Carcrashes and Crying Girls

I live in a busy part of Orlando right next UCF. There is a street called N. Alafaya Trail, and every day I see a car crash.
There are two crowded apartment complexes parallel to each other on this street, one Pegasus Pointe which I used to live at, and the other Campus Crossings: College Station which I now live at.
There is a intersection between the two of them, a very dangerous intersection. When one stands on the asphalt they can almost hear it whispering lurid tales of broken glass and burnt rubber. If one looks at the concrete and focuses real hard they might even be able to see stains on it, stains from tears cried, stains from blood shed.
I have experiences with car wrecks, every time I stare at a motor vehicle, every time I hear the tell-tale purr of an engine I feel it in the back of my mind. I feel fear, I see the gods of the road bloated in their blood-stained glory. I feel the overwhelming presence of the endless graveyards we call highways. Behind me I swear that the chill on my neck is not some animal reaction, but the breathe of some ghoul made from twisted metal with eyes like headlights.
When I was fifteen I was dating a girl named Veronica, she is a pretty girl that goes by Ronnie.
Ronnie rides horses competitively, and she is very good. I spent so much time with her watching her jump her horse over barred jumps that to this day I still associate love with the smell of horse sweat.
One weekend Ronnie had a horse show that she was competing in. The horse show was taking place in Tampa on the fair grounds next to the Hard Rock Cafe. Her mother, her younger sister, and her were all going to stay in a hotel for the weekend and compete in the horse show during the day. They invited me along and of course I was happy to go, any chance to get away from my oppressive step-father and spend the weekend with the girl I was in love with was a great opportunity.
We left Pasco County on Friday afternoon happily packing into Veronica's mom, Sue's Suburban. I remember sitting in the back seat of the Suburban with Veronica watching as the hilly terrain of Pasco County dissipated around us and turned into the death trap known as I-75.
As much as I would like to claim that I did, I had no premonitions of the horror that was waiting not thirty minutes into my future. Horror that would leave me with nightmares for the rest of my life, horror that would forever ingrain the pale-white of children's bones into my Psyche.
Sue is a good driver she pays attention to the road, I felt quite safe in the back seat of the van and soon I began to feel sleepy. It had been a hard week at high school and I was ready to take a nap. I lay my head in Veronica's lap and tried to sleep as she lovingly rubbed the long brown mess I then called hair. Sleep was elusive and instead I listened to the hum of the road and stole kisses against the inside of Ronnie's thigh.
Suddenly Sue began to break hard and I sat up immediately. Staring ahead I saw it, a small off white car colliding with the median of a construction zone. I stared in shock, unable to believe what I was seeing as the car barrel rolled through the air and children flew out the windows. A young boy and a young girl flew out into the middle of the road sliding across the pavement.
Like an angry monster the black top mutilated the children peeling back skin and muscle as if it were nothing more than paper on a skeleton.
Out the right side of the car flew another little girl she collided with the median and it crushed her skull, she died instantly.
Behind us all the cars were stopped, and we were closest to the wreck. I looked on in horror for a brief moment and then ran out of the car to the children in the road. They were about fifteen yards away and as the came closer to my view I saw how bad it really was. A man had crawled from the wreckage and was screaming nonsense.
The young boy had a compound fracture in his leg, his knee had no skin on it at all and I could see his bones gleaming ugly in the sun. He was cut up horribly from the cruel road and was bleeding profusely from his head, I feared that he might have suffered horrible head trauma. He was screaming.
The little girl was in similar shape, she wasn't screaming though she was in absolute shock. I remember the wave of revulsion I felt as I watched her idly peeling her finger nails off asking over and over again.
"Is this a dream? Is this a dream? Is this a dream?"
Ronnie, her sister, Sam, and Sue had all gotten out with me, but I didn't know where they were. All I knew was the atrocity in front of me, stricken with panic I ran to the backed up traffic and banged frantically at the window of the first car I came to. The window of the car rolled down to reveal a middle aged woman sitting in the passenger seat.
"Call an ambulance!" I said, my voice cracked with emotion, "It's bad, it's really fucking bad. I think someone's dead, and the other two are dying."
The woman didn't make eye contact with me, she just nodded her head.
Then I went to the Suburban, Sue the ever strong rationalist (God bless her forever) had taken the children and put them in van. They were in the back seat, bleeding and crying, Sue had me hold ice to their wounds.
The panicked man was there also, saying nonsense talking about taking Sue's van and driving to the hospital. It got to the point that I feared that if an ambulance did not arrive soon that the man would soon become violent.
We tried to keep the children lucid, I tried to talk with the little boy about how it didn't look so bad, and that I had a pretty bad "boo-boo" on my foot (a result of a recent battle with staph infection). Sam and Ronnie also helped, holding ice, trying to calm the children down. Sue told the little girl that it was just a dream.
"Oh..." The little girl said, and fell quiet.
Overhead the news helicopters circled like buzzards, kicking up sand and debris. The cameramen held their cameras in one hand and stroked the dicks to the carnage with the other.
Eventually an ambulance arrived and emergency paramedics began their work. I remember the way that the bald paramedic in his white garb carried the little girl, there was no compassion in his hardened features. He looked like a butcher, not a life saver.
The little girl looked him in the eyes and pathetically asked him, "Is this a dream."
"No." The paramedic said and took her into the ambulance as she began to have a fit of hysterics.
The little boy was carried off in a similar fashion and I took a bottle of saline solution from the back of the van. I desperately scrubbed the interior of the car praying that the blood would give way to my pathetic administrations.
I then scrubbed the blood off my hands, I felt like lady Macbeth getting rid of the sticky red substance seemed to be impossible. A paramedic walked by and laughed at me. He laughed at the wild look in my eyes, and the desperation in which I tried to rid myself of the little boy's life sustaining fluid.

