Nikki Logan
THE droning whine might have been coming from the tyres spinning in defiance of the absence of a solid surface beneath their tread, or from the still cooling engine, or from the air hissing from the deflating airbags.
Or quite possibly from deep inside Aimee Leigh’s tight throat.
The brace of the steering wheel against her chest really didn’t allow for much more than a whimper, followed rapidly by a shallow, painful breath, but making noise seemed like a priority because somewhere down deep Aimee knew that if she was making noise then she was still breathing. And if she was still breathing then she had something to save.
A life.
No matter how pathetic.
Adrenaline surged through her body as she flicked her eyes desperately left and right. It was pitch-black outside, except for a lone shaft of moonlight which fractured into a hundred different facets in the shattered windscreen of her little Honda. Long lengths of her hair brushed forward across her cheeks, defying gravity. She shook them just slightly, they swung in the open air, and the press of the steering wheel into her chest finally made some sense.
It wasn’t pressing into her. She was pressing into it.
Down onto it.
Her world righted itself as she re-orientated and spidered her free hand along her middle to the pain in her abdomen—and discovered the seatbelt carving into her belly, straining against her weight, holding her in her seat.
Saving her life.
The moment she acknowledged it, its ruthless grip became unbearable. Her trembling fingers found the long cross length that was supposed to brace her from hip to shoulder—that had been until the force of the accident had pulled her free of it—and, forcing panic back, she squeezed her free arm up behind her and found the place where the seatbelt locked against its hidden reel. She curled her sticky fingers around it, got a good purchase, took as deep a breath as she could manage …
…and then she pulled.
Her whole body screamed as she forced her torso behind the fabric restraint and pressed herself back into the driver’s seat. The release of pressure on her abdomen allowed a rush of blood into the lower half of her body, and it was only then that she realised she’d not been able to feel anything down there before. At all.
The painful burn of sensation returning kept her focused, and as she hung suspended at the waist and chest by her strong seatbelt she audited her extremities, made sure everything responded. But when she tried to flex her right foot an excruciating pain ripped up her leg and burst out into the night.
A bird exploded from its treetop roost just outside her shattered window, and as she slipped back into unconsciousness the urgent flap of its wings morphed in Aimee’s addled mind into the hover of an angel.
A heavenly soul that had come to earth to act as midwife between her life … and her death.
‘HELLO?’
The darkness was the same whether her eyes were open or closed so she didn’t bother trying.
The disembodied voice that floated down to her made Aimee wonder if maybe she was dead, and she and her car and the tree she’d hit when she flew off the A 10 had all been transported together in a tangled, inseparable mess into a void.
Some kind of spiritual waiting room.
Her heart battered against the seatbelt that still pinned her to the seat like an astronaut strapped into a shuttle.
Starved of light, her imagination lurched into overdrive. She replayed the slide and crash in her mind, each time making it worse and more violent. One minute she’d been travelling happily along through the towering eucalypts that defied gravity, growing forty-five degrees up out of the Tasmanian mountain all the way to the horizon …
… the next she’d been sliding and briefly airborne, before slamming into the trunk of this tree.
‘Hello?’
Her head twitched slightly. Maybe her heavenly number was being called? She prised open her crusted, swollen lids and stared into the darkness that still reigned.
It didn’t seem necessary to reply. Surely in the spirit world it would be enough just to think your response?