Falling Through The World

• Nathan Mills, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2010

Dark red tears of blood stained the warm black leather of the back seat. He would’ve moved his hand to dry them, to stop their domineering pathway down his cheek, but his hands wouldn’t listen.
He told his legs to run, but they disobeyed.
He told his chest to rise and fall, but even that proved problematic.
He was powerless against the constant pressure of over a ton of burning steel and deformed metal; there was glass in his mouth, cuts on his face, and tears in his eyes.
They were hurt, his parents, he could tell, he could see his mother’s body near him- her eyes frozen open in terror- the weight of the car had hit her even worse than him, just sleeping, that’s all, he told himself. His father’s face was pressed up against the windscreen, bathed in blood, a spider web of glass spreading out from the point of impact
This was justice, the world that families everyday bring their children into. Where rage can drive people to abandon all hope; where in the space of barley a second, a drunk driver can rip apart families and leave children to pick up the pieces. He blinked and his whole world had disappeared.
He heard footsteps, tapping against the burning cement, a thousand feet a second, but could they help him? Could anyone?
“Hey, hey kid?!” he heard a voice whispering from a distance, “Are you okay? Don’t try to move, there are people coming, ‘K?”
“My pa…pa…parents they’re okay, right? They’re hurt, but they’re okay?” he questioned, measuring his words, carefully.
The man closed his eyes and lied. “Yeah, they’re fine. They’re just sleeping. Alright?”
He didn’t have to look at the wreckage to tell him the answer; no one could live through something like that; and no one would possibly want to.
“Okay.”
“Okay, good. What’s your name?”
“Jeremy.”
“Okay Jeremy, I’m Matt,” he said quickly, “Just keep looking at me, okay? Keep talking.”
Another man staggered over to the car and peered in through the same shattered window at Jeremy. Even in the state Jeremy was in, he could detect the smell of bourbon and the reek of stale cigarettes, thickening in the air. “Sorry Mate, I didn’t see ya’ll, ya came out of nowhere.” He had crashed into them at something close to 110Km/hr and here he was, without a scratch.
“Matt?” he called, determined.
“Yeah, buddy what is it?”
“Don’t lie to me; they’re not sleeping are they, just… please?”
He sighed, his head falling, and his tone almost inaudible, “No, mate, they’re not, they’re gone.”
“No.”
“Jeremy?!”
“NO!!”
“Jeremy, it’s okay, listen you‘re going to get through this. You’re going to be okay, understand?”
But he couldn’t hear him anymore; he was falling. At least it felt like falling, falling through the world, into pure, penetrating nothingness.
All the pain, all the hurt melted away and yet even through everything, he swore he heard his mother and father calling his name.