10 Seconds

“Hey! Watch it!”

“Don’t worry about it. I know what I’m doing.”

“Look ou—“my body is sent flying.

(One) Everything is slow. As if time was on hold for me to truly grasp the severity of the situation I’ve been put in when I look next to me and see my own body smashing through the windshield.

(Two) I don’t feel any pain, just the shock of seeing myself from a different perspective. It’s odd, I don’t feel scared. I’m oddly at peace, considering the current state I’m in.

(Three) I’m not one to believe in fate, but if I did, this would be the moment my recent choices would’ve led to. It would be the moment that was foreseen even before I knew why I made the decisions I made. I would say this is how my life should end.

(Four) I can’t believe I was so reckless. Letting him drive like that. I’m the more responsible one. I should have known. Should have refused to let him take the wheel knowing the kind of person he is. Was? I don’t really understand what’s happening to us right now, are we dead? Are we between life and death, where if we don’t fight to live, we’ll die? Please fight. We both need to make it out of this alive. We have to. This isn’t how our time on Earth ends.

(Five) I look around and find I can move around in this incorporeal state. I try to find him. Or his body, if he’s in the same state I am. I pass in front of my body, it’s halfway through the windshield by now, still moving as if time was going at point one speed. I look next to my body, thinking that’s the natural spot for his to be. It’s not there. I scan the front of the car, where I assume his body to be if it flew out faster than mine did. Not there. I shift my attention slowly behind the car, he’s rolling, at point one speed, on the pavement. I can see his skin ripping. I hope he’s also having an out of body experience. I hope he’s not feeling what’s happening to him.

(Six) I don’t see him floating around like I am. Maybe this incorporeal experience is to each their own. Maybe it’s only mine to experience, alone. Maybe it’s because he’s already dead. No out of body to experience because there’s no more him. Maybe he passed out from the fear, or the pain, or both. I hope he’s not feeling any of this. I hope he doesn’t know what’s happening. No one deserves to know the pain they’re experiencing, even if they can’t feel it.

(Seven) When I wake up from this delusion, I hope I wake up in the hospital and not on the pavement in front of the car. Or maybe this is a dream, and I’ll wake up in the passenger seat with nothing wrong.

(Eight) I won’t wake up in the passenger seat. This isn’t a dream. I truly am going through the windshield. I’m going to wake up in the hospital with many injuries and cuts and bruises.

(Nine) When we get out of this, and we get better, I’m never letting him drive again. He wasn’t even paying attention to the road. ‘Fixing his side mirror’. Who does that halfway through the drive? We were going too fast for that. Pathetic excuse to take your eyes off the road. I don’t even believe he was doing it to fix his view. He just wanted to do something that wasn’t driving.

(Ten) Well that’s what he gets for getting recklessly distracted while driving with a passenger. I don’t mean that. I’m just upset that he put me at risk. I just want to go home.

— Pain. All I know is pain. I want to go back to the painless moment I was just experiencing.