Thread: Man Of My Dreams (SketchyEquine x Traveler)

Rubble and smoke, as far as he could see, filled the world. He stood alone in the devastated city. Everything good was gone. Every blade of grass, every leafy tree, had been reduced to dust, and smoke, and despair. Flowers no longer bloomed. Rivers that once ran with clean, cool water now sat dry. Bleached bones crackled in the unforgiving sun, slowly dehydrating and then falling apart, only to become one with the sand below. He looked down at the ground between his Wolverines. The sand blew with a hot wind that reminded him of those bulbous helmets his grandmother used to sit beneath, when she was waiting for her rollers to dry at the beauty salon. He remembered the way the shop smelled - ammonia and nail polish mingled with cigarettes and cheap perfume. It was an old salon, one that ignored the marching of time and still catered to old women in too-bright lipstick and blue hair, who gossiped about the days when they used to be in the New Yorker's Society Page. Those days were gone, long gone, but the wind brought remembrance of a time when he didn't have the burdens of his sins weighing upon him. Of a time 'before'. Before the party, before the argument that propelled him to leave, to take the keys, to insist that he was 'okay', and to go down the two-lane, rural short-cut between the campus library and the Commons... before the stupid joint and the shaky hands and the OH SHIT that preceded the screams and the horror... The sound of the world dying around him was loud. Every crackle, every buzz, every slow succumbing crumble, throbbed loudly in his ear, but it could not cover the memory of her screams. He heard her in his dreams. He heard her in the silent hours of the early morning, and in the small stillness that blipped between songs on the radio. He heard her when the TV flipped between the show and the commercials, and it was driving him crazy. He felt like he was barely holding on to sanity, and he wished, not for the first time, that it had been him, not her, who suffered the consequences of his stupidity. His foot hit something metal. He bent down and turned over the bent rectangle, barely making out the reflective words on one side. Broadbent Way. Broadbent Way. The rural short cut that wound along the stream and botanical gardens that flanked the east side of campus. Broadbent Way, that crossed Huntington Avenue, leading to the Commons. Where the dorms were. Where she was headed, according to her lawyer. He could smell the sweet scent of his joint through the whiskey. It had calmed him. It had helped him to stop cussing out loud at the absent other side of the argument. It hadn't even been an important argument. A roommate was breaking the lease, leaving school early, and he had been pissed. He didn't want to let it go. He wanted the rent, damn it , and he wanted it before the end of the month. There was a four-way stop at Broadbent and Huntington. Stupid stop signs. No one stopped, unless you counted the slowing pause that preceded acceleration. He rounded the corner, dropped his joint - Shit! The burn on his thigh still stung. - dropped the joint, his last bit of weed before payday He reached down to try to catch it, but the four-way stop had come sooner than he had anticipated it and as he zoomed through - how fast did they say he was going? Was it really fifty? - a flash of reflective white and orange crossed his view, and the crash, the 'thump', the horrible OH SHIT that he yelled as the blur collided with his car and then flew away from the intersection, towards the botanical gardens. He felt his chest tighten. It was happening again. He crashed into the signpost. The car smelled like radiator fluid and burning plastic. He felt the hot, wet, vapors envelope him as he pushed the driver's door open and struggled to undo his seat belt. He vomited in the gravel. There was a sound. A hissing from his engine. The tires were still spinning, trying to catch ground and move, but the car had been pinned on the curb and against the fire hydrant. The water spewed powerful and cold and turned the car over just as he crawled away, over his own vomit, to the middle of the street. The sound again, a scream. He looked towards the botanical greenway. No, no no no no, not again. I don't want to. Please, no no no. He knew that he was going to crawl in that direction, then stand, when he realized he was not injured, then stumble-fall-run towards the bike and the girl. The girl who was impaled on a tree branch, who's eyes were wide and unbelieving, whose face he couldn't remember yet he couldn't forget the way her eyes had looked at him, focusing and unfocusing as her body fought to stay conscious. To stay alive. Oh God. I want to die. I should be hurt, not her. I should be injured, not her. I should have died. Not her. Not anyone . Intent wasn't a defense, though. It wasn't enough, and though he had almost killed her, his clean record and his grades and the pleading letters from his family and loved ones had somehow convinced the judge to give him a lenient sentence. Too lenient, according to some. Certainly according to her family. Too lenient according to him , who felt like he hadn't done enough penance to make up for destroying her. For killing her. The last he had heard she would never wake up she was brain dead. Her family was considering pulling the plug. I want to die. I should have died. He knelt on the sand, thrusting his hands into the hot ground and wiling his heart to stop. Just. STOP. Stop. Die, damn it. But he was too cowardly to take his own life. He feared hell. He feared being 'nothing'. He feared facing her in the afterlife. He hated himself, and there was nothing he could do to change what he had done. I want to die. Hello I should have died. Hello! I hate myself. Hello! He was standing in the rubble. He turned. The smoke and dust swirled in the distance, as if someone or some thing was moving through the crumbled road. Hello! Hello! He shaded his eyes in the glare and saw a figure running towards him. It was slight, slim, and frantic. Then it stopped and stared. A face with eyes wide locked her gaze on his. He'd never seen anyone here. Hello? He answered, lowering his hand. Behind her the dust parted, and he could see green through the grays of his world. Hello? Hesitantly he took a step forward. Are you real?