a/n: I realize there might be some typos. I just wanted to get this up before I go CAMPING (!!) and I'll fix them when I get back. Ta!

He found himself walking along the highway, the cars whizzing past in metallic blurs. He wasn’t sure how he got there, but the idea that he was hitchhiking squirmed its way into his head. He hadn’t been sleeping very much lately, which was probably the reason he didn’t remember why he was walking down I-85 in the middle of, what looked like, the late afternoon. Quite frankly, he was surprised he hadn’t fallen down asleep on the highway’s shoulder.

He stuck his thumb out to a passing car, but they didn’t slow. He sighed and kept walking, his head bent down against the bright rays of the sun. He watched his white t-shirt flutter around his slight frame. There seemed to be blood on his shirt. Quite a lot of blood, actually. He scrubbed at it with his knuckles, but that only made the stain worse, so he gave up after a few furious strokes.

The ground he walked on was littered with pebbles, cigarette butts, and bits of glass that crunched under his shoes. He stepped over a coil of tire rubber and continued on, looking up only to flag a passing vehicle every time one happened by.

The blood was beginning to bother him, though. He didn’t feel hurt, so it probably wasn’t his blood. He couldn’t remember what he had done to get the blood on his shirt, but he felt a sense of foreboding as he walked that seemed to loom closer with every step. A thought tugged at his mind, but was wiped away by a blue Mazda that was traveling the line between the southbound lane and the shoulder.

He gave a cry and jumped back away from the car, nearly falling, but collecting himself in time to give the inconsiderate driver a heartfelt “Fuck you”. What was he, invisible or something? He barked a laugh. Invisible… If only…

His foot caught on a car bumper and he went down, barely having enough time to put his hands out to catch his fall. He could feel glass cutting into his palms and his cheek, but no pain, no warm wash of blood. It was surreal. He pushed himself up and felt the glass sink deeper into his flesh and almost laughed. He sat back down and leaned against the gray underside of the car bumper he had tripped on and held his hands before him.

The glass shards glistened in the light of the setting sun, making stained-glass patterns on his bloody shirt. He giggled and wiggled his fingers. There was no pain, no blood. He calmly picked the glass out of his hand with a smile on his face.

Once that was taken care of, he stood up, placing his hands on his hips. There were hunks of metal strewn about the shoulder, some, recognizable as parts of a car, and others, too mangled to even guess what they were or had been. Had there been an accident?

He turned around and faced the trees, away from the highway that had become eerily quiet in the last few moments, and scanned the underbrush. He saw a metallic flash ahead of him as the sun dipped lower in the sky and jogged over to it.

There was a car. Or, what was left of a car. It was turned on its side, the front and back ends smashed in so far that the interior of the car must have only been two feet long. He looked back towards the highway, but it was still. Not even the trees moved in the slightest of breezes. He rubbed the back of his neck and exhaled through pursed lips. Today’s not my day… he thought as he pushed aside a tree limb to get a closer look at the wreckage.

The windshield was nonexistent, but the window closest to him, the driver’s side window, was still intact. For some inexplicable reason, he stopped down and rapped his knuckles on the tinted glass. He shook his head and muttered, “Guess no one’s home…” He straightened up and walked around the front of the car to the passenger side.

Through the empty hole where the windshield used to be, he could see the white balloon of the passenger airbag, but nothing on the driver’s side. Just an empty seat pushed all the way into the steering wheel. Just above the poof of the airbag, he could see a tangle of reddish-brown hair.

Something about the hair… It made his breath catch in his throat. He froze, standing in front of the car, his eyes fixed on the hair. He shook his head. “No.” He took a step back and put his hands on either side of his head. “No, no, no, no, no,” he mumbled as she looked at the familiar car. The yellow ‘Stone Mountain Park Visitor Pass’ stuck to the dashboard, the silver angel medallion that hung from the rearview mirror, the blue baby car seat that now lay a few feet away from the rest of the car…

“No!” he shouted as he pointed at his car accusingly, his finger inches from the chipped paint on the roof where he had accidentally scraped the side of his garage one day only a few weeks ago.

The afternoon came back in a rush. The car ride. Her smiling as the wind blew her red hair back off her face. The radio playing ‘Yellow Submarine’ and all three of them singing along. The other car. Her cry. The baby’s shriek. Tires screeching. Glass breaking. The car seat, being thrown from the car and bouncing into the woods. The blood. The pain. The darkness.