XXX

Years of nightmares later I am eighteen and going for a drive to rid myself of the haze that the medicine that dictated my mood put me in. I was driving my 1993 Ford Probe, a faithful companion, and truly wonderful car that I had lovingly titled Dani Exotic.

I was in Seffner outside of the Publix plaza that has Game Stop and Dunkin Donuts in it, I had just finished eating three strawberry donuts and was lighting my pipe (for digestion). Taking a left turn behind a slow-moving school bus I felt an impact and heard a titanic roar.
For a brief moment I had no idea of what just happened, and then I looked to my left to see a brown pick up truck having spun out not too far away from me.
The front of my car had been ripped off, my car totaled, and I felt the ugly gods of the street leering at me.
However I'm getting tired and this story needs to be continued on another day. My next post will be Car crashes and Crying Girls Pt.2.

On Writing

When I'm writing the computer screen is glowing, the room is filled with music, everything from the mad techno throb of Alien Sex Fiend and My Life With a Thrill Kill Kult to the heart wrenching tunes of Portuguese fados. I'm typically wired from head to toe on coffee and cigarettes, I'm alone I can't write around people.

I ruin my keyboard when I write, I slam out words too fast, too hard, the staccato click of my keyboard almost competes with the noise of the music. I try and justify my actions, I try and justify my senseless detail and poor grammar. I try to claim that I write of higher human nobility, that I write of things of substance, but the only substance around is all the different things pumping in my veins... if you get what I mean.

In school I was a maverick, I was the kid who showed up to class everyday hungover or stoned. I had a mohawk and I thought it was cool... maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but I had one anyway. I wore a leather jacket and stunk of cigarettes, I tried to have sex with any girl that was even mildly attractive. Most of the time I didn't succeed, sometimes I did.

Sometimes I was manic, sometimes I wouldn't sleep for days I would do things that were juvenile and stupid. Sometimes I was god and my fingers were my host of angels.

But most of the times I was depressed, I held onto sadness like a lover, I preached the gospel of Oblivion and practiced what I preached. I was a burning ball of nihilistic fury, I was also a pathetic cry for help that no-one could offer. I saw road signs sandwiching the void, I saw girls as tunnels, and I saw sugar as salt.

I saw the written word as escape, I devoured books, one after the other, sometimes two or more novels in a day. Then I went home and wrote, I would sit on my porch smoke my pipe and write with my cat on my lap. My cat is a skiddish little creature named Bruce Wayne who doesn't live up to his namesake... nothing ever does. I would write two thousand words a night, I wrote a collection called the "Memoirs of the Violated", short stories of despair and terror. I wrote a novella, I wrote half a novel, but my inner censor would always mess me up.

My computer crashed, my mom and step-father recovered the data, but they don't really pay much attention to me and haven't taken the ten minutes of the day that it would take to send me my stories back. So I kinda slumped, I still kinda am...

I'm going to college now, I don't have a mohawk anymore I have a very short hair cut. I go to campus everyday and attend classes, I bum cigarettes off of pretty girls and try to get their phone numbers. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I got in a car crash so I don't have a car anymore, it's a major bummer and the economy is too messed up to find a part-time job. I ride the bus from my apartment to the campus everyday, even if I don't have class. I'm broke all the time, but I don't feel too bad about it, I'm sure things will get better.

Sometimes I try and lie to myself, I try to tell myself that at one time I had everything, but it's not true. Aside from lacking a car and a job I have more now than I ever have. I'm working for a good education, I have good friends, and one day I'll have a good job. But no matter what happens I plan on writing until the day I die.