Premonitions part 2

For those new to this, please go to the bottom for the first part!!




It was the night night before senior prom and there was one hell of a thunderstorm going on. It was pitch black and my headlights were nearly useless. My wiper blades were on full speed and it didn't seem to make any difference. I was on the pickup before I knew it, he was driving even slower than I was. I slowed down enough to keep from rear-ending him, but it was a close call. My heart didn't even have time to return to it's normal pace when it happened. Several pipes slid off of the pipe rack on the pickup and bounced end over end toward me. I was still to close behind him but I tried to swerve anyway. Too late. One of the pipes punched a hole in the windshield end first and slammed into my chest, knocking the wind out of me, and then I was off the road. The embankment must have been steep because it seemed as though the car was flying through the air forever, then slammed nose first. Pain. Burning. All through my chest. I couldn't seem to breathe. And what was that gurgling noise? I looked down at my chest and through the dim green light of the dashboard I could see the pipe against my chest... no IN my chest. Bubbles were forming in the crimson ooze.


Then I woke up. I sat straight up and grabbed my chest. No pipe. No pain. I looked around and saw that I was still in bed. I lay back down, and consoled myself that it was just a nightmare.


I got up the next morning, still thinking about how vivid the nightmare was. I could still almost feel the pain in my chest, but I shook it off and thought about the things I needed to do to get ready for prom tonight. It was supposed to be a fantastic night. Matt and I had rented a limo, and we were going to spend the night with our girlfriends at his parents cabin. Matt was going to pick up our tuxedos, and all I had to do was pick up the corsages.


My parents had already left for work, and I was eating breakfast when the phone rang. It was Matt's parents. He had been in an accident on the way home from his girlfriends house last night and was killed. They told me how it happened, although they didn't need to. I had been there. I had lived it... and died it.

I didn't bother putting the phone back on the hook. I sat down right there and bawled. I must have cried for hours. I was still in the same spot sobbing, although I had long since run out of tears, when my parents came home and found me curled up on the floor by phone.

I didn't go to prom that night. I didn't eat or get out bed for days. My girlfriend Angie must have called a thousand times.

I finally went to school the next Wednesday, but I wasn't really there. I was in that car with Matt, all alone, watching my blood drain out onto my lap, listening to Jimmy Buffet on the radio singing about a pirate, born 200 years too late.


Things only went downhill after that. I couldn't make myself do school work and I ended up with incompletes in all my classes. I didn't get my diploma, and I lost my scholarship to Vanderbilt.

I spent a lot of time with Matt's girlfriend, Amber. We talked. We cried. We laughed. We cried. We remembered Matt. And we consoled each other. Afterward we both felt guilty. We had betrayed Matt and I had betrayed Angie as well. We were wrong. I've never talked to Amber since. I told Angie what I had done. She dumped me and told everyone we knew about it. It destroyed Amber's and my reputation. I'll never blame her.

By the end of the school year, I was spending time with the only ones who seemed to be empathetic towards my pain. The Death Children. You know the ones. They dress in all black, dye their hair black, wear black eye makeup, paint their nails black, and listen to black music. They showed me how they dealt with pain.


The weed seemed to help a little, and so did the alcohol, so I stayed drunk and high as often as I could.

I had been working at a grocery store for the last year, but they fired me after I came to work drunk for the third time. I went through four more jobs in as many months, getting fired from each. Missing work. Showing up drunk or stoned, or both.


Then my parents found my stash. I was just surprised it took them as long as it did. I often left my baggies sitting on my nightstand and their booze cabinet was nearly empty. They said I had a week to find somewhere else to live. I don't blame them.

I moved in with Ray, one of my pot-head, booze hound, Death Children buddies, who'd been on his own since he was 15. We lived in a piece of crap mobile home on the outskirts of town. It was an odd style that the trailer was decorated in. There were death metal posters, and dragons, and vampires, side by side with football and basketball posters. Michael Jordan hand in hand with Marylin Manson.

I realized just how low I'd gone when Ray, of all people, told me that I was a bad influence on him. That I drank and smoked too much. He was right, and so I started to cut back.

Ray got me a job working with him at Pizza Hut, and I was able to hang on to that job for several months. Things started to look better, now that the marijuana and alcohol haze had cleared a bit. I was even considering enrolling for GED classes.

Then it happened again.

Premonitions - part 1

It happened again last night and it has me scared. The first time it happened was when I was 18 years old and prior to last night, it's only happened twice since.

Everything had been going great my senior year. The football team had gone undefeated to win state as underdogs. Between my legs as halfback, and my best friend's arm as quarterback, we pretty much carried the season. Same thing in basketball, I'd bring the ball down the court and pass underneath to Matt, our power forward, who would put it in. Matt got most of the recognition with 1st team All-State honors in both sports, while I only made 2nd team. Still pretty cool in my book.

Both of us had been dating the two hottest girls in school for most of the year. Matt was dating Amber, the head cheerleader, and I was dating Angie, the captain of the volleyball team. Our relationships looked to last, at least to a couple of high school kids. We planned on asking our girlfriends to marry us on graduation night, although the girls didn't know it at the time.

School was going great. Having just aced my last history test, I was able to slip by Matt in the race for Valedictorian. It was going to be one of us to get the honor at the end of the year as 3rd place was far enough behind that neither Matt nor I was worried about it.

Seeing how the year was going for us, I'm sure it will be no surprise when I tell you that we were always invited to the popular parties. It surprised us, though. Matt and I regularly talked with the A/V Club kids, hung out in the computer lab all the time, and although we were never good enough to get parts, we always helped the Drama club build their sets. We hung out with the so-called 'uncool' kids often enough that it came as a shock to us when the school newspaper named us among the popular kids.

It wasn't just our senior years that were going well. Our futures seemed to be falling into place as well, albeit along different paths. Matt had received a full ride scholarship to Oklahoma University for football and basketball, and I received scholarships to Vanderbilt due to academics and football.

I should have known it would never last.