Sarah O'Connor

(A weird nightmare I had a few nights back.)

I remember the dog, white and dying on the road. It shone in the headlights, pure white except for the blood by its mouth. It was lying down, looked like it might just be getting ready to sleep. Its eyes were black and glazed, but it could still see, still comprehend what was going on. It lifted its head slightly as my car came closer, as the car that hit it was stopped beside it, taillights red, still on top of the dog.

“We have to go back,” I’m almost crying when I say it, when I tell my two friends who are in the car with me. We had to pass the dog. I hadn’t wanted to, but there was a car tailgating us. It wouldn’t let us pull over so I had to keep driving forward, but even with the car still following us I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving the dog to die with its killer by the side of the road. I can’t remember what my friends say, if they agree or think I should keep driving but I turn the car around, a U-turn and all the white lines on the road light up when my headlights touch them.

I have to turn left to get back to the dog. There’s a white arrow pointing on the road for where I should go. I look around me and there is no one, save the car and the dog in the other lane and when it’s safe I turn, and that’s when we’re hit.

Hard.

I turn to check on my friends who sit impossibly in the car, one behind the other but at the same time side by side. One of their noses starts bleeding on impact, the other bounces to the ceiling of the car but gets back in place because of their seat belt. There’s a moment of shocked silence and then I ask, “Are you guys okay?” and the one with the bleeding nose nods and stuffs tissues up their nose while the other one says they are also okay and we start panicking and screaming because a car just hit us it hit us out of nowhere and maybe it was the one following us earlier but it’s gone now, a hit and run. We were just hit and run.

Then there’s an ambulance and my friends seem calmer than I am. My insides both buzz and feel sharp like glass, not from any pain from the accident but something internal only I can feel. We end up somewhere that is and isn’t a hospital where my friends are taken care of and I have to wait because they can’t fit all three of us. I am and am not looked after by staff I don’t remember, the only thing I’m aware of is that I’ve been separated from my friends and the hospital looks empty. I want to know where my friends are, I want to know if the dog’s okay.

Two men in suits come for me then and they tell me I’m late for my defense. They say my friends already told the court what happened with the accident and now it’s my turn. One of the men leads me to the room but I dawdle, I see my friends, I try to figure out what I’m supposed to do but there’s no time. I run after the man in the suit who is so far ahead of me now but manage to see him walk into a room and I follow, to find I’m standing in an auditorium.

It isn’t a court per se, maybe that of the kangaroo variety (not literal kangaroos). If anything the people here are around my age, they look like the Welcome Week reps I remember in my first year, the ones I remember repping with. I stand at the lectern and I try to tell them about the accident, about how the car came out of nowhere, how I wanted to know if the dog was okay but no one was listening. They were chasing each other up and down the steps, giving each other piggybacks, drinking. Eventually the man in the suit led me out of the room disappointed by how everything had gone down. If I wasn’t late then they would have listened.

I woke up disoriented by the rain outside and had to blink the dream away until I knew it wasn’t real.

(Image made on good old reliable Paint.)