English Short Story

The tires screeched and the alarms blared as car came to a skidding halt, finally ending its hellish ride upside down next to the base of a tall tree. The man staggered out of the car as it burst into flames, the fireball shooting its orange tendrils skyward. He collapsed in a heap next to a nearby tree as another car burst into a similarly brilliant explosion nearby, extinguishing the cries for help in the car in a flash. Off in the distance, the sirens blared as the man laid his head and against the tree and shut his eyes, the oncoming darkness providing a welcome break from his pounding headache.


As Dan groggily opened his eyes, the pounding sensation of bright, sterile lights beat down on him and while the steady beeping of various medical devices provided a rhythmic background. Dizzy and disoriented, he sat up, only to be knocked down by a sudden wave of nausea. For the life of him, Dan could not remember where he was or how he had ended up there. As he laid there, attempting to piece together the various parts of his memory back together, scattered events from last night began to trickle into memory. Dan remembered a car spinning out, a woman screaming, and a bright, vivid explosion, followed by pure darkness.

That couldn’t have been what happened. Dan vividly remembered leaving work that night, exhausted after another day of working overtime at his job as a quality assurance manager. Money had been tight around his house lately, and as a result, he was forced to extra hours in order to keep up with the tuition payments for his kid’s college. Dan had been tired recently, on account of his extra hours, but he was surely a good enough driver to make it home, a route he had driven hundreds of times, without crashing. It was probably just a movie that he had watched last night and was having a bad dream about.

As Dan began to take in his surroundings, his nausea settling down, a couple things caught his eye. A newspaper resting on his bedside table blared out from its headline DEADLY CAR CRASH 3 KILLED, and a clipboard at the foot of his bed with Alexian Brothers Hospital emblazoned on the back. That must be why Dan had no recollection of what happened last night. He must have had one of his seizures and blacked out at home, also explaining why he was in the hospital. Despite finally knowing where he was, the newspaper headline was what intrigued Dan more. As he flipped the newspaper open to the page, images of two mangled, smoking wrecks of cars greeted him, one of them being a black Toyota just like the one he drove. It was nothing more than a strange coincidence. Black Toyotas like that were extremely common, and the more that Dan looked at the picture, the less it looked like an area that he drove in often.

Dan put the newspaper down and flipped on the TV, hoping to pass the time with some mindless activity. A news report came on, the reporter standing next to the scene of that same car crash, the trees about her rustling in the wind. As the reporter began to list off the names of the victims, Dan listened with a growing apprehension as his memory of last night began to form clearly in his head. This anxiety was not quite the anxiety associated with the fear of being caught – and yet there was little that Dan could otherwise define it as. The voice of the newswoman faded into the cadence of the background as Dan finally began put together the pieces of his shattered memory. He had finally left work at 11, and set off on his drive home. He began to drift off behind the wheel, but it was only a ten minute drive home and he could surely make it. As he began rounding a bend, the full force of his sleep deprivation hit him, and he began dozing off behind the wheel, his foot applying more pressure to the accelerator as his body went limp. A pair of bright headlights suddenly cut into his view and both cars slammed into each other, but not before Dan stared into the terrified faces of the other car, 2 children among them.

When Dan initially recognized his responsibility – for it could hardly be interpreted as less – his shame and guilt was palpable. He killed three people. No justification could excuse him from the simple fact that he was responsible for the deaths of three people. Underneath the heaviness of guilt such as this, the remaining desire to live inside me submitted. Still dazed by his realization, Dan reached up and removed his oxygen mask.



This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil – and yet I should be at a loss otherwise to define it.

When I first beheld this apparition – for I could scarcely regard it as less – my wonder and my terror were extreme.

Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed.