Around me the wind roars like waves crashing on a shore I wish were near, its icy breath a thousand tiny hooks tearing into my skin. With eyes marinating in thickened blood, nothing seems real. The world beyond this shattered window is a photograph hanging in a darkroom, a lifeless reflection made creepy by a red light. Save for my tears diluting the blood I would certainly be blind to this horror. So I wait, in hope, for another trickle, another crimson stream to find its way to my eyes once more, blinding me to this macabre spectacle of open flesh, mangled steel, and exposed bones.

It doesn’t.

I turn slowly to Joe, his face sparkling in the last slither of light, his eyes made indifferent by agony. I hear my voice, an echo in a dream, “Don’t you remember the Arizona Girl?” I ask him. “Nothing more than a child, trapped in a car wreck for five days? Don’t you remember? Someone will come Joe, someone soon.” When I pronounce anything with too many vowels, I taste more blood.

Where my foot should be is now where the radio is. Ignorant and impervious to the carnage, the radio station we were listening to before the crash plays on.

I say to Joe, “The Arizona girl survived five days eating rice crackers. We must be brave. If a child can survive, so can we.”

Silence follows darkness, follows silence.

I awake to cherry snowflakes falling from the sky, each catching in the ravine of the twisted rubber windowsill in front of me. Soon it’ll be dark, colder. Through experience I have learnt compassion and sympathy are not things the darkness preserves like daylight. In the dimness of night, one’s anxieties trick even the most rational of thinkers. Not that Joe would ever agree to my having any rational thoughts. He believes I’m quite the drama queen with an over excited imagination. And it’s true, in part. But the person that questions a dull thud in the middle of the night, or the creek of floorboard, is poles apart from a person helplessly pinned to a car chair, unable to move.

No, this night will mark the start of a very long, cold and difficult wait for us both.

I move my eyes slowly to the left. Pine trees surrounding us form a barrier, a rich fertile environment for the dark to grow stronger. Cars will pass on the road above us, blissfully unaware of the crushed metal and injured bodies lying below. And here we will wait, like the Arizona girl, for salvation to find us before someone, or something else does.

Clear of where the window screen should be a second car shows its belly to the dusk sky: inside, another diamond-encrusted face appears unperturbed to pain. I want to laugh, but I know it would only result in my losing a tooth. At least if the driver is dead I’ll be halfway to being happy. If he’s dying a very painful death then I may raise a smile at the cost of splitting my lip even more. But being so far away it’s hard to determine if he’s either. As substitute for assurance I breathe a laboured sigh of approval regarding his bloody appearance, and hear the gurgle sound of fluid collecting in my chest.

I say to Joe, “I’m going to get stopped a lot more at passport control after tonight,” and the bottom part of my lip tears a little.

Cerise shadows follow darkness follows black.

I awake in more pain. The second car is all but consumed by night’s shadowy hand, its fingers spread flat across what’s left of our bonnet. Without light time is measured in blackouts and the slow dripping noise coming from the engine. I don’t remember the radio stopping, nor do I know how long the last blackout lasted. What pulled me out from this last repose was the strong smell of gasoline and pine needles being carried by cold winds.

Part of me that still believes this is still a dream.

Wishes.

Those few seconds before the thick red veil is lifted and misshapen shadows draw ever closer, brings me to moments when both Joe and I would doze in bed on Sunday mornings, where the simple exchange of a smile would make the day perfect before it had begun. Then the beat of pain crawls over my body like a thousand angry footsteps, and such moments seem as far away as the low rumble of passing cars above.

I say to Joe, “Some anniversary, eh?”

The snap of a branch stops me from reaching over and touching his face.

“Joe - did you hear that?” I ask him, and he remains still, quiet. “I’m sorry. You’re trying to listen aren’t you?”

No reply.

I look out towards the woods before me and blink. Squinting, I see nothing but tall pine trees dressed in ghoulish attire, the winds bringing to life each one. “Joe,” I say quietly, “I’m cold… Will you hold me?”

