by David Probert

Theresa McDormit needed The Antidote. That’s what her mother, Kate, always called anything that would pull her through the bad times. When Theresa was a child it consisted of a soft vanilla ice cream cone or a trip to the park, but now it was the little bottle of pills inside her purse—a small white bottle filled with antidotes that would soon be floating in the stomach of her corpse.

Kate had died three years ago; to Theresa, it still felt like yesterday. It was a memory that she fought to block from her mind; it always seemed to find its way back. Shortly after Kate’s passing, Theresa’s father, Neil, began drinking heavily. His reckless binges started off as a way to ease the pain, a way to forget what was really going on in the world around him, and for a while, it seemed to have worked. The alcohol was a disease that practically left him coughing up his insides; it was his antidote, or as Theresa called it, his poison.

Trying to keep the thought of her mother and father from her mind, Theresa navigated her car over the smooth road, which was overshadowed by the pines and oaks that lined its surrounding woodland. Sunlight beamed through the windshield, blinding her as she rounded the dangerous corners. The shafts of light receded behind the trees. Theresa noticed a large, black mass in the middle of the road. She gasped and her heart pounded like an angry fist trying to beat its way out of her chest. The mass turned toward her and stood on a pair of hind legs. From the distance it looked like a bear.

With trembling hands, she cut the steering wheel to maneuver around the hulking beast. The front right wheel of the car slipped onto the shoulder and pulled the vehicle off the road. The tires rumbled down the rocky slope, jolting the car with ferocity.

Theresa’s heart froze and her hands slipped across the steering wheel trying desperately to hold it steady and avoid the trees. The sound of crunching metal echoed through the trees as the car ploughed into a great oak.

The car careened, spraying gravel across the slope and began to spin out of control. Trees zipped by the windows so quick they were nothing more than a flicker in the glass. The car struck a large boulder and flipped onto its side, and Theresa could feel the glass break as her head smashed into the driver’s side window. The airbag snapped against her face and threw her head back into the seat so hard she felt a crack in her neck and a sharp pain zipped up the back of her skull. It felt like the bones in her neck had shattered.

She was now looking at the trees from another angle, an angle that changed as the car flipped again, this time onto its roof. The loud, crushing sound of metal rang in her ears as the vehicle smashed through the trees and, as it gained momentum, flipped again and again.

Chunks of glass rained onto her lap from the broken windshield. She noticed the airbag had turned red, red and glistening with the blood that gushed from a laceration on her forehead. Her chest tightened and she could feel the breath being squeezed from her lungs. My god. How bad am I cut? She raised her neck to peek into the rear view mirror. All that reflected from the shattered glass were crimson splotches bleeding across her face.

Lethargy settled in and Theresa felt the color drain from her body, leaving her with the tingling feeling common with anesthesia. She watched the colors of the world fade and everything was slowly obliterated by darkness.

#

She awoke battered and tender. Her eyelids peeled themselves apart from the veil of sticky blood that held them closed like scarlet glue, and the world was masked in a blur. She slowly raised a trembling hand to her face and wiped her eyes. This brought to fruition the terror that she had become victim to.

Her arms were covered with lacerations and her head throbbed. She rubbed the left side of her face and felt the warm skin swollen beneath her fingers.

The windshield, now a gaping hole to the outside world, littered the front seat of her car with small glass shards. The car remained pinned against a large pine tree with only the passenger side wheels touching the ground; the driver’s side leaned against the tree on a sharp angle. The roof had collapsed, nearly crushing her inside of the metal carcass.

I need to get to a hospital, she thought. I’m going to die. I’m going to bleed to death out here and die. Her legs were numb, and for all she knew, they were severed and lying on the driver’s side floor. Now she’d end up like one of those people she’d seen on the streets, the war veterans who had stepped on land mines and had their legs blown off and were now confined to wheelchairs. Her legs were still there, numb, but there just the same.

Someone would surely drive by soon and see her at the bottom of the slope, pinned against the pine tree, bloodied and bruised. Right now hope was all she had, nothing else existed, nothing but the dreadful silence occasionally broken by the cawing of crows in the distance and the breeze that sporadically sifted through the treetops. The thought of suicide was no longer on her mind, not when the control of her own fate had been yanked from her hands and placed into the universe around her.

What if the car explodes? she thought. How much can the gas tank handle before it erupts into flames? A lump formed at the back of her throat and her eyes welled with tears of horror. She tried to wriggle herself free from the seatbelt. It was no use, the belt was locked and she didn’t have the strength to break free. She heard a tink toward the back of the car. Maybe that was it, the gas tank could explode any second and she’d blow to pieces along with the car. How awful would that be—a phone call from the police asking her dad to identify the charred remains of his only daughter, lying throughout the woods. She cringed at the thought.

An arm here, a leg there, and a severed head burned so badly that it could only be identified by the dental records.

Staring through the broken windshield at the bed of pine needles and leaves, Theresa recalled the time her father had bought her first bike. He stood in the driveway with her for hours, teaching her how to pedal, brake, and steer around objects. This was before the drinking, of course, before the nights when she’d stop by to see how he was doing and find him passed out on the couch with a table full of empty beer bottles beside him. Those were the days when all she wanted to do was ride her bike and show her dad that she could brake and turn. Those were the days when life was good, simple. Why did things go so wrong?

Her eyes welled with tears as she sat helpless inside the crushed car. The tears stung as they rolled over the cuts on her face.

Her throat felt scratchy and her chest tight. Still, she managed to spit out the word “Dad.” Her father would likely die without her. She hadn’t given that reality much thought; not until she was forced to. Who would be there to throw Dad’s stash away so that he couldn’t drown his liver quite as often? Who would check in on him from time to time to make sure he was still alive and hadn’t fallen down the stairs?

She’d been selfish, she knew that now. She’d focused so hard on the bad things in her life that she was willing to leave the people behind who needed her, the people who mattered. And now she was going to die anyway. She was going to die alone in this car, trapped beneath the very device built to save her life in a crash. She reached down again and pushed on the button; the seatbelt did not release.

She began to sob as she listened to the birds chirp among the trees. The taste of salty tears and blood coated her tongue. Every so often the sun hid behind a patch of clouds and resurfaced, and a light breeze flowed through the broken windshield.