Chapter Text
I couldn’t tell if I was conscious or not; was I in the middle of a dream?
Pain erupted through me like a volcano, agony wracked my entire body. It was consuming, really. Would the pain ever go away? I couldn't think clearly at all, there was only agonizing pain. There was no source to the pain I felt—it was all over. It was my entire being. Could a dream feel quite so realistic? The concept of reality versus illusion was lost within my hazy mind. Were those police sirens? Why were they so loud, so desperate to be heard? I was trying to sleep the pain away, couldn’t they just shut the fuck up for a moment?
Where was I, anyways? What in god’s name was going on?
It was warm, very warm. A hot and humid summer’s night; it would likely storm later on.
I was trying to sleep, but it quickly became obvious that with the police around that would be impossible. Fucking police, I thought.
I opened my eyes slowly, taking my time. Was that even a good decision? Probably not. But I needed to know what was happening. I tried my best to stay afloat, to not sink down beneath the crushing wall of pain doing its damnedest to pull me under. My eyelids were heavy; fighting against me, begging me to take mercy on them and on myself. The sight awaiting my eyes would not be pleasant, not in the slightest. I was confused as to why I would know that if I didn’t know what was happening.
Did I know what was happening? Maybe I did. I realized that there was an absurd familiarity about the situation. In an effort to concentrate, I let my eyelids win the battle and remain shut for a moment. Did I know what was waiting for me? No, I didn’t. I felt like I had known at some point, but had forgotten. There was no time for thinking. The pain was unbearable. I had to be dying; there was no way I could live through this. The police sirens were infuriating me; they weren’t helping me keep my barely existent train of thought. Shut up, shut up, for fuck sakes, shut the fuck up. Nobody asked for you to be here, anyways.
I felt paralyzed. Could I move my limb if I tried? I was scared to try. What if I were paralyzed? That would suck. That would suck really badly, actually. But wait, why would that suck? Especially if this were a dream, then that wouldn’t even matter. Because I would wake up. But would I?
Why was it so goddamn hard to keep a coherent thought process?
Maybe I should try opening my eyes again. This time they opened with little effort; which was fucking stupid since I had fought so hard for them to open before, to no avail. Whatever. Why did my whole body hurt so fucking much? My eyes adjusted slowly to the scene laid out before me. The blinding lights of police cars were shining directly into my eyes from every angle. Had they not been there, the sky would have appeared pitch black. I wished the lights would go away—my head hurt. Well, my whole body hurt, but I had discovered that most of the pain was centric to my head. Incredible.
Police men everywhere. They were surrounding the car—apparently, I was in a car. That made sense, I guessed. Why else would police men be surrounding me? I didn’t know. Police were idiots, anyways. They had nothing better to do. There was no need for them here, go bother somebody else. A fresh burst of intense pain shot through me and my eyes clamped shut again. Fucking hell. I needed to know what was happening.
I tested my fingers to see if they still worked, because I legitimately wasn’t sure if they did or not. They were still fine, apparently. Was I holding onto something? I could feel a smooth surface under my fingertips that I had been unaware of before. I opened my eyes again. My fingers were positioned over the steering wheel of a car. I’d been driving? Apparently so. Blood was covering my fingers and the longer my eyes lingered the more blood I found covering the car’s interior and my own body. The police were shouting wildly at each other; what a bunch of animals. Calm down, everything was fine.
Just a bit of blood. There was the pain, and it was intense, oh god it would probably kill me, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. It wasn’t reality, anyways. Or it was. Either way, didn’t matter. Leave us the fuck alone.
Us? No, that wasn’t right. It was just me. I was driving alone, wasn’t I? I didn’t remember. But with this confusion and anguish, I prayed that I'd been alone. Nobody else deserved to suffer in such a way; I would much rather shoulder everything myself. If dying now were to be my fate, as long as it was me alone I had no qualms. My vision came slowly into focus as the fog in my mind began to lift slightly. The pain had not dulled but my coherency was returning.
Memories of that night came trickling back—I'd spent the evening at a party. It had been one of those cliché high school parties that sported red plastic cups and couples making out in every shadowy corner. I thought the whole idea of them was stupid, really, but the booze availability was far too good to pass up. Everyone went to them, as long as their social standing wasn’t horrible. Mine was pretty much borderline, but nobody really gave a fuck about what I did; I was free to attend them as I pleased. So yeah, I had been at a party. I must have gotten plastered, which would explain the haziness in my mind. I vaguely remembered doing way too many shots with a bunch of other kids from school. Typical Friday night affairs.
As I urged my brain to recall more about that night, I remembered that I had gone to the party with Armin. We'd gone there together, of course. Oh, that’s right. I'd offered to drive us home since Armin had felt uncomfortable driving while drunk; he had been hesitant to let me drive but reluctantly accepted when I assured him that I would be just fine, that I’d driven after drinking plenty of times. Which wasn’t a lie, because I had. I asked for Armin to trust me that night and he had, being the perfect boyfriend that he was. It was all coming back to me now; we had been driving along and I had been unable to focus properly, and suddenly a bright light was rushing at us and everything went blank at that point, until I woke up confused, which was what was happening right then.
