Blood trickled slowly across the dashboard. He watched it crawl slowly to the edge and then drip down onto his sneakers. This, he thought, was a nightmare. He stared with utter disbelief at the body of his father draped over the bent steering wheel, his hands still tightly wrapped around it and his knuckles white. The hands reminded him of a more pleasant time when his dad would play baseball with him. His dad would always applaud his efforts and cheered him anytime he hit the ball. His dad was so proud of him. He remembered his first little league game. How his father stood up and cheered when he got a hit, yelling, "That's my boy!" and, "Way to go Steve!" not caring about the "baseball-father" image he was giving to all the other parents. The memory felt good and almost brought a smile to his face, almost. But reality slapped him hard in the face. There would be no more cheering father at his games anymore, only an empty silence. It seemed no one would care if he got a hit or not, or even if he showed up at all.

 A lump in his throat began to grow and swell until it almost choked him. Blood pulsed up into his head as he broke out into tears. Instinctively he cried out for his mom to help him. She always had before. When he lay in bed terrified of the bogeyman, holding his covers up to his chin to protect himself, she was there. She would put her soft hands around him and say, "There, there Steve, everything's all right. I'm here to protect you." She would fill him with love and hope when she would kiss him on the cheek. He felt good as he remembered seeing his mother's smiling face and kind eyes. But now as he looked at her all he saw was a stare of horror and pain fixed solid in death. It was terrifying. He felt all the love and hope slipping away from him. No one would be there anymore. His last memory of his mother, the horrid stare, would haunt him forever in his dreams. Nightmares.

 He tried to scream but only a crackling cry came out. He felt like he wanted to explode and kill the person that hit them but he knew that would do no good. He kept his anger inside and it ate away at his stomach. "My friends!" he thought trying to fight off total despair, "I still have my friends!" He remembered Eddie, his best friend, who constantly made jokes in class and actually made school bearable. He remembered the time Eddie got up in front of the class when the teacher was out and imitated her right down to her lisp. It was a riot. The entire class was laughing out of control and he stood up there yelling "Class! Class! Stop this laughing or you'll all be in big twubble!" And Alex too, he thought, he could still spend afternoons over at Alex's house eating cookies and playing games on his Atari. And Bruce and Ted, he thought, and all the guys. But soon he realized that this would not be. He knew that with his parents gone he would be sent away to a foster home in a strange town with strange kids. His entire world would be taken away from him and replaced by a fake one with no father, no mother, no friends, no love, no happiness, no laughter, nothing. He would be alone in an empty void for the rest of his life. He tried to fight the bad feelings that were filling him with so much misery but they were much too strong this time. He crumpled his body into a ball on the carpet under the dashboard trying not to touch the feet of his parents and tried to hide. The awful visions kept bombarding him even here as he could no longer shut them out of his mind. He wished that this was all a dream and begged to wake up as he felt the warm tears stream down his cheeks. "Please. Please." He quietly begged in futility, but he knew that it would do no good. And as he fell asleep from exhaustion he prayed that God would be merciful and not let him awake.

© Veyanne - 1999