Resurrection

I focused in on the car; it was completely lifeless save the drip of freshly spilled fluids and tires spinning frictionless.

Through the lacework of a cracked window, his hair was red, sticky fire in moonlight. His face was buried beneath layers of pine needles and crystal rain was pelted hard into his cheeks and brows with lacerations and pits. Fixed eyes had frozen in a flashed astonishment of the suddenly aware. His mouth was held shut and portraited the look of determination, determined to get out before some speck of fiberglass or windshield snatched a synapse out of sequence.

His arms were stuck though the glass in a giant attempt caught in rigor mortis to be free of man-made captivity. His hands were gloved in freshly sharded, stained glass yet bare of any other accessories by which someone could have been notified. From his wrists extended cuffs over which his hands dripped in ragged currents. His shirt was flecked sporadically with purple and red, making the original color questionable.

He was pictured as if purposely posed in a bear trap of violent modern art. Legs held in check, mangled around and through the steering column, showed no orderly pattern to his linear body. Every piece of him flailed to exit, like the real life fire escapes one experiences from a crowded apartment building.

Thick denim jeans served guardian to his lower body, effectively sopping up excess blood. His right foot, somehow, had managed to hurl its shoe several yards from the wreckage. It lay dejected in the road on some faded yellow lines and a dozen miles from anywhere.

The train whistle awoke him, or actually, the remembrance of the whistle followed by the lack of instant gravity spinning the car into chaos and the inhuman grind of automobile against tree. He untangled himself carefully, limped to the road, gathered his shoe, and crossed to the other ditch, disappearing among the trees.

And I let him.

-Rachel Johnson, 1994