The Accident
Created | Updated Sep 23, 2018
The Accident
She was dead. I'd seen it happen with my own two eyes but nobody else would believe it.
'You must be mistaken.'
'Not her!'
But I was there, they weren't. I'd seen the car appear out of nowhere and bowl her over – mangling her bloody corpse as it dragged her along the road and carried on as if nothing had happened.
She was dead. Of course it could have been someone else that was this bloody, unrecognisable mess now but it was definitely her that had stepped off the curb and tried to run across the open road – playing chicken with her life. It was her for certain and she was definitely dead – the second car that hit her, unknowingly, made sure of that. Thud, bump and that was that. She might have moved a little before that but not this time – not this second hit that was anything but glancing.
She was dead alright. A mangled excuse for a living being.
What could you say to her relatives, her friends? She was hot-headed and paid for it? Would they thank you for such a truthful obituary?
I looked at the road, expecting someone to come – someone else to see what had happened but this was the countryside not the town. This was where death was commonplace, even if not acknowledged. Animals died everyday – killed by human hand. The cities of course were filled with every wickedness possible – you expected death and cruelty there but here it was just acknowledged as part of life, not judged. This was the countryside's practical viewpoint of that was just how things were versus the idle entertainment of towns where things like that, should or shouldn't be in people's opinion.
She was dead alright and I'd seen it. Should I just accept it and get on with my own life? What choice did I have? Only the living suffer – the dead are beyond it. She was dead and gone – and that was that. She'd been a lovely young thing when alive but like all overconfident, joyful creatures, she took unnecessary risks and didn't see any danger in the world. Death though, waited for her patiently, knowing that all he had to do was bide his time and just be prepared to catch her, when she fell from grace: We all make mistakes after all...
She was definitely dead. Those cold, black sightless eyes stared perpetually at the stars and all daylight was now darkness to her. Blood ran through her slightly opened mouth. Rivers of red tears, trickled from the corner of her left eye. Her head crushed by the wheels of one or both cars. Her limbs, contorted in a dance of death, that spun her through the air, scraping her legs across the rough, gravelly surface of the granite track. The wind blew dust across her distorted form – ashes to ashes, dust to dust...
Who couldn't mourn the loss of such a young life, cut short so tragically? I felt nothing but sorrow for her as she felt, thankfully, nothing herself. That gentle face would soon rot into a lifeless skull, unrecognisable to anyone who knew her. The bones would further descend into dust, to be blown into the faces of other road traffic victims. The young and foolish never learn – the wise aged, never forget.
She was dead, oh yes she was dead…my doe-eyed, doe. My wild and free one, my fellow rabbit...
