Sleepless

Two

I was looking at him as we took a dive toward the concrete. He was still sitting in the same position, that stance of foreign contempt, an almost calm acceptance, then I saw his brow arch. He seemed sad, disappointed; even now, as he defied gravity, he knew who was to blame, didn’t he? Wasn’t he sad, instead, because he didn’t want to blame me? Was this wishful thinking? Am I running from the blame? Now, it was too late, I had accepted this as I had accepted the consequences of my irresponsibility.

The car was pushed right and it landed on all four tires.

My eyes went wide, I couldn’t believe this, but my joy was short lived.  More cars were headed in our direction, somehow we had ended up on the opposite side of the road. There were no real thoughts at this point, I simply did, and so I drove straight over the road divider. As I did, I noticed how oddly casual my demeanor had become, as if to say that the rolling death headed towards us was of no importance, and even now I drove at impossibly high speeds.

I drove parallel to the overpass where the darkness was thickest and considered myself out of the worst, a thought that I knew was not naivety, but simply the choice of ignorance, the choice of optimism. Once more I looked in my brother’s direction, he still sat in that overly comfortable and slightly contemptuous pose, but the sad look on his face was gone now, and now he looked forward. Looking at him or, more likely, looking past him is when I saw her, the woman in the wedding dress.

A gaunt woman in a white wedding dress was wondering the late night streets in an almost suicidal stride. Her appearance was ghastly, that of a woman whose death had not been enough to end her pains. Her dress was torn, her skin pallid and her jaw was stretched long as she wept in a tone that seemed to travel outwards of my head.

My sight was fixed again, but this time it was her. This was not good, I was aware of the danger that it would be if my brother saw her, a sort of transcendental knowledge, the kind that even déjà vu pales to in comparison.

He heard the weeping, in his head, much like I did, and he turned.

He began to speak “That’s the-“

She was directly in front of my face, she screamed, tearing her cheeks open as far as her wisdom teeth. I screamed and closed my eyes…

 She fell quiet, I could hear my hitching breath, and I could feel the cold of the foreboding darkness. I slowly opened my eyes fearing the possibilities. Was she still there, why had my brother cut off? Why didn’t he react?

I opened my eyes.