Some of you read the first bit of Chapter One, so hears the second bit I promised. Dig in!
Alex was the sort of person you couldn't forget, you'd look at him and his face would stick like a bad reputation. Hard to get rid of and extremely annoying. He had dark brown hair and a face that looked like a rectangle with smoothed out corners and goofy ears slapped on as an afterthought. A bit weird, but cool in his own sort of way. Alex was on his way home, eating up the soggy pavement impatiently. A heavy rucksack filled with numerous textbooks and an impossible amount of homework hung like a criminal from his back. He sighed, why couldn't teachers see that he had more important things to do? The pouring rain joined with the fact that he'd forgotten his waterproof did nothing to improve his mood. Alex was meant to be waiting for Jack, but heh why bother? If Jack wasn't here now, he wouldn't be in the five minutes it took him to get home. The little idiot had probably forgotten him. With a grunt of annoyance Alex turned on his heel and stalked down the road. By the time he reached the bus stop music was blaring in his ears, I-pod nestled nicely in it's water proof cover. He looked both ways before crossing and went to take the final steps towards home, it's freedom and the warm sofa accompanied by X-Box therapy that would bring immediate relief.
The car hurtled round the corner, tyres screeching, doing at least sixty. The drivers face transformed form predatory joy to horror in an instant, a silent scream was eruptting from his lips . The world seemed to move in slow motion as Alex saw the screeching vehicle, threw himself forward, it felt like moving through treacle. He wasn't fast enough, he wasn't going to make it. A chilling thrill of adrenaline and anticipation blurred his vision and he could almost feel the crunch of speeding metal on bone. His arms snapped up , he was screaming. It was going to hit him any moment. There was an awesome crunch, metal shearing through flesh, splinters of glass darting through the air like death captured in a twinkle. A scream piercing through the explosion of noise like a knife. Blackness, for a brief moment entirely nothing.
A giant force caught him and he was flying through the air. He smashed into the ground. Face grinding tarmac. His cheek was a mix of exposed blood and tissue. A tooth was hanging loose. Alex's face was on fire, the pain burning through his mind until only the screeches of distress and animal panic. Something black began to well up inside him. Terror like pitch, pouring up his veins and into his neurons. He was a corpse, unable to move, surrounded by echoing silence as the noise died away. Wallowing in agony. Through the eye that wasn't shut he could see a crushed lump of steaming metal. It was like a can, with liquids dripping out of the burst lid. It struck him then. The car hadn't hit him. He must be hallucinating, cars didn't stop. He should be dead. Things like this didn't happen. He felt exhausted, he has a headache from hell and blood was dribbling down his arms. He still had a chance, he wasn't dead. Somewhere deep inside his mind he realised that he could live. Just keep fighting, keep calling. A voice scrambled up to his ear, it sounded muffled, put through a blender. Why couldn't he here, where they still there? Alex couldn't hear them, his voice wasn't working, he couldn't move! Inky blackness, like a sea, washing over him in waves of seduction. Give in , why fight a battle you can't win?
He was staring into darkness.
*
The sirens where still there, wailing to the world “Get out of the waaaay, get out of the waaaay” that almost made him giggle. Giggling hurt. He tried to stifle the seductive urge to laugh. Just a moment of hysterical laughter, that was ll it took. The red mist of pain descended on his vision. God that hurt. A concerned face hovered over his saying something. He strained to hear it, battered hearing straining. He couldn't grasp those words. They lay just out of reach, flitting in his vision. Dolphins in the breeze. Dolphins, those curved backs, carving into water with elegant jumps. Water, so shiny........
A Hospital is a strange place, white walls that scream bone to the world and the acid stench of overused detergent. The low whisper that permeate the wards and the underhand way that everyone looks at you is somehow deeply annoying. Alex always found it too quiet in Hospitals, it seemed wrong that a place made for healing should be as quiet as the grave. His head was throbing,he could imagine two little men by his temples, swinging hamers at them. Seeing was a challenge , it was blurry, like looking through misty glass. A groan escaped his mouth. Why was he here? The room was very white, white walls with white skirting boards. A bedraggled picture hung on a wonky pin, trying to disguise the brutality of machinery and authorised drugs. In the back of his head he could hear an insistent beeping, beep . . beep . . . beep. He mentally shrugged. Heart monitor. He was so tired. So very tired. He collapsed back into concrete pillows and slept.
When he woke his head was full of a high screech that ate through his attention span. God the screeching, it permeated everything. He could look at something and he would hear it. A voice at the back of his head whispered, they can hear you too. He must be on too many drugs. Any moment now a nurse would walk in and wake him up. They would say something calm and reassuring in the same over-friendly tone they used with everyone and that buzzing, sound of tearing metal would go away and be lost on the wind.