As I recalled that Armin had been with me in the car, an agonizing sense of fear began to overwhelm me. I was terrified of shifting my gaze over to the passenger seat, terrified of what my eyes would see. The familiarity of the situation brutally stabbed at me as if a knife were being driven straight through my heart. My subconscious knew exactly what was going on but I still did not, and I really wasn’t in a rush to find out. When I reopened my eyes I found that the police were even closer now and they would be prying open the doors to the car at any minute. I saw their mouths moving rapidly as they fired orders at each other; the car’s windows were open but due to the shrill cry of the sirens, I was unable to hear what they were saying. Another bout of pain spread through me but I did my best to ignore it. The pain was still great but I no longer assumed these were my final moments.
My car had crashed, there was no doubt in my mind about that. I scanned the area directly in front of my eyes to see if I could spot the other car involved, but it must have been out of my line of sight. There was a flash in the sky that wasn’t the colorful light on a police car and I knew it had begun to storm. I thought I heard a crack of thunder over the sound of the sirens but I may have just imagined it, I guess. I still couldn’t tell if I was locked in a nightmare or reality, but I would have to concern myself with that later. I figured I only had a minute or two left before a police officer would tear me away from my car, having to pry the most-likely damaged door open. A downpour began outside, as if a ginormous bucket of water had simply been dumped over us. The policemen were still bustling about and I could hear a new siren sound joining the others. Looked like the ambulance had made its appearance on the scene.
I was running out of time, and I could no longer avoid the passenger’s seat. I slowly, slowly turned my aching head to face the seat adjacent to my own. I inhaled sharply as my eyes adjusted to what they were seeing.
I screamed. I couldn’t help it.
Armin’s lifeless body was bent in a grotesque way and there was blood everywhere—way more than had been spread around me. I could tell immediately that he had died on impact. The angle and force of the collision had hit Armin in such a way that he wouldn’t have survived the night even if the impact hadn’t killed him. I was screaming, screaming as loud as I could, unable to process what was going on. Agony ripped through me and I could feel the tears of hysteria begin to cascade from my eyes and onto my face. That couldn’t be Armin; that couldn’t be my sweet, caring boyfriend who had trusted me despite his better judgment. The horridly deformed corpse in front of me couldn’t be Armin. It just couldn’t. I saw his face. Blood was pouring over closed-eyes, eyes that would never open to see the light of day again. His mouth was open and also had blood spewing from it. I'd never seen anything so terrifying in my life. The image of my boyfriend’s corpse would haunt me forever.
I was alive. I had made it.
I was the driver.
I had caused the crash, there was no way that I hadn’t.
Which meant that this was my fault entirely.
I was the reason my boyfriend sat lifeless in the seat beside me.
I frantically attempted to separate myself from my seat belt so that I could make it over to Armin; a vain attempt to save what was already gone. My fingers were shaking profusely and I struggled to even click down on the button that would release me from the confines of the seat belt. I eventually accomplished my goal and I threw myself at Armin’s body, wrapping my arms desperately around the bloodied body. I was subconsciously aware that I was still screaming at the top of my lungs even as I clung to what had been my wonderful, lively Armin less than an hour ago. Because although my time sitting there in the car had felt like it had stretched on for hours on end, realistically it had likely only been a half-hour since impact. My tears streamed down my face without abandon; a few of them fell onto Armin’s unmoving body and mixed with fresh droplets of blood to create a disturbing watered-down parody of the crimson substance.
The police men were finally making their move, and I heard the driver’s side door being pried open by an officer. I didn’t turn and face him and instead kept my attention on the broken body cradled in my arms. After a slight pause, I heard the officer’s voice.
"Sir, we’re going to need you to get out of the car.”
I didn’t move. I continued leaning over the driver’s seat onto the passenger’s side. I continued sobbing and gazing at my barely-recognizable boyfriend. I could no longer feel the pain in my body; it was still there, but it was by far the least of my concerns. The police man sighed behind me before crawling into the car far enough to grab me. I ran my fingers over Armin’s soft blonde hair that was now matted and stained with crimson as I felt the police officer close in behind me. A pair of firm hands grabbed at my waist and I vainly tried to kick them away so that I wouldn’t have to leave my lover’s side.
I was being pried away from Armin and I screamed, “Let me the fuck go! I’m not leaving him!”
Pity dripped from the police officer’s voice when he said, “I’m terribly sorry, but he’s already gone. There’s nothing you can do now.”
I continued writhing about, trying to land kicks on the man to no avail. The man removed one of his arms from me and used it to disconnect my arms from Armin’s body. I was nowhere near strong enough to put up the fight required to stop the officer, and I was left with no choice but to shriek in agony as I lost contact with Armin’s body for good. I refused to tear my gaze away from my lifeless boyfriend even as the man lifted me up and out of the car. I would never see my boyfriend again, and it was all because of me.
-x-
I woke up from my nightmare screaming and my thrashing had translated into reality; my arm flung against the surface of the nightstand beside my bed. My arm connected with the contents that I kept on top of it; a round bottle of pills clattered to the floor along with a large razor blade that was stained crimson at the edges.
It had been a nightmare, but it had been a nightmare recalling the events that had marked my imminent downfall as a decent human being.