The Accident

Blue. Yellow. Green, the seaweed kind. White. Black. Red.

The colours of the rainbow and more flashed before my eyes. Then, I realised that the flashing colours were actually images. Images...of who?

I start to see people I recognise. Mom, Dad, both so young. Not a white hair on them, their faces pure and line-free. No haggard furrows tugging and their crows with worry, decrepit from years of being overwhelmed by stress, consumed by anxieties.

My three brothers. All wearing diapers, giggling together as though they've hatched some devious plan. Friends, more family, a small poodle we had for a pet, so long ago that I can't even recall his name.

My girlfriend's dark eyes glinting. Her soft pink lips open slightly as she drinks from a bottle of water, panting after a bike ride along the footpaths of the Himalayas. She smiles with her eyes as she drinks.

Her mother. Unconscious on the floor in front of us, her fingers dripping with blood, still clutching hopelessly at a God-foresaken needle.

More needles. On the floor. All over the floor.
Two black guys, also unconscious.

Me at a hospital, clutching her hand. She is under a white sheet. I watch her eyes gently roll to the back of her head, once-pink lips now white and dry, and I feel her hand go slack, life ebbing away from her hand,

as now it does from my own.

Blackness.....
.............
.....
..
.

I see a white light now......white. I try to walk into it, but I cannot move. The white light moves towards me, then stops suddenly.

I hear voices.

I feel strong hands lift my broken body up, and I don't know where they take me.

The Sweat

I smelt it as it dripped off him.

Dimmed disco hall. Smoke machines. Coloured light.

His arm around my waist, his hand tightly gripped in mine.

The smell of alcohol and cigarette smoke hung in the air, heavy, mixing with the smell of him on the dance floor.

Every time I breathed in, my nose reached out, lightly brushing his neck. My nostrils filled with the smell of him, his skin, his hair, his breath. Every time I breathed in, my chest expanded towards his, pressing together amidst the fervent heat. I watched him as he concentrated on the movement, the music, watched as his light brown hair stuck to his forehead, the moist droplets of sweat running down his skin.