Joe doesn’t move, his hands are lost within the broken plastic of the dashboard, his expression caught between worlds.

A gentle wind makes its way up my skirt. The slight chill makes me realise I’ve soiled myself. The expensive matching lingerie I bought especially for this trip will never complement each other again. I sensed the assistant at the shop could predict this even before the crash. From her expression she thought the underwear would be wasted on a woman my size, that maybe my thighs would be too daunting a challenge for its delicate material.

Bitch.

I wonder to myself if Joe would have thought the same.

Yes.

My body has aspired to be much larger since we married, and it appears no diet is going to stop it from its ambition. Joe won’t even look at me now when I get changed for bed. Instead he comes to bed late just to avoid seeing me getting changed. I’ve asked him several times if being fat makes me unattractive to him, and he’s always said with great resolve that it didn’t.

Joe is a lousy liar.

Once, when drunk, he made himself a sandwich of cottage cheese and roast ham. I was stupid enough to remark how disgusting it looked. “No worse than your legs,” he said. So I told him cellulite affects one in every three women, and he told me his friends must have married the other two.

You were mean to me, Joe. But I forgive you.

I forgive you.

The snow knits together a white blanket for my lap. My teeth click together like castanets. I never realised how warm the cold can be. I’m scared more by this than the shadows lurking in the woods, a feeling spawned from reading about people who have died through hypothermia and how often they’re found naked. A severe drop in temperature gives you the one thing you want, all the time forcing you to sink deeper into death. It’s nature’s last trick.

I ask Joe if he’s cold, but he doesn’t answer.

I rub my hand along Joe’s face, loosening a few window screen fragments. With each end of each finger now numb, I feel nothing but an overwhelming sense of loss.

Darkness follows shadows follow darkness.

From behind, a high pitched shriek, a god-awful scream, forcing me to move suddenly. The change in position sends a thousand volts charging up my leg, robbing me of oxygen, tearing open clotted wounds. I scream in agony and follow it with a cry for help. “P-P-Please!! H-H-Help us!!”

I look to the side mirror where a tall black figure moves swiftly behind us. “P-P-Please,” I cry. “S-S-Send f-f-for help!”

The wind taunts the trees once more causing a roar of provocation to echo around the clearing. When it dies to a whimper, a staccato of branches break against the whine of an animal. My hand searches the space between Joe and I for a shard of glass.

Nothing.

The side mirror is a window of grey and black shadows, all of them moving towards us. I close my eyes tight and remember the Arizona girl, the news reports of that lost little girl trapped in a car for days. How scared must she have felt? Her mother dead beside her, the black hand of night holding her like it holds both Joe and I. She survived. She found strength to overcome the very thing that now grips tight my heart. Joe was right when he said I was a drama queen. He was right. I’m a fat old drama queen. And although he never said it, he was right to think I was foolish to hold close the love we both knew was slipping away.

The Arizona girl inside me is lost, and the once brave heart of a child is now slowly accepting the certainty of fate.

Silence.

I look to the side mirror and it’s empty again.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

I look down at my legs and they’re nothing more than a tangled web of dry blood, plastic and steel. I know I’m going to lose the leg. Joe will hate that. It’s hard enough him coping with the cellulite, but having a wife with only one leg will, I’m quite sure, cause him no end of shame. But at least the prosthetic will have no dimples. It’ll be smooth, just like a mannequin, perfect. I’m guessing it’ll still be fat. But at least it will be dimple free, and Joe will have half the woman he married again.

Self-sacrifice follows heartache follows hope.

I whisper to Joe how the Arizona girl’s mother was truly devoted to her child, and how the family told the press she probably took her last breath saving her daughter. With eyes still firmly closed I search for Joe in the darkness while winds sneer my sentimentality.

Against my face, the talons of a beast tears at each of my cuts. With a quickened heart and deadened fingers I touch what feels like a hand, round and malleable. Squeezing it tight I tell Joe how I would do the same for him, repeating it over and over while falling through everlasting chasms of serenity.

And I would do the same for you…