Tires

 I heard the tires screech. This loud assault on my ear drums. It was just like how you hear at the movies, or at a drag race. My old man, he took me to see one when I was a kid. The smoke coming up from those big pieces of rubber you would think they would catch on fire. I don’t know if these tires caught on fire I didn’t really believe the car hit me while I walked across the street. It was just….nothing. I don’t mean it was dark like someone flicked off the light switch or you close your eyes, I mean it was nothing. My guess is the brain just didn’t want me to feel the pain of my face hitting this guy’s windshield, or girl’s? I didn’t really get a good look at the driver.

I guess I scared myself awake though, because the next thing I know I’m in the air, flying. I guess you could say falling all fancy-like because when the big boy in blue with the cape flies through the funny pages, he always lands on his feet. I landed on the road. I was so good at it by body bounced right up and I hit it again. The two chances to land on my feet and I squandered it. It was a little bit like a drag race, I guess on account there was a crowd around me screaming. One lady, some bystander. Her scream, “Oh, my god!” was almost as loud as the tires.

I manage to hoist myself up on my knees. Blood dripped off my nose and onto the road. “I’m ok.” I said, before collapsing on my side and roll onto my back. My legs worked, I knew that much but damn, it was like someone shot lightening up my spine.

I’m on my back surrounded by strangers looking down on me. I saw no one had their phones. Just staring at me not knowing what to do. I’d like to think someone called an ambulance and not the cops. ‘The wrong big boys in blue’, I thought. They would probably give me a ticket for jay walking, or look at my record and figure a broken spine and a bloodied up face was punishment enough. I don’t know I’m getting tired on this pavement. My eyelids are closing even though I tried to stay awake.

There was that nothing again. That road that was getting so comfortable just disappeared underneath me. Yet, I wasn’t falling. Just kind of floating. Me and my thoughts only, I didn’t have much thought to think.

Who the hell knows how long I was like this? I certainly didn’t till I saw this speck. Like a star farthest away in the night sky. Like me, it was by itself. Maybe it was lonely? Could it feel? I didn’t have a thought in my head for what felt like a hundred years and suddenly I’m playing twenty questions with whats probably a speck of dandruff on my eyeball. I don’t really have a reason why, but damn. I wanted to get to it. I don’t know if it came to me or I to it but it wasn’t slow. There was no countdown from Houston and I’m no Buzz Aldrin, no tires screaming at me to go before we catch on fire, we were just going.

I didn’t think there was going to be a smell in this place, or that I could smell at all, but damn. I don’t like flowers. I give them to whomever I’m dating. My old man taught me that too. Even if they say they don’t, they like flowers and I like making them happy. Whichever one I’m dating at the time at least. I hope those weeds I bought for them were anywhere as good as what I was smelling now. Roses? No, better than roses or any orchids, daisy, lily or any rag weed I bought before. I’m surrounded in this smell and yet I’m not overwhelmed by it. I can’t stand inside a flower shop more than an hour before needing to get the hell out of there from all those scents fighting over your nose. This though, I could live in it, throw it in a tub and float there. Then again that’s pretty much what I’m doing now right? Then the voice comes.

Like this speck starting off so far away this voice didn’t register as anything other than noise. As this speck comes closer I can tell it’s a light. As the light comes closer that noise turns into a muffle. Like those hearing tests Uncle Sam had us all do back in Fort Sill. I failed by the way, not the hearing test; Uncle Sam just found something stupid I did on my eighteenth birthday. If you didn’t do something at that point in your life then what’s the point? Those rubber headphones at that test, like big rubber tires themselves on your ears. They don’t cut you out the world, it just dials everything down till you can hear your own heartbeat. Is my heart even beating at this point?

That light gets brighter. I would say things are lighting up but I’m the only thing here. Nothing is around me. That muffle turns into words. At least I think they’re words. I can’t tell what the hell this thing is saying. Sounds almost Native American but I’m no linguistic it could be Bavarian or something for all I know. That light is starting to get close. I’m starting to squint, it’s hurting my eyes. Like waking up to someone opening the curtain on you and you hiss like a vampire, you curl up under the blanket wishing death on whomever grabbed you out of that peaceful darkness that you chose to put yourself through at three in the morning.

I think the light knew how I felt because as it came closer, practically engulfing me at this point I can see. It’s not light, I just been floating in nothing for so long the mere existence of, something. This blanket of white appears to brighten up where I am. That was a relief and that voice changed too. There was still that language but now English is dubbed over it. Like the cheap old Japanese monster tapes my old man owned. You could hear what the characters were saying underneath in Japanese and the English dubbed over it. The tapes didn’t make it clear but I wouldn’t been able to tell ya what the original actors were saying. Somehow, I knew this was a direct translation though.

“Don’t worry, everything’s all right.”

Hearing that voice no, not hearing. It was like playing inside my skull. It wasn’t even the words it was the feeling of those words. Like all my life I been just a speck floating in nothing and now I’m here. In this warmth. It’s more than welcoming it’s down right addicting. This was probably why the old man chased the needle for that high. I can finally relate. I wanted to jump in there, needed to, but I didn’t get to.

It run away. I didn’t move from where I was. I was in the middle of nothing. No, this great big presence just hightailed it out from me and I screamed. I don’t think I said a single word. Like the voice, I was just raw emotion. That’s how I recall it anyways. I didn’t inhale any air when they brought me back I just screamed in this young guy’s face. It shocked him something fierce because he screamed too. I like to think he didn’t want to make me feel awkward screaming alone surrounded by a bunch of shocked faces. When it ended we stared at each other, this fat EMT two inches from my face. Guess someone called after all. That’s a nice thought.

While the doctors were piecing this old humpty-dumpty back together, I miss that light, the smell and that silly dubbed voice. I heard somewhere about astronauts when they practice their shoot off into space. Something about the G Force so strong that rushes all the blood away from their heads, they hear voices, see lights and smell smells. Hell if I know, Buzz. I’ll probably see it again. I guess it just wasn’t my day yet. I’ll ask Allen, the EMT that shared that duet with me if he likes drag racing. I’ll buy some tickets when I check out.