The instant before the car impacted my driver’s side door was too late to start thinking I could have made better choices most pointedly choosing to pay better attention to blind turns at intersections. Rather than having my life flash before my eyes there was only enough time to curse the whole bloody enterprise then the sheer concussive force of impact translating to every inch of my body, the taste of copper and a brief flash of pain before everything in my vision went as red as a stop sign.
Blood and regret where the whole of my existence as I felt the pain and all other sensation retreat from my body. My eyes were firmly shut but that didn’t force the red haze back. It grew ever more livid as I felt my heart slacken and then silence its beating. It should all be over and yet the pulse was replaced with the sound of drums as the red haze pulsed in rhythm with this new ever present sound. Regret seemed to pulse along with it. Every ill conceived plan of my youth, every spiteful action every sin made manifest but there was no looking away. My eyes were shut tight as my ears filled with the ominous pulsing of war drums beating out the pace to a march of memories I was powerless to stop.
Long past the time where I felt I could bear it no more the haze dissipated and the dreadful playback ended with the sound of hoofbeats was added to the drumming. Slowly a woman on horseback draped in a red cloak on a mare the same shade of crimson came into view as if breaking through a heavy fog. If this was my subconscious anthropomorphic manifestation of death coming to take me then I was thoroughly impressed with the effort my failing cerebral cortex was putting out. I was beyond terror and bewilderment but I was still beyond understanding whatever this grim figure was trying to communicate by appearing here. As she got closer her face was still obscured by the cloak but now I could see it wasn’t woven fabric at all but was a swirling clinging mass of blood and viscera and the most pants shittingly horrendous garment I could imagine, which may very well have been why I was seeing what I was seeing if this was just a bad prank being played on me by my last few neurons as they blinked out along with me. As she got close enough to see under the hood I was greeted with a sight as unnerving as the cloak. A pair of lambent green eyes set in a skeletal frame. If this was the grim reaper she had earned her title.
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As she stretched her blood soaked skeletal fingers in my direction the rest of this bloody haze seemed to clear from my vision and I felt a sense of self returning to me. Or at least I was feeling the desire to run with every ounce of my being. Even if I didn’t feel quite like I had legs or limbs of any kind to be doing that running with. Somehow in this terrifying ruddy dreamscape that feeling turned into motion. The woman kept coming but I felt myself being pulled in the opposite direction her gruesome form and the thrumming beat of the drums began to grow duller and less distinct. Just before they both faded away completely I felt a dizzying motion as if the whole world was righting itself as I opened my eyes.