"I love you."

Those were the last words I heard my sister say before everything went dark.

She wasn't even saying it to me.

•••

I gripped the wheel as my sister and her boyfriend persuaded me to drive faster, blurs of corn and farmland flying past us as I barreled down the desolate road. Something in my chest told me it was a bad idea, but something in my head wasn't right, I could feel it.

I pushed down on the gas pedal more, their cheerful words and laughter encouraging me to go faster.

As we made our way over a large hill, I noticed some overgrown trees near what looked to be an intersection, but we were going too fast for me to process anything more than that.

My sister, however, who processed things much faster than me, saw what I couldn't see amongst those overgrown trees.

"There's a stop sign! Stop! There's a stop sign there!" She screamed, hastily pointing at the cluster of trees nearest to the intersection.

But I didn't stop.

I wasn't in control anymore.

Something had taken over me. It was like I was suddenly frozen and I couldn't move. I just watched in horror as I caught a glimpse of the red sign peeking out from behind the leaves. My grip on the steering wheel loosened and then... it was all white.

Something crashed into the left side of the car and I felt the world turn upside down over and over again. Before I could even process what had happened, we were hanging upside down with only our seatbelts holding us in.

That is, my sister and I were being held in.

Her boyfriend hadn't been wearing a seatbelt.

I reached to grab the key and turn the car off, an act of pure shock, but the key wasn't there. In fact, most of the car wasn't there. That's when reality set in on me.

I whipped my head to the side and peered at my sister, checking to see if she was okay.

A large gash split her face in half and I watched as drops of blood trickled down her face, turning her lips red. She blinked at me, eyes wide,  before turning back to look for her boyfriend.

He wasn't there.

That's when the odor of gasoline began to overwhelm my senses, so strong that it seeped into my stomach and threatened to empty it. It was then that our situation began to dawn on me.

"We need to get out," I stated, a sudden wave of calmness washing over me.

My sister nodded in response, clearly still too shocked to form words. We unbuckled ourselves and managed to maneuver out through the broken windows of the flipped vehicle.

That's when I saw him.

My sister's boyfriend was under the car.

Crushed.

She ran to him and held his head in her arms. He blinked at her a few times before trying to get some words out of his mouth, but it wasn't words that left his lips, it was blood.

That's when I noticed the second wound my sister had- a large cut on her neck, with blood rushing out of it.

I stumbled back and fell down.

Tears ran down her face, mixing with the blood that was already trickling out, as she held her boyfriend and wept, slowly sinking further and further to the ground with him.

"I love you," she whispered, closing her eyes and falling down next to him.

I crawled backwards, trying to distance myself from the horror in front of me. I didn't want to believe my eyes.

Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, flames began to form in what was left of the car.

I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and save myself from the trauma of what I was about to witness, but something kept them open.

The flames spread, consuming everything in their path.

Everything.

I watched as the flames ate up the bodies of the two who were once in the car with me, and all I could do was try my best to get away from it.

I shimmied myself further and further away until I felt the flames could no longer reach me.

I ran my hand through my hair, only for it to get caught in a tangled and wet mess.

Wet?

I pulled my hand away from my hair and gazed down at it. It was soaked in blood.

I looked around desperately, hoping, praying, that someone could help. It was then that I spotted the mangled remains of the car that had hit us and my stomach dropped when I caught sight of the two motionless figures on the ground beside it.

My vision began to blur as the world started to spin around me.

Before it all went black, I saw a tall person.. no.. a tall creature, standing in the distance at the edge of the corn field that surrounded us.

I felt my body go limp as I began to succumb to what I could only assume to be death.

Was this how it would end? Dying in some stupid corn field before anyone could even find us?

I had wanted to die for such a long time, to escape the misery of a life that had thrown its worst at me and after watching the bodies of the two people I cared about the most burn to a crisp in front of me, I wanted to escape this life even more.

I took relief in the fact that it would finally be over. The adrenaline pumping through me kept me from feeling any pain from my injuries and if I thought about it hard enough, corn fields weren't the worst place to die.

I could be dying in a Burger King instead, you know?

Or in the locker room at my old high school after everyone's been forced to run laps outside on the hottest day of the year, and everyone is all sweaty and gross and- well you get the point.

I chuckled at my morbid mind and let the darkness take me away.

Maybe I could finally get some sleep for once.

An eternal nap didn't sound so bad.

•••
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