He wanted to open his eyes. He had slept for so long. The darkness clung behind his eyelids like a drop of tar on his pupils. And yet the darkness was not complete. He saw streaks of color in it, red slashes like claw marks furrowing through the black. Red, the color of the accident. The other car had been red, or so Josh remembered now in this state between unconsciousness and awakening for which there is no name. But he felt sure the car had been red; it was the most concrete thing he could feel in this black whirling state of mind, this state where he seemed to feel like he was lying on a table that tilted and turned at random angles. The flashing lights of the police cars and the ambulance had been red. The fire had looked red. His blood had been red. The accident had been an explosion of crimson light. Red, the color of screams and murder, lust and terror and death.

A horrifying thought possessed him. He felt suddenly sure those red claw marks in the dark fabric of his awakening would open upon the shattered and crumpled remains of his car, and he would open his eyes and see the entombment of his flight from humiliation all around him.

Oh Jen, why did you say that? Why did you hurt me?

The thought of his sister, his twin in spirit and heart aside from the fact that they had shared a womb, refreshed the pain of her words. His traitor memory took him back to their argument. (How long ago had that been? His sense of time had been broken like the digital clock in the dashboard of his truck.) Arguing over Mike, their mutual friend, the only thing they could not share between them. And the words she had said

(such a faggot)

had sent him storming from the house. And then the red car had come and hit him and the whole world had gone as red as one of those red supergiant stars Mike had told them about, those ancient stars that swelled up and swallowed their planets before they died.

Mike was always talking about astronomy. It was his one great passion. Mike was the reason Josh wanted to open his eyes. Josh felt if he did not fight his way out of this red-furrowed blackness right now, he might never be able to leave it. Trapped here with darkness and pain and memory, never to see Mike again.

No, he wanted to see him. He wanted to open his eyes.

He willed himself to feel the ascent of awakening. That feeling of rising came, not floating as one does on the verge of sleep, but of rising purposefully upwards towards consciousness like a diver to the sun-dappled surface. The black and red of his unconsciousness began to pale.

The elements of what we are were made in the cores of stars, Mike had said to him once. Synthesized there, and then spread out into the Universe when the star explodes. How Josh wanted to hear him talk about those things again!

Wait, I think he's waking up…

Voices. Far away. He struggled towards them.

…uhnnnn…

Josh? Josh, it's Jen. I'm here.

Jen! He was so glad she wasn't angry anymore. He hated it when they fought. The black background and red slashes paled to a translucent gray and pink, like a shroud placed over his face. He could see figures moving through it.

Josh, please wake up. I didn't mean it. Oh God, please wake up.

Unnnnh… ah!

Something was lodged in his skull! He could feel it there, hard and metal, painfully pressing against his temples. He was still in the wreck! They hadn't gotten him out! Throbbing pain coursed down his neck, his back, through his skull. His eyes fluttered open, white light washed through his pupils, and he saw he was not still in the wreck after all.

Faces loomed out of the white light and hung suspended over him, unfamiliar faces of strangers with lined faces and thick black-rimmed glasses. A man and woman in white. Then he heard Jen, speaking in that commanding tone of hers.

"Excuse me! Move!" The woman was pushed aside and he saw his sister's face above him, her brown hair mussed, her face red from crying.

The nurse Jen had shoved looked outraged. "Miss, you can't do-"

"Quiet!" Jen snapped. Then she looked back down at Josh. "Hey brother, welcome back. You're okay. You're gonna be… okay."

Liar, he thought. I can always tell when you're lying, Jen. But you never believed I could. He tried to move his head. Pain flared through his skull like the stab of an icepick.

"Don't move," the man, obviously a doctor, said. "You're in traction, you mustn't move your head or try-"

"Don't talk to him that way," Jen said, her voice low and dangerous. "He's not stupid, even if he doesn't have a medical degree."

"Miss, you need to leave," the doctor said.

"Ha!" Jen laughed.

Oh Jen, stop. Not now. Josh closed his eyes and tried to raise his hand to his forehead. Nothing came. For a moment, Josh stopped listening to his sister and the doctor as confusion overcame him. He had tried to raise his hand and rub his forehead in frustration, and yet his hand was not on his forehead. He opened his eyes. His hand should be right in front of his face, but it wasn't there. He tried to look down at his body. It was difficult with the iron bars holding his head in place, but he managed to glance down with only his eyes. He saw his hand lying limply on top of the blanket beside him, a place where, he now realized, he felt it to be. He willed his hand to move.

His hand did not move.

Car accident, Josh thought just before understanding hit him, impacting his life like the red car had done. My hand does not move.

He heard his sister arguing with the doctor and he felt the iron bars in his skull. But he did not feel the blanket on top of him. He felt… nothing.

He closed his eyes and gave himself over to the darkness willingly, fell into it as if into an abyss.

Made in the stars before they die, he thought, and a tear slid down his cheek. And then the darkness had him once again.

copyright 2005 by Robert Williams