The acrid scent of smoke filled her nostrils, causing her lungs to violently spasm, as it forced the foreign substance from her body. It was a hoarse cough the ejected from deep with-in her, and it was the first thing she could remember experiencing. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. Her skin was warm, but only on the right side of her body. She tried to open her eyes, but a warm viscous substance clouded her vision.
“Uhn,” she groaned.
A tidal wave of pain, originating from just below the elbow of her left arm, began to lap at the edge of her consciousness, It pulsed with growing urgency, each reception only a split second behind the rhythmic drums banging in her ears.
She screamed, the pain forcing mind to take root, as she became aware of the dangerous situation threatening her.
Again, she struggled to open her eyes.
Her left peeled open, fighting against the warm sticky substance that had covered it. She knew that more of the same liquid also ran up her face, thin, morbid, rivers that carried her essence away.
Thick smoke clouded her vision, making it nearly impossible for her to see much farther than the top of the steering wheel, and it did nothing to fight against the feeling of disorientation that still coddled her senses.
She cried out as another wave of pain rolled up her arm, and slowly, she turned toward the source of her agony. She struggled to make sense of the nightmare before her. Even through the haze of smoke, and the liquid that poured up her cheek and into the corner of her eye, before following the trail it had made on her forehead, did she fight to believe it.
Where her forearm should have begun, just below the elbow, were two very bloody fragments of bone. What should have been, was no longer, and what remained, was the source of a crimson rain that bathed her in her own life’s essence.
“Fwoomp!”
Past the steering wheel, through the broken windshield, the engine suddenly ignited. The flames were small, but they fed hungrily at the fuel pooling on the pavement below. With the light came the revelation that she was upside down.
At that moment, she remembered everything. She remembered coming home to find her husband in bed with her best friend. How she hastily gathered some of her clothes together and threw them into a suitcase, desperate to leave as they begged her to listen. She remembered the panic attack setting in as she sped down the mountains, and looking down as her phone came to life. And, the last thing she remembered, was seeing the missed text messages and phone calls.
But then, the flames found their way into the fuel tank, and nothing else mattered. She was surrounded by an intense heat, crushed by an impossible pressure, and erased from existence, in all but the blink of an eye.
This is me, with my youngest son, nine years ago. This was how I had always been, and who I was used to being. I didn’t believe in myself, or that change would ever be possible.
Three years ago, I underwent a transformation. I followed through with my resolutions, a little each day. November 7, 2020, at the Wheat State Nationals in Wichita KS, I took first place in traditional (Karate) Kata, and second in non-traditional Kata, along with my oldest son, who took second for weapons Kata.
Beneath The Headstone 