Shotgun Morning

On the bright cut shotgun morning my car left the rain soaked road slick bitumen making short work of rubber on the road.

The Datsun slewed sideways completely as it snapped off fern trees like a scythe and I braced for impact there had to be an impact eventually.

Then it came at the base of a towering Mountain Ash in a violent sound of twisting metal and shattering glass.

I was hearing a sound many would have heard in a car accident before death. The screech of contorted metal and the pure force it took to bend a car into a horseshoe.

I was twenty two and I could live forever or so I had thought many times back then.

My body was by pure force thrown sideways as the car found an immovable object. Out of the seatbelt and my head into the smashed metal and glass and tree.

I felt the warm blood come from my forehead and down the side of my face.

After the accident a lady I had known said I was flying with angels.

Damn right I was and the memory still triggers something in me thirty years later. On that bright cut shotgun morning.