'Remnants' by Helen Laycock

All dead. 

It was a spiny graveyard. 

Mangled wrecks were piled high, distorted like scrunches of coloured foil; tin skeletons, gutted and blinded; soulless. Maybe their windows had been eyes. 

No more snarling as they sliced the wind and swallowed the asphalt, wild and free. Their tongues were cut.

Even the red ones had taken on the muted hue of watery blood soaking through a bandage.

I was sure it would be here, in part at least. After the crash, it had been left for a while. No doubt, thugs had mutilated it – the types who plucked legs off iridescent bluebottles, cracked their plasticky wings into fragments then split open their bodies to revel in the yellow gunk. 

I scanned the unwieldy mountain of metal edges and rusting orifices that threatened avalanche. 

Just a quick check inside. That was all I needed.

A discordant ache squeezed through the hulk. The sound yawned again, horribly elongated this time, and a shard of mottled silver tumbled down, skirting my trainer and throwing up brittle flakes as it came to a halt beside me.

There was so much black. Just needed to find the sticker – the Welsh dragon on the boot…

A shift. 

I flicked my focus haphazardly over the pile, tipping my weight from foot to foot, failing to nail a decision about which direction to run, when I saw a face momentarily framed between the bent struts of a dark hatchback. A Golf. 

My Golf?

I climbed effortlessly, numb to serrations, my feet finding niches and my arms pulling me upwards with ease. 

I could taste metal, smell petrol. It was as though I was sweating it. 

Trickles tickled beneath my sleeves like trailing chiffon. 

I caught sight of my bleeding hands and my breath lost its rhythm; I hung there, like a remnant of fabric caught in the cog of a giant mechanism.

With renewed energy, I clambered the last few metres, now feeling the clog of wet eyelashes and burning saltwater in my eyes. I must have gashed my head on something: rivulets streamed down to my chin and soaked my grey hoodie, spreading like inky crimson roses.

‘Hello?’ My voice was raw.

Silence. 

I peered through the window aperture and a wave of familiarity gave me the odd, but wonderful, experience of feeling embalmed by joy. 

It was my car. 

A jab of memory brought me back to the face. The girl.

Was she injured in the footwell? Crouching through fear?

‘Hello?’

I could have climbed in. 

No. 

I clicked the handle and pulled. 

The door jerked and juddered, scraping across the debris before wedging open. 

As I had anticipated, she was badly hurt and was crumpled behind the front seats. Unmoving.

I pulled back her matted, bloody hair and a gasp as solid as a pebble lodged in my throat.

I remembered why I had felt the need to come back. What I had come to find.

The girl in the car was me.

All dead.