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Blinding lights in his eyes.
Screaming tires against a wet blacktop.
Shrieking metal against metal.
A silence that wasn’t silent.
Roaring pulse in his ears and pounding horror in his veins.
Beneath it all…a voice. A cry, a gasping. A discordant note played skillfully by broken fingers.
“Sly…I can’t…. I can’t see you….” The raspy, hollow voice of his best friend whimpered through the cloaking blackness holding him captive.
“J-Jake? W-what happened?” Good question, one that made his brain spin and the nausea rise into the back of his mouth.
“I…I don’t know….I can’t feel anything. Is Loni okay?”
Loni? Shit!
Jerked from the darkness embracing him, Sly slowly opened his eyes, his mouth dry, his throat sore…. His head pounded, his ears ringing, his neck throbbing…. Like a hangover from hell—and damn, did he know from experience what the felt like. But this was different. This was harder. The transition from blackness to consciousness like barefoot skating over broken glass instead of soapy asphalt.
He shifted, his body taut yet loose, his thoughts hazy, his heart racing, his body…aching. Had an elephant landed on his chest?
What the hell happened?
He groaned, then grunted when the act of lifting his head made everything scream.
From beside him, a voice he knew by heart and soul crawled into his ear and exploded.
“Sly…Sly, man” —cough— “I ca-can’t move….” A familiar voice slid into his mind, jerking him into full consciousness.
What the hell happened? Jake? Loni? That was Jake’s voice he heard in the dark, calling out to him, bolstering the panic in his chest. But where was Loni? What happened to Loni?
“Jake?” he muttered, his voice lost in the strange, sound-sucking vapor engulfing him. He could hear, but the ability to speak, to be heard, was lost.
His eyelids like lead against his cheeks, Sylvester fought the urge to just go…to just fall…to just let the darkness hold him in place, embracing him. Drowning him. But he had to open his eyes, he had to see, he had to know that Jake and Loni were okay.
He’d been driving…leaving the party on the hill where they’d been celebrating Jake getting into the Master’s program at Yale. He was going to be a professor, the one thing he’d always wanted to be—even as a little boy. And finally, his dreams were coming true.
Now, though….
“W-what happened?” he asked, his voice raspy, the smoke filling the interior of the car turning his words to vocal sandpaper. He couldn’t see a damn thing!
“Jake?” he called, coughing, his body finally coming back online, his mind struggling to filter the murky memories of what happened. Yes…they’d left the party, driving down the hill…. Then bright lights in his eyes, his booze-addled brain flooding with confusion and panic. Then the screech of tires, the gasp and scream of air brakes, then the agonizing crunch of metal against metal.
No!
“Jake!” he screamed. “Loni!”
Silence.
He tried again, frantically trying to get his arm loose from where it was pinned against the door. He shuddered, pain shooting through him. But he didn’t care about the pain—he needed to get to Jake. To Loni. He had to save them.
“Jake!” he bellowed, coughing again, the smoke seeming to thicken even as the heat inside and outside intensified.
The car was on fire—and they were trapped inside.
“You have to answer me, man. I can’t get loose. I can’t get to you!” He pulled at his arm, but it wouldn’t budge. He shoved his shoulder against the door, frantic, desperate, but it seemed welded shut from the outside.
