What Lies Within

Chapter 1

The rain beat down relentlessly on the windshield of young Isabelle's car as she drive down the empty road towards home. It's around twelve o'clock and she just got off work at her intern job as a nursing assistant at her cities hospital. Exhausted after her late shift the sound of the rain beating down as she drove made it very relaxing. She so tired and her eyes were heavy and it was cozy and dark inside the small car. The only light came from her headlights hitting the trees that flicked past on each side of the road. Inside the radio flashed the name of some song that was playing quietly in the background. 

She was deep in thought, thinking about her studies she needed to catch up on and in the back of her mind worrying about a few new patients at the hospital. She had only been there a few moments ago, but was her job to see that they are taken care of and that they are okay so maybe it was just habit to worry about them. Isabelle enjoyed working at the hospital, it made her feel good to help people, aside from the long hour shifts. After all she was going to school to be a nurse. Always dreaming of being a nurse or doctor since she was little, liking the idea of healing people. While she continued the drive she envisioned her four year old self setting around the living room playing doctor with my father, pretending to fix his hurt knee. She can still see his face as he pretended to pout like it actually hurt and she would simply put a band-aid on it and everything was okay. The memory makes her smile. She missed times like that in the short time she had with her father. 

"I guess in real life everything isn't always okay", she thought to herself as she could feel the pain in her heart as she recalled the bittersweet memories.  

In the midst of her thoughts she heard her cellphone ring in her backpack in the passenger seat. Jumping at the distracting noise that broke the calming quiet inside the car. Fumbling around she reached for the bag trying to undo the front zipper pocket.

"Damn it" she cursed under her breath as the bag slipped into the floorboard.

Isabelle leaned back up to watch the road, she had missed the call anyway so she just hoped it wasn't important. Then as if on que it started to ring again and she let out a sigh as she again tried to reach for it from her side of the car. She fumbled around some more in the dark until finally retrieving the bag from the floor. Unzipping the pocket she grabbed her phone, shoving the bag under her arm. Before she even had time to answer it she looked up and at that moment the beam of her headlights caught a flash of grey in front of her. Instinctively she tried to slam on her brakes, but before she could she felt the hard impact as her car crashed into what ever had been in its way. The sudden jolt threw Isabella into the steering wheel and the unanswered phone against the inside of the windshield leaving a long crack. The bag she had retrieved just a moment ago had now ended up back in the floorboard. 

Everything was still. She sat there for a minute recovering from what had just happened, holding her throbbing head that must have collided with the dashboard during impact, she looked out through the cracked windshield into the darkness. The rain continued to beat down, unfazed at her sudden dilemma as the car sat motionless in the middle of the road. All she can hear is the sound of her ragged breathing and the radio still playing some classical song in the background. Of course her first thought was that she hit an animal, maybe a deer because it was so big, but some eerie thought in the back of her mind told her she hadn't hit any animal. She had seen the flash of what looked like a grey sheet, rather tall, taller than any deer. She just didn't want to admit to herself that she might've actually just ran over a human being. A lump formed in her throat as she tried to fight back unwelcome tears as a certain reality and panic began to set in, but right now all her thinking was wasting time and she knew whatever.. or who ever it was was definitely hurt.

She grabbed her backpack from the floor board and forced herself to look into the rear view mirror, afraid of what she was going to see. It was way too dark to make out anything, and with no street lights or any other cars she slowly open the door door. Feeling the cold wind hit her face like ice, she stepped out onto the quiet road was instantly soaked by the pouring rain. Hesitantly, she walked towards the back of the car and looked around for any sign of something moving, or she guessed in this case something not moving. That's when she saw it, the end of a perfectly still shadow just barely illuminated by the cars rear lights. Isabelle quietly gasped, her hand instinctively covering her mouth in shock. There under the reddish light lay a body on its side with it's bare back turned to her, the rain soaking through the blanket which seemed to be its only cover as it lay so still. She gathered her nerve and rushed over, trying to remember what they had taught her so far in nursing class about how to deal with victims of like, well, being hit by her damn car. She cursed herself for being so idiotic as she bent down over the lifeless mound and looked to see if there were any open wounds or broken bones. She knew better than to try and move them because if something was broken it could only hurt them more. 

She eased the blanket back and notice it was a young male, probably around his early twenties just like her, with a mop of brown hair that lay wet and dirty on the pavement. His arms and chest were tan and lean as she reached to feel his wrist for a pulse. She couldn't help but notice the small tattoo on the inside of his arm, like a symbol, it had a circle with a triangle and a line trough it. Weird, she thought.

 His pulse was very low and faint, but at least he had one, that's better than nothing. As she looked closer she notice his chest sightly moving up and down in shallow breaths. A sigh of relief washes over as she realized he was still alive. There was really nothing she could do for him here and the nearest hospital, her hospital, was at least forty five minutes away. Resenting the fact she lived so far out of the city in the middle of nowhere, Isabelle rushed back to her car to find her phone. She dug around the seats and in the floor and then finally remember it's what had hit the windshield. Quickly searching along the top of the dash she located it wedged above the steering wheel, she fumbled to turn it on, make it work, make it do something!  

"Come on!" She pleaded, this can't be happening it must have broke from the impact of the windshield and the huge crack in the glass just added to that theory. 

"Great, just fucking great, what am I going to do now?" She couldn't just leave him here! Panic washed over her as she felt a hot tear slip down her face, blending in with the rain. She collapses onto the drenched pavement, leaning back against the dent in her car as even more reality of the situation set in, but before she could get to into her own head Isabelle was interrupted by a shadow moving in the tail lights under her car.