He fell to his knees in tears. “No,” he said once again as he rocked back and forth. He crawled on his hands and knees to the passenger side and peered in with bleary eyes. His wife, Diane, was slumped against the airbag. A cut snaked its way from her left eyebrow to her hairline on the opposite side and a dried line of blood seeped out of her ear. He pulled her half out of the car, her limp body catching underneath the steering column, a torrent of blood pouring out from her stomach. He untangled her from the seatbelt that should have saved her life and hugged her to his chest. “Shhh…” he whispered as he stroked her cheek lovingly.

He looked from Diane to the car as he pet her. How had he survived? And how had he ended up on the other end of the highway? And where was the baby? Where was Shane? He looked down at Diane’s face once more. “I’ll be back,” he whispered to her as he kissed her dry, dead lips.

He gently laid her head on the dirt ground next to him and stood, stumbling slightly as he walked towards the empty car seat. He could hear the shrill call of a distant siren, but had no idea as to how close the ambulance was. The trees seemed to muffle the sounds from the highway.

He reached the car seat and stared down at it. There was a small smear of blood on the blue corduroy cover. He felt his face grow hot with anger. “Goddamn it!” He kicked the car seat, its gray plastic frame cracking against a tree.

He spun around, his eyes flickering from tree to tree, looking, searching, for his son. He groaned in aggravation and sunk to the ground, his hands over his face as he lapsed into tears once more.

He couldn’t be sure how long he had been sitting there, but when he next looked up, a team of several paramedics were rushing towards him with a stretcher. He struggled to his feet. “Please. My wife…” He couldn’t finish, so he just pointed towards her body.

The paramedics seemed to have heard him, because they rushed right past him and to Diane’s side. The one wearing a blue hat, her ponytail hanging out the back, rolled the stretcher to a stop and stooped down to feel Diane’s neck for a pulse. After a few seconds, she looked up at her mustachioed partner and shook her head. He took the clipboard from under his arm and scribbled something down. She stood and unclipped her walkie-talkie from her belt and said something into the mouthpiece. The third paramedic inspected the driver’s side window and then looked towards the car seat with a frown.

“We have something over here! Bring a stretcher!” called one of the paramedics who had continued on into the trees.

The three by the car ran towards the other paramedic’s call, the two women bringing up the rear with the stretcher.

He sniffed and started to follow reluctantly; unsure he wanted to know what they had found. But before he could move, the woman in the blue hat came running out from the trees, his son in her arms. Crying and shaking, but otherwise unharmed.

“Shane!” he cried with relief, reaching out towards him. The paramedic however didn’t pause. She carried Shane out to the ambulance parked on the highway. He watched them go, but made no move to go after them. Instead, he stayed where he was, his hands in the pockets of his pants, staring lamely at his wife’s body.

“I’ll go get another stretcher,” said the other woman as she turned and ran to the ambulance as well. Another stretcher? He frowned and finally made his way over to where two paramedics stood facing a tree, their arms folded across their chests. The third was stooped in front of another body, his back obscuring the body’s face.

“He was curled up in his arms, the poor kid,” one of the standing paramedics said to the other with a shake of his sandy blonde hair. “Imagine that…”

The other nodded slowly and watched the third paramedic rifle through the corpse’s pockets and pulled out a brown leather wallet that looked like…

His hand shot to his back pocket. No. His wallet was still there. He could feel the bulge through the fabric.

The paramedic opened the wallet and squinted at the driver’s license in the plastic cover. “‘Michael Andrew McFarland’.”

He laughed and shook his head. “No, that’s impossible.” He pulled his own wallet out and flipped it open to his driver’s license. “I’m Michael Andrew McFarland. I’m right here. That’s not me!” He shoved the wallet in the blonde paramedic’s face. He didn’t even flinch.

“Shame,” the paramedic next to the body said as he tossed the blonde paramedic the wallet. He stood and brushed the dirt from his blue slacks.

“No, I’m… Michael Andrew McFarland…” he mumbled again as he looked down at the body propped up against the tree.

It was definitely Michael Andrew McFarland. Definitely him. Cuts lanced his face, most still with glass fragments sticking out of them. A large chunk of the windshield was embedded in his chest, his blood staining his white t-shirt. He looked down at his own chest and watched as his shirt darkened with fresh blood. He ripped open the fabric and stared down at the gaping hole in his chest, then back to the body.

“This is it then?” Michael Andrew McFarland yelled at his body.

“This is it, then,” one of the paramedics seemed to respond as he wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

Another siren cried in the distance…