A Tale... The Windfall

I could never really believe that it had actually happened. But I can see myself fading in and out of my surroundings. I can see the cheque arriving, the look on your face and I can feel how excited I was. The possibilities that lay before us. Knowing that everything was to change. The new house, the new leisure time that we had to do things that had always been put off and, the new cars. The sports car, of course. Not a red sports car, it was too cliché, but a fast one; very fast. One that roared when you put your foot down. No, I hadn't wanted red, but it was red now.

I hear a voice, like someone speaking quietly at the other side of a class room, “Don’t move; we’re getting you out of there.” Who is he talking to? I want to be where I am, I deserve it, don’t I? I can see his eyes still staring at me, only for a split second before there was nothing but a splash of red on the windscreen where his face was and the spider web spreading across the glass before it implodes inwards. My wife is screaming beside me, the car is swerving I can feel it. Piercing screaming, then I can’t hear it through the tearing of metal, my whole body is forced forward; I can hear my ribs snapping in me and the copper taste of blood filling my mouth. I can’t look beside me, but I know she is there; twisted and broken. I caught a glimpse of her as the dash board..., her beauty replaced by savage terror and pain that I never knew existed...

I can see the show rooms, each brightly lit with eager salesmen descending like vultures or approaching individually like a snake. We were eager and there was nothing that we couldn’t really afford, but we wanted the best. No, not red we told them; racing green. And we drove it out of the forecourt like royalty in a carriage; too cold to have the roof down, but summer would be here eventually. Pushing the peddle; feeling the engine straining at the leash; so used to the old car and not thinking, I pushed my foot down on the accelerator at the roundabout and the car leapt forward, the steering fighting against me, tyres spinning, clouds of smoke rising out of the back of the car; panic rising inside me and losing control.

I’ve killed her, the only person I didn’t want to harm and didn’t think I could. Broken. Even somebody I didn’t even know; seeing his eyes briefly then red. Red then blue then red, again and again. Sparks erupt; I can hear metal screaming again and I’m back there, turning to see her blood spurting from her mouth in a choked scream; her chest forced in by the dashboard, looking away, a final crunch and the last thing I can feel is the hot blood running down the side of my face and I can’t brush it away; my trousers wet and clinging to my broken legs, arms useless in front me. The chair buckles behind me then the pain disappears. The distant voice again, I don’t know it, soothing me. Don’t. Don’t touch me; it’ll stop and I deserve it, I’ve killed her. But they are not stopping and I can hear things around me but can feel nothing until something flexes in front of me