Prologue – A Life

Prologue

It’s funny what your mind registers when you are lying half unconscious next to the broken asphalt, concrete and stone. I am pretty sure that I have a concussion, three or four broken ribs and a broken hand. What made me so sure of these injuries was that one of my hands was bent at an odd angle; it was torn from its sockets and was a hundred and eighty degrees in the wrong direction, hence why I couldn’t crawl out. Two, I found it hard to breathe; every breath was wheezing and agonising. It was like my asthma was back, and this time it stabbed me with a hundred knives instead of being hypersensitive to the air around me. Third, my head was throbbing, and I could feel the blood rushing to my head; this time it was not from a sugar rush to Coco-Pops.

I wondered if I stayed here like this, the pain becoming numb by the second, would anyone even try to rescue me. I could smell the burnt tyres; at least my nose wasn’t broken. I laughed hysterically to myself. My senses were still in overdrive; I stopped panicking a few minutes ago, my breathing slowing down by the second. I knew that if I did not crawl out of this car window, I would get blown up. It’s a shame too; I cherished this Hennessey Venom F5 – this car should have kept me safe given its life’s worth of a price. The smell of gas was intoxicating; I always loved the smell of petrol, but in this scenario, it’s condemning everything I have worked for and how far I have gotten in life.

Knowing there wasn’t a single soul to help me out of this wreckage that is ironically going to end my life, I unhooked the seat belt that kept me from further suffering. The broken glass of the car window was scattered amongst the wreckage. I used my good hand to brush away the glass pieces, their touch not even registering in my parietal lobe. My body had gotten past the fight mode and was ready to flee. Slowly but progressively, letting my less dominant left hand guide the way, I crawled out, only to be hit by the feeling of something metallic aimed at my head.

‘Get up!’ shouted the person at the other end of the metal, which I now registered as a handgun.

Slowly, I staggered to my knees, then shakily, upright, afraid that any other movement could mean my concussion would have a competitor.

‘Keep walking towards that car behind you!’ screamed my kidnapper, my vision focusing on the very Ford Falcon, painted bright white, the very one I was trying to get away from.

I limped and staggered, my assailant to be, placing pressure on the back of my skull, ready to fire the moment I made a wrong move. He placed one hand roughly around my left arm whilst still pointing the handgun with his right hand, edging me backwards.

‘Get in!’ shouted the voice, the ringing in my head getting louder. I didn’t know which was worse, the tetanus getting flamboyant by the second or the gun aimed at the back of my head, ready to blow a hole through my skull, though my occipital lobe and out my frontal lobe, taking with it a life and a dammed soul.

When in crisis, the brain does such strange things. For me, I recalled the memory, the memory of the day everything changed.