Into the Night

{New} Ch. 3 : Being Alive

The cold wind picked away at the survivor's chest. Just as the monster would picked strands of its victims from its teeth.

An untimely demise would have been a small mercy. It would have meant avoiding the aftermath of the crash. He could smell blood, moist and thick, and pooling around him.

The officer watched as nausea morphed the survivor's pale face. He didn't see it as warning to move. It didn't matter because he was alive and he finally did something to ease his guilty conscious.

"I'm not a bad person," was the mantra he had become accustomed to. "Even good people make mistakes that spiral into much worse mistakes. "

Calla wasn't a survivor to him. He was his saving grace, that one way ticket away from the moral degradation he had allowed himself to become a part of. Maybe, a heavy good deed could balance out the massive amount of bad he stacked so high?

The survivor lurched forward, his eyes bulging, back curving, and lips dripping with saliva. It bubbled out of his gaping mouth, a babbling brook of toxicity trailing down his shaking chin and pooling in his collarbone. It sprayed onto the officer's chest.

"I'm so sorry," he tried to cry out but another chunk-filled stream pushed past his words.

The officer gagged, but kept his composure. "It's okay," the officer tried to soothe, but another stream hit him.

It covered most of his uniform, from his knees to his shining badge. What didn't puddle in his lap, polka-dotted his arms, cheeks, and wavy black hair.

However, that disgusting moment couldn't erode the officer's smile. He endured the repugnance without surrendering the nirvana, that higher state of bliss, he got from the moment.

Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, he had repented. He couldn't believe he redeemed himself, that he could live as a "changed" man. That disbelief held his smile up high like two hooked fingers.

"As long are you're alive, it doesn't matter," he said without a hint of disgust.

Calla owed the officer his life, and a new uniform, but he couldn't keep his eyes on him. He couldnt pull them off the wreck he had become a part of. They lingered on the carnage of what he survived.

Tall windows became laminated glass cubes that stuck to his skin like the stars in the night sky. A few pierced his flesh, but he didn't have the energy to focus on the pain. He had lived and that was all that mattered.

The autumn midnight couldn't wring a shiver out of him, but only because the view of the wreck already did. It was like a disassembled puzzle except the pieces had been gnawed on and put through a garbage compactor. They had been warped and torn, completely obliterated. Yet a single window remained with a jagged crack along its surface. Not broken like the rest, only scarred.

"What happened to my shirt?" He mumbled groggily.

The neck of the shirt remained attached and most of the sleeves were unscathed, but the chest and back were missing. He kept expecting to close his eyes and open them to realize it was all a dream.

Calla wiped the vomit off his mouth with the back of his hand. It smeared across his chin and jaw, and had the faint odor of peppermint and diesel fuel. Other than a few scrapes and bruises, he left the incident physically  unharmed.

As for his mind, he was unsure.

His breath caught the cool air and fell in clouded wisps. Shivers broke down his arms and legs, leaving him numb and warm.

Strewn amongst the field, the rest of the bodies caught his eyes. If the force of the crash could twist metal, it possessed more than enough power to kill everyone inside.