the curve in the road, I looked at the wreckage just as I would have roadkill, although for the squashed remains of a hedgehog or pheasant I would have felt something. Here, I felt nothing. No sympathy and no sorrow. I didn't feel numb, as I thought I might, I just felt nothing for the man, little more than a boy, who had driven too fast for too long and had mowed down a young girl on her way home from school without even noticing. I felt nothing for the person who could clean his car, polishing till his arms ached, to try and hide the fact. I felt nothing for the mangled corpse of someone who, the next day, could climb back into his car, turn up his music, talk on his phone, and forget it had even happened. The expanding pools of blood and oil, merging together like a ying-yang pictogram were just something to step over.