This was when her life was supposed to be flashing in front of her eyes right?
Instead, she just thought of everything she didn’t remember. Specially, for some reason, she was thinking about her brother. Or lack of memories. Did she even tell him she was leaving? Did he assume she got kidnapped? Killed? Or did she try to tell him some story? You would think she would remember, but she didn’t. It seemed like a big thing to forget, yet she did. How much more she had forgotten?
There wasn’t a way to figure that out though so she tried to push that back as far as she could. There were a lot of other things to care about that she could actually change. They were more important.
That never stopped her from thinking about it late at night when no one else was up. Nights were too long to be rational about it all.
None of this explained why those particular thoughts were racing through her head now though. Maybe she had fully given up trying to be rational. It seemed like the worst timing right as a reaper was coming fast behind her.
She didn’t know why she expected it to feel like bugs. Instead, it felt soft, velvety, almost like flower petals on her skin. It was outside the car. Inside the car. Both at once. It just was and it was everywhere.
And she let her foot off the pedal. The car slowed down, rolling to a stop. There was something just out of sight, an exit. She could press her foot back down and then she could get out again. She just had to press her foot down no matter how impossible that sounded right now.
The reaper brought her closer to itself. It’s icy fingers touched her cheek again.
The cold shocked her. She twisted the wheel. The car flung into the warped space. There was a moment where she was somewhere bright, sunny maybe, or maybe any light was bright after being surrounded by absolute dark, then the G-force hit her. The seat belt choked as she flung forward.
She blinked away the fuzziness in her vision. She couldn’t get rid of the splotchiness that covered the entire windshield. She tried to flip on the windshield wipers, but they wouldn’t budge. She flipped them off again.
Fuck.
The seat belt dug into her chest and her aching shoulder. It had a sharp pain in it since the “incident” because, shocker, death wounds never healed right. But, she was a master ignore a problem long enough, it disappears. So Dona just didn’t look, didn’t even check. She better not have dislocated it or something. That would truly suck.
The Camry made a valiant effort to find some sort of traction. It strained, huffed a few times, but it didn’t make it anywhere.
Dona flipped it to reverse and floored it again.
Still nothing. Just like the windshield wipers.
She was stuck.
Dona had to kick the door to dislodge it. Snow dropped down onto her ankles. Something about the motion and the feeling made her head dizzy. That or she just was dizzy. That was probably more likely.
With the door open, the weather was worse than Dona even imagined. Snow flew past on gusts of wind. It whistled into her ear until there was just a bunch of pressure on the side of her face.
The only lucky thing was the lack of people to notice a little old car that suddenly appeared in the middle of a snow bank. A few people glanced back at her from across the street, but they didn’t bother stopping. The mystery wasn’t worth the cold. The only person close enough to really matter barely looked at her for a moment. Then he looked down at her bare arms, which, side note, she really had to do something about soon. She wasn’t exactly planning on stopping somewhere cold in literally the middle of winter, All she had were some long sleeves.
The man stared at her. She stared back.
He put out the cigarette he was smoking and walked towards her. “You stuck?” He shouted, but the words were still nearly drowned by the wind.
There was no way she could get her mouth open, not with her head swimming like it was. She couldn’t even shake her head.
“Do you need help?” He just kept coming closer and closer.
She had to make a decision. She could either move forward to him, or dive back in the car, but she needed to take a step soon.
She needed to take a step before he reached her.
But she didn’t, and he kept coming closer.
“Ley line,” Dona finally choked out. “There was a line. Here.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve heard that before actually. Haven’t seen someone use it in a while. Not many line jumpers anymore.”
He stood next to her now, but she could barely look up at him. Moving her eyes felt impossible, like there was something in the back of her head that tried to pull her down, back, away, somewhere else.
His hand inched into her vision. It barely was visible over the blackness coming all around her. “You must be cold,” he said.
She couldn’t tell how cold it was really, but it definitely wasn’t California heat. The longer she stood there in only a T-shirt and jeans, the weirder it would look. She really should think about that. She needed to think about that.
But her mind refused to work. Couldn’t work.
His glove prickled on her skin.
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