Sunday, August 22, 2010

Not Alone - part 1 of 4

I am posting my short story NOT ALONE from the anthology FOREVER FRIENDS in 4 installments starting today. (by the way, if you are impatient, sign up on my ChelleWrites Yahoo Group mail list and download it in its entirety)


Not Alone - part 1 of 4

I ignored the changing numbers on the alarm clock as long as I could. I still refused to believe that anything that had happened over the past few days was real. It was all a nightmare, that’s all.

As my toes sought the warmth of my slippers, the tears began to fall again. No matter how many times I tried to deny it, my best friend was buried yesterday. They wouldn’t let Jordan come to the cemetery; every-one blamed him. Even me.

For the two days that Jordan had been hospitalized, they kept him under a suicide watch. That angered him. Not because he wanted to commit suicide, but because it meant that people thought he would want to take “the coward’s way out” as he put it and avoid facing what had happened. He said it wasn’t his fault, but he still blamed himself.

I left the party that night early, too early to know everything that had transpired. Kimmie’s boyfriend dumped her, he left her at the party while he went home with another girl. She was upset and she drank more than she should have. Actually, she shouldn’t have been drinking at all; most of the folks at the party were under the legal drinking age – but that’s another issue altogether.

Eventually Kimmie wanted to go home and, as it was explained to me, she had trouble even holding onto the keys from her handbag. So Jordan offered to drive her. He drank a beer early in the evening; he was one of the few who could legally, and then he hadn’t had anything else. That was hours earlier. The cops even said that his blood alcohol level was well below the legal limits. Jordan was just trying to be a nice guy; besides, he had once had a thing for Kimmie.

I visited Jordan in his hospital room right after I heard about the accident. I didn’t even know that Kimmie was dead yet. Jordan was devastated. He didn’t need to have his friend’s condition confirmed; he knew. He told me how he had gotten cut off on that dark and winding road. The car rolled down the embankment and came to rest against a tree. There were no witnesses; just a minor paint scrape on the front fender and the police said that could have happened at any time prior to the accident.

Kimmie kept unbuckling her seatbelt and then she would laugh; Jordan kept telling her to put the seatbelt back on. He was tired of her arguing so this time he had been slow. When he looked at her after the car stopped moving, he knew that she was broken. The bone to one upper arm protruded through the skin and fragments of the bone in the lower arm gave her a limp rag doll effect. Her beautiful face was cut up from the windshield glass. He wanted to pull her from the car, but even though he had been belted in, he hit his head on something and was bleeding from the temple. And then he passed out. But he knew, from what he had seen, Kimmie was gone.


1 comment:

hotcha12 said...

GAH, I'M SIGNING UP! LOL