I Am Anastasia

I Am Alive

It's just starting to get dark; I can’t watch the scenery going by outside very well, so I stick my headphones on.  Listening to classical music always calms my nerves.

I notice a lady and her son climb on the bus - he gets a seat but she stands in the aisle and clings onto one of the overhead poles. She's tall and skinny, with scraggly blonde hair past her shoulders. I wonder if she's the type of annoying person that can be caught at regular intervals sucking the ends of her hair. Gross. 

Her son has the same thin blonde hair she has, only he's about fourteen and it looks better on him.

               I glance out the window, switching my attention back to my music after she catches me staring at them and views me suspiciously with a pair of sunken blue eyes.

The bus starts to pick up speed on the highway, and my body lurches a little so I brace my sneakers on the back of the seat in front of me, I can hear the engine strain. My music picks up and just as the Dance of the Sugar Plum Faeries really gets underway, there's a flash of blinding white light. The music makes me think for a split second that I'm looking into a twinkling fairyland, which is ridiculous. It takes me a second to realize what it really is.

               Headlights.

               Later I'm told a car came down the wrong side of the highway, but in that split second it  seems like a blast of light from some hellish other world.  My breath catches in my throat; I feel the entire bus creak and shudder, and then we're sliding sideways.  The dark landscape outside flows past in a dizzying surreal display. My breath stops and over the gentle strains of violin music in my ears I can hear people screaming. Or is it me? My body lurches sideways in my seat and the side of my head smacks into the window with a crack, sending a bolt of pain through me. Stars skitter across my vision.  Dazed, I watch out of the corner of my eye as the lady standing in the aisle is thrown down, screaming.  When her head strikes the ground, a bright spatter of red decorates the grey floor.

               The spinning seems to stop for a split second, but before we even have time to breathe there's a second shuddering impact.  This time it feels like an earthquake rattling my bones. I see the lady lying in the aisle slide forward a few feet.

               Then there is no movement at all; everything goes quiet.  I'm clutching the back of the seat in front of me, leaving dents in the fake leather, and my fingers have gone numb and white.  I look at the lady lying face down in the isle. She doesn’t move, her right arm is flung out crookedly above her head, her fingers splayed wide as if she's waving; the other arm is trapped beneath her body. All I can see is the back of her thin blonde hair, and the trickle of blood making a crimson trail from beneath her hairline down the centre of the dirty floor.

               Is she dead?

               Someone wails. It's the boy. The woman's son. I watch as he tries to go to her, his legs keep giving out and he can’t seem to get there.

Everyone is moaning and someone is yelling over and over, “Oh God! Oh God!"  

There's a horrific metal scraping sound, the bus shudders a little bit and the woman in front of me shrieks hysterically.  More yelling, fainter from outside. Sirens shriek eerily in the distance, which makes it all seem scarier somehow. More real.

               A man just down the aisle from me seems to be in a better state of mind than most of us. He says, “Well that was quite the ride,” and he reaches out to place his hand on the neck of the woman lying in the aisle. After several seconds he announces,