darkness

I opened my eyes.  Shut them and opened them again.  My stomach fell – I turned to watch the road out the window.  The yellow streetlights dimly flooded the six-lane expanse between the wall on which they stood and the entrance ramp on which we accelerated.  I felt the engine of my car push as Chris floored it.
Nothing.  No one.  The orange hew of my clock read 3:39 and not one car could be found as far as the highway dared to expand.  It seemed so chillingly out of place.  The road was as empty as I felt – I was numb.  Chris headed for the tollbooth, making sure to pick an exact change lane, away from the possibility of interaction with a toll operator, though I knew no one would be there now.  Just like the road, it would be deserted.  
Erie clouds turned the sky an ominous combination of deep grey and dark orange.  I buckled the seatbelt in, pulling it tight to me for some sense of hugging security, an escape that offered no relief from the odd mixture of a nauseating fear and a wrenching loneliness.  I felt saturated with horror and helplessness.
I jumped.  “We didn’t do this;” Chris broke the silence.  I didn’t respond.  His words were to assure himself as much as they were to comfort me, and I knew what he meant, but I wouldn’t let myself realize that it was my frightening ignorance of the situation that made my consuming anxiety strangle me further.  I pulled my feet onto the seat and hugged my knees.  Being brought back to reality by Chris’s statement, a wave of panic rushed through me again.  And that’s when the smell once more became obvious – reminding me that I was still in the back seat of my car, behind Chris, an that they were still back there behind me.  I hated the fact that I had to sit there, so close to them, but I wasn’t about to argue when we were firmly instructed to leave “now.”  So Chris assumed charge noting the condition the situation had put me in, and instructed me with one glance to let him handle it.  Later I would realize that if we were to get pulled over, he’d be sacrificing himself as the one to take the blame.  I had no choice, but to get in on that side, and in the back seat.  Was I supposed to keep watch of them?
No one was on the road.  No music eased the atmosphere.  No words exchanged between us.  I looked in the rear view window at Chris’s face.  The same expression of fear and confusion that Chris had I felt deep inside.  
I wanted to look behind me, but I was afraid of what I’d find.  It was tempting to just glance over my shoulder and look at that source of fear, but what would it do to me?  This whole mess has already psychologically scarred me, but I felt pulled.  I looked out the window across the car, though I wasn’t exactly looking to see what was out it.  I wanted to, but something kept me from looking.  I fought inside myself.
Succumbing, I looked over my shoulder quickly and the second I realized what they were, my heart skipped a beat and I almost puked.  But just as soon as I had looked, I snapped around to the same position, hugging my knees wishing I hadn’t looked.  I hugged myself tighter as I stared intensely at the floorboard.  I felt ashamed and frightened to an extent which I thought could not be known.  I wanted to look again.  It wasn’t like they weren’t there anymore, but I just couldn’t help my impulse.  Yet out of some sense of their deserved respect and my gripping terror, I couldn’t.  
My mind raced.  
Wait, I had no idea that there were dead bodies back there.  And they weren’t fresh.  I had known that there was something darkly foreboding in the air, enough to drown me in fear, but I hadn’t known exactly what it was to be feared.  All I knew as that they were in my hatch behind me.  A numbing acknowledgment washed over me: there were decaying bodies piled in the back of my car.  There must have been six or seven of them.  But why?  My thoughts churned.  We were taking them somewhere.  That’s what we were supposed to bury, and so that was what the stiff shadows that being lifted into the back of my car were.  But Chris knew this?  How could I have not until now?  A familiar feeling in my gut told me we were not supposed to be doing this.  I really began to worry, but this time not only was I scared; I was frustrated at my ignorance and the confusion of the state we were in.  I looked at Chris again.
“What are we doing?”
I could feel the fear in his voice: “I have no fucking idea –” and he really didn’t, neither did I.  
I have no control: no control over my car, my life.  I have slaughtered people in the back of my car.  I needed answers.  My breathing grew quick and shallow.  I wanted Chris to pull over so I could run – run back towards where we came from, back to before all this started.  Each progression forward made me realize that we were leaving that place further and further behind, and the permanency of our actions was reassured with each step farther.  I blatantly turned around and looked at the bodies for answers.
Their mangled forms, blood caked hair, contorted and tangled limbs, torn and stained clothing made me lose the ability to recognize them as human.  My eyes locked, I was forced against my will, drawn into them.  
Chris’s eyes flashed in the rearview mirror:  “Jackie!  No!”
The intensity of the experience overwhelmed me to the point where my strength gave way.  The disfigured shape of a woman turned only her head with effort to look straight into my eyes with her one last opaque, glassed-over, and haunting eye.  She opened her half-decomposed jaw as if to speak when I screamed – but no sound came forth.  I convulsed in my bed, ripping back to life.
A cold sweat made me shiver.  I was breathing heavily and had to awaken to my surroundings before I could make myself reach for the orange bottle of codeine and go back for more in the dark world of my subconscious.