Til Death Do Us Part

32

I’m not slowing down. The railings are coming at me at a speed of noughts as panic grips me, and I yank with all my might to turn this infernal metal coffin, not knowing what else to do. I slam the break repeatedly, in a manic, impulsive effort, gripping the wheel so tight that my hands turn white.

Nothing.

A solid wheel, no brakes, and not enough time to do anything about it because I’m traveling at high speed.

I run out of options. I brace myself as I smash through metal barriers at the top of the viewpoint, metal ripping up and tearing the front of the car as the barrier goes with it. Rumpling the bonnet and smashing out the headlights, my illuminated view becomes a dark, terrifying blackness. The scenery before me goes out, like a Tv screen being switched off.

Letting go of the wheel, I scream out in terror and press my hands to the ceiling to hold myself taut as we crash through, and the car takes a nosedive with a stomach-lurching precision, right off the top of the peak view cliff. A perfect view, a pitch black night, a full moon, and the glistening sea laid out before me that ripples with reflections of my only light source now. So typical to have such perfection and beauty when fate decides it’s the end of the road for me.

It feels like my soul leaves my body and everything goes in slow motion. My butt lifting from my seat, only held in place by my seatbelt, my hair, arms, even my purse and cell beside me, all experience a loss of gravity. My stomach moves up into my throat, and I’m so caught in the loss of sense I can’t react, like astronauts in a moon expedition showing us the fun from inside their shuttle, suspended in time and space. I plunge together, with this heavy black object of regret, into the darkness of shadows and swooshing noises below. Trees are rustling in the wind, the night air so silent yet so bustling with noise, and I am swallowed into it all. The radio crackles and breaks up through such an upbeat song, so I get quiet moments.

Jyeon flashes through my mind, his face paining me, even at a time like this. Yoonah, mother, my parents, and the massive weight of guilt and sorrow that I would do this to them. I didn’t even mean it.

Almost in a blink, the elongated period comes to a crashing halt as I’m blasted nose-first into inky water that comes cascading up the windscreen and sides of the car like an explosion. Igniting a scream from me as I’m smashed forward and head butt the wheel with so much force, I blackout for a second and lose my sense of reality. It calms my panic removes the fear as I’m knocked for six for mere seconds. I come around just as fast though, as icy cold fluid numbs my feet and legs and starts climbing like creepy fingers up my body. I’m disorientated and don’t know what it is at first, so shaken and detached from reality.

I drag in a gulp of air and flop back in my seat, my head hitting the padded cushion and rolling from side to side, and wince at the pain that rocks across my face and skull. Warm fluid trickling over my left brow. It’s an instant migraine and swirling vision.

I’m dazed but starting to take in what’s happening as reality hits home, that I’m sinking. The iciness cloying at my limbs is a rising water level. My blood turns cold because it’s freezing as the vehicle submerges and swallows me up. Rushing in at every orifice and the car is being tussled about in the rapids of deep stormy water, so close to the sea opening that it’s no longer just the river tearing at my lifeboat.

I pull myself together, ripping back clarity like a slap in the face, urgency flooding me as I get to grips with how bad this is, and I start clawing to get out. At my belt, holding me captive to this damn seat, with hysteria-driven motions and losing the ability to be able to coordinate my fingers. I’m shaking so badly I start fumbling and feeling around, taking shallow gasps as tears flood my eyes and blur my vision. I become more alert by the second, and yet with it comes my unbridled fear of what’s happening and how bad this is. Genuine terror is taking over and slowing my ability to react.

“Jyeon, help me, please…. help me.” I sob out loud, making senseless requests to deaf ears, breaking a nail in my efforts, and grasping, scratching, and clawing at the metal components I can’t seem to make work. Hysteria gripping my soul and making me erratic. Emotions overwhelm me as my immortality stares me in the face, and I fail to save myself. I can’t get the damn thing to unclip, and it’s literally anchoring me to this coffin.

“I don’t want to die alone. Not like this. Jyeon…. find me…. please. I don’t want to die.” My voice is barely a tearful whisper, drowned out by the chaos of the water rushing in and the groans and creaks of the car straining under its weight. The radio is still flickering music and dies out in a horrible dramatic last burst of lyrics about not being together. An awful way to leave me alone in this desperate darkness.

It’s at my waist in seconds, then my shoulders, a sensation like I’m being pulled down into ice that steals my breath. Speeding up with momentum as I sink further, and I only manage one last gasp before I’m pulled down and under. Still fighting to get my belt off as this colossal weight around my hips yanks me into another world.

The air around me disappears as the cold dark liquid I can’t see through surrounds me, blurs my vision, and shocks my skin with its temperature. I hold my breath, submerged and aware of a free-falling sensation in my stomach. We’re being pulled down faster than I anticipated, this car and me, and I fight and scrabble with the mechanism to get loose. I close my eyes, feel my way, and almost let out all the air in my lungs with a relief squeal as it finally unclips, and the sensation of being let go frees me. Rising into the space with a head bump to the roof over me before sinking back down.

Instinctively, I reach up to the window beside me and use it as leverage to pull myself out of the seat, but I’m tugged down as I try. Something around my ankle is jamming me in and keeping me secured. I twist and fight. Wiggling my foot because it feels like my shoe is caught somehow, I tug, rotate, and kick out until it slides free, releasing me from my b*****e and my own strapped on stiletto. I haul myself out the window with great effort, my ass causing a temporary issue, and then pop, I’m out, as the car falls away into blackness. I can’t see anything around me.

I don’t know which way is up, and my lungs are burning, straining, with the effort of holding air that’s not enough to sustain me. I start to panic that I’m suffocating and the instinct to gasp in is something I have to fight with my entire willpower. Swishing my arms and legs around in a bid to swim to the surface, but every direction is a formidable black wall of nothing. I can’t even see the car anymore. I don’t know what’s down, up, left, or right.

My gut pulls me one way, something like a sixth sense, that it’s to oxygen, and I kick with fury and extend my arms in a grasping motion as I fight as much a is can to find light and air. It’s a good guess, and as my face breaks the surface, I gasp with all my might to breathe it in before I’m plunged back under with the reactive force up my upward thrust. A moment of relief, followed by the reality that I’m far from safe.