Ponder Place

Picking up from where we left off in Part I; Be sure to read Part I.

You’re about half way past the bus when a small blonde girl runs around the front, stepping into the path of your car.

You don’t have time to react before you feel the impact. She hits your windshield leaving a small spider web in the glass. Through the spider web you see the shocked expression on her face. This expression remains with you as she tumbles over the top of your car. Her expression remains burnt in your memory.

Conflict, do you stop and call an ambulance, or do you run.

You must still be in auto-pilot mode because you find your foot has become heavy on the gas. Speeding away you hope nobody saw your license. Relieved once you realize you still did not have one, and the paper license given to each new car owner had been torn away earlier that week.

Luck was on your side.

However, not very far on your side, moments later you hear sirens.

You’re now on the run, where do you go? To work? Act normal as if it were not you who had just hit a small child in an automobile and left the scene of the crime?

Luckily this conflict is not one you will need to address. Just then a cop comes to view speeding in the opposite direction.

How did they respond so quickly? It must have been their lucky day, a patrol car very near to the location of a hit and run. The patrolman sees your cracked windshield and almost without slowing snaps his car around in a screeching U turn.

Fresh conflict, you’re now being chased by the cops. Do you pull over right away and give up? Hoping that will somehow shine kindly upon the impending consequences of your recent actions?

It’s not a good chance; you decide against it.

The cop is not far behind. The cold seems to have lost its effect on you; sweat has formed on your forehead. The clutched feeling in your chest remains, and has grown much worse upon sighting the cop.

You now wished you’d flossed your teeth. They don’t allow dental floss in prison. How do they justify that? The oral hygiene of prisoners must be suffering from this decision.

No time for that now, you need to get away.

Conflict, you are now in the midst of a chase. It’s not a high speed chase, but you anticipate it leading up to that very quickly. Do you reach over and buckle up? You’d been in too much of a hurry to do so when leaving your house. It seemed the sensible thing to do. With eyes fixated on the road, you reach with your left hand, attempting to grasp the familiar seatbelt. Several attempts pass and you cannot seem to find the seatbelt.

You look down, oh; there it is, caught behind the seat. You grab it and feel an extremely sharp pain shoot down your back. You’re not sure what has happened because it is pitch black. But that excruciating pain is there, repeatedly tracing up and down your entire body.

If you’d been paying attention you might have noticed yourself drifting slightly into the other lane. A lane which happened to contain a dump truck loaded with gravel headed in the opposite direction.

You were not paying attention and do not notice this.

Your perception of time is warped. The pain is very real to you and seems to be the only thing which you are able to focus on; despite your best effort.

If you were not in excruciating pain, and had you been able to see, you would have known that a crowd had begun to gather. And in the space of time which to you felt like hours, merely a minute had passed. This is unfortunate because of your current predicament.

You think you hear the sirens but you cannot be sure. The deep blackness which has encompassed your vision is pierced by painfully bright white spots, which flitter into view and back out almost as quickly. You attempt to reach out and block these jittery lights, but the pain this movement brings arrests your attention from the lights.

Without giving a reason, the pain vanishes. It is still pitch black, but the frenzied white lights have also vanished. You look at your arms. They are fine, looking down you find your legs, and everything else seems in tact. That is strange; you were in such pain before. How could you not have some physical anomaly?

Before you are able to contemplate too heavily on this confusing discovery, your attention is pulled to the darkness.

To Be Continued…

Continued in Part III.

Title image used with permission and courtesy of Epiphany, check out the original here.