Cold morning air hit me as I slowly gained consciousness. I wished I was home and in my warm bed listening to the sound of my wife breathing softly next to me, but I don’t know where I am. The light I could see softly glowing through my eyelids was cold, and it hurt to move. The ground beneath me was damp with leaves and twigs sticking out of the ground, one of them pressed into my back making it impossible to be comfortable. I knew I’d have to open my eyes at some point, and part of me hoped someone would be there waiting for me. Maybe someone would be looking down on me telling me everything was going to be okay and that the cops were on their way.
The only noises I could hear were the soft songs of the birds and wind flowing through the trees along with the hum of cars as they rolled by on the road up the hill. The bed I lay in was the cold damp ground of the forest. Tall trees towered over me reaching out to the cold sky looking for some sort of embrace from the clouds and light that hung in the air.
My body aches and breathing is almost impossible to maintain at this point. There’s pain branching through my body, but the worst pain is coming from my leg. I can feel it throbbing and begging for me to look at it. Maybe I broke it in the car before I went through the windshield or landed on it when I finally came to a stop after rolling down the hill, but I can’t bring myself to look at it.
I hoped I would wake up to a hospital room and doctors telling me to tell them what happen. But teenagers are only young kids who are experimenting, messing around, and making all the bad choices they can. When you get a group of kids who are not only making bad choices that affect themselves, but they affect others too you would hope they take responsibility. But when you get kids that drink and party all through the night and end up driving down the street swerving and swaying to their music not caring about anything else in the world you get kids that look at what they’ve done and do nothing about it. They can be cruel, with their smiling mirages of alcohol and echoing thoughts of hope for their future. But that’s the problem; they only have hope for themselves and their future. God forbid anyone that gets in the way of that bright future.
Too afraid to call the cops, and too afraid to see if the person they just made swerve off the road is somehow lying on the ground and begging for anyone to come look for them. But no one comes. No one is looking. The only proof that the car went off the road is the dent it left in the blackberry bushes; but no one will see that. They’re all too caught up in their own mirages, smiling their fake smiles and thinking of how they’re going to live with what they’ve done. How they’re going to try to never give into that mirage ever again.
Cold light of the sun is the only thing trying to comfort me as I slowly slip. I know that the sound of the wind slowly shifting through the trees and the birds singing will be the last thing I hear. I know this because when you’re a kid you’re afraid of what’s in the dark, but when you get old enough you’re afraid that there’s no one in the light. No one is coming to help me, and I know I’ll be alone. So I’ll lay here on the cold hard ground feeling the throbbing of my leg under my long shorts. I lay here and think of all the people in the world going along the road with their hopes and life ahead of them and hope they don’t get caught up in someone’s mirage. I will hope that teenagers don’t fall under the haze of a mirage and drive along the road with their glazed over eyes not caring about helping the person they just sent off the road.