Chapter 1 –
Sitting in the back seat of the family Jeep, an ad on the radio for cheap flights to Italy ended and the Scissor Sisters “I can’t Decide” started to play; I sank back in the chair my mum and dad in front talking about what we should do for the family holiday. The last time we had went on holiday had been before the fire; when grandmother was still with us, my old cigar and bourbon loving grandmother, we went to Rome during the middle of summer and regretted every second of it, everything was closed during the middle of the day and none of the restaurants opened till later so we were always hungry. But I miss grandmother, it was her idea to go, just once she said she wanted to go to the Vatican and pray, she joking said if he won’t listen to me there then he won’t listen to me anywhere.
“What do you think sweetie?”
“Huh,” I grumbled I obviously wasn’t paying attention.
“Were you day dreaming again, you need to get more time off from your job,” my mother remarked with a honey sweet voice.
My mum was and always would be the first person I could go to when I was upset, she would know exactly what to do and say, it was funny she thought I worked too much since she was the one that was involved in about 12 different charities and helped with the church events.
“Your mother asked if you think that pumpkin wouldn’t mind being in a kennel for a couple weeks,” my dad chimed in his deep voice like fresh roasted coffee really helped wake me back up to reality, after all it was always him who woke me up when I was running late, usually cause he was too.
Looking over to my right I stared into the soft brown eyes of pumpkin, her little oval brown eyebrows making her look more expressive than I’m sure she meant to be at all, really no thoughts passed through that head other than being around people.
“I don’t know, we’ve kind of had her with us since covid happened, she kinda has separation anxiety dad,” I sarcastically chirped back over the front seats.
My dad sighed and scratched his head, we stoped at the intersection and he rhythmically tapped his fingers along to the beat of Scissor Sisters before the light turned green and we pulled out forward into the intersection. Our black family Jeep with all four of us inside, then as we reached the centre a truck coming from the other direction swerved right. Dad pulled on the wheel and slammed the break, mum screamed something between shit and fuck; pumpkin and I were buckled in and the seatbelts held us in place, glued to our seats, helpless to the physics exam question that we found ourselves situated without time to study.
The front of the car began to crumple from the front right corner as the truck rammed us, dads fingers began their path grip of the wheel his knuckles going white as his hands tried to guide us out of harms way, mums hair began to fly forward in-front of her face like blinders on a horse she screamed in slow motion as the world around her was chaotically obscured from her. My arms flew forwards like a crash test dummy on a rollercoaster, going limp I had already lost control of what would happen to life, a spectator to my own life it felt like I was watching a horror movie and this was happening to someone else. Pumpkin was paralysed with fear, she had only just gotten over her travel sickness, now she remembered that in a car she couldn’t run away from her fears and was at another’s total mercy.
Next came the glass from the windscreen, it cracked and crumpled, then fragmented like angry crystal hornets towards the faces and organs of my parents, the seats used my parents like meat shields and in doing so protected pumpkin and I from the barrage. My mum stopped screaming, my dad held onto the wheel still even now like a captain going down with ship, loyal and dedicated till the bitter end.
Then like something out of an old action movie the car flipped over up onto its roof, spinning and scraping along the flank of our unwanted dance partner. The truck unbothered by the end of our waltz, continued its voyage looking for the nearest china shop with an opening for a bull.
Lying there upside down held up against gravity pumpkin and I sat barely conscious, the Scissor Sisters sang their hearts out for 2 instead of four as the ended their set,
“I can’t decide
Whether you should live or die
Oh, you’ll probably go to heaven
Please don’t hang your head and cry
No wonder why
My heart feels dead inside
It’s cold and hard and petrified
Lock the doors and close the blinds
We’re going for a ride.”
Who I Am 