It’s your twenty first birthday at last. You and your girls, let’s call them Stacy and Tracy, are out partying all night. The typical birthday is never complete without alcohol of course. You all jump from club to club partying and dancing with hot guys. It’s probably around two in the morning when you decide to head back to your apartments. You remember feeling your dress stick to you as you climb into the driver’s seat of your boyfriends Mercedes SLR you asked to borrow for the night. That once charming little cocktail gown has become shredded from all the dancing and soiled with beer and sweat. Once in the car you start off back home, where ever that was. You were way too drunk to remember at that point. What actually happened is you and your friends end up cruising down the complete other side of town. They don’t care. They are having the time of their lives jamming out to some Katy Perry songs in the back. Tonight was the best night ever. You will remember every vivid detail of all the fun you had together. Sadly, there is one very important thing you will forget. You will forget about the color red. That night was all about red. Red like your shiny little dress, red like the solo plastic cup containing the life of the party, or red like the light you just ran through.
When the worst happens, the brain seems to work like a camera. It captures every second of what unfolds. A process starts; it’s your mind trying to make sense of the insanity. “This can’t be happening” “Maybe this is just a dream. Maybe we are sleeping…” All you want is to have your life back. To be able to put the pieces back together. It all started with a small nudge on the side, but that’s all it took to take you over a cliff. In the middle of the busy intersection, that red light casts a shadow on the carnage about to take place. Your boyfriend isn’t going to be too happy with you tomorrow when he sees what you did to his car.
It was then that first car rams you in the side. All of a sudden you’re spinning. Every view is upside down or contorted. It reminds you of the roller-coaster you used to ride in the summer as a kid. Back them when you heard screams they were often of joy, now they were of terror. After that first car, you come to a sliding stop. It doesn’t end there. Car after car bombard you. Your body, once strong, now is flung around like a helpless ragdoll. Your head hits the windshield, you heard cracks. All of a sudden you are frozen. It doesn’t make any sense. This turn of events isn’t fair. Later you’ll realize the full extent of your choice. The police will take you in; show you the Aerial images, the bloody cars, the metal shrapnel, and everything else.
Enough of that, back to you. Poor little drunk girl slumped over on her carbon fiber dashboard. You can’t move. Your eyes forever frozen on your two friends with broken necks and bloody faces. Other than that, all you can see is your cracked windshield. Something that was once whole now shattered in a million pieces. A lot like you. Spaces that were once filled, now empty. These spaces included your friends, boyfriend, and goals. As you are lying there, you start to hear some sort of monster ripping through the metal chasse of the Mercedes. One last glace at your friends and you see that once unimportant color of red. Gloved hands pull you out when everything fades to black forever.
To put it simply, although you used to be able to see, you were blind. You were blind and ignorant of the world around you, and now you can’t see at all. It’s fitting, how things work out, isn’t it. Only it isn’t. Why did you live when all of those others had to die? Your life had become a living news headline “Drunk Party Causes 10 Car Pileup” and “Alcohol Claims Another Sixteen Lives”.
Just to gain some sanity, when all the reporters asked what it was like, you say that you don’t remember. A perfectly reasonable response, given your head trauma. Also it’s a complete lie. You know you remember every millisecond. If you say, you forget, maybe you eventually will. Also the doctor says eventually your vision will come back, but secretly you hope it doesn’t, because you can’t face the sights of death and despair that you have caused. You can barely even life with yourself. You’re a killer, a murder of innocent people. I know you will get over it, that one day, when you woke in the hospital bed that had become your new home; you could barely start to see. What was that first color you saw? You saw red of course, and lots of it. It wasn’t like the red you last remember. It was beautiful. What you saw, was dozens of red roses covering the room.
Like the cars in the streets, your life moves along. Going with the change and the curve of the road. Then something like alcohol comes along and smashes up your world then retreats back into its dark recesses of waste and hopelessness. But like all cars, you must keep moving and avoid those dangers. “The creaking silence of age echoes through the streets. Sounds like old wooden floors under heavy feet. All of the children running around have evacuated, or maybe they just disappeared…”
At last you come again to the famous cross roads. All of the lives lost, all of the dreams ruined have faded. “Where have all the children gone?” One look up at that famous red light, but it isn’t red anymore. It has faded to green, and you pull on.