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Past

16 years old

“Papa, slow down!”

I was gripping onto the fabric on the side of my seat like it was my only lifeline, praying to the gods that we wouldn’t crash. My dad was drunk and driving like a maniac. Again. Today was worse though. He was driving 60 in a 30 zone and just blew through the last 5 stop signs in the small residential neighbourhood we passed through. Our car was swerving in and out of the lane and we nearly smashed into cars parked on the side of the street multiple times. I was honestly surprised we haven’t gotten into an accident yet, especially since this wasn’t the first time he’d done something so ridiculously dangerous, but today he was being excessively reckless and it was freaking me out.

“Mila, ne krichi na svoyevo otsa!” Mila, Don’t yell at your father! My mom shouted at me in Russian, trying to pacify the obviously deadly situation we were in.

She was defending him, yet again. How could she do that? How could she defend him when he’d been putting our lives in danger for the last two months? Couldn’t she see that there was something seriously wrong with him? I asked myself these questions time and time again when in reality the answer had always been the same. She didn’t dare to go against him. Ever. She was scared of defying him, afraid of the response she’d receive. God forbid she told him that his actions were flawed and deflated his enormous ego. I swear I loved my mom to the moon and back, but has been this way for years and maybe if she had confronted him about this earlier, we wouldn’t have been living the same nightmare again.

“Mom don’t you understand? He’s going to kill us and people around him if he doesn’t slow down!” I shouted back this time, paying no attention or care to my mom’s displeased reaction.

I didn’t get a response, which was a sufficient response in itself. She was not happy with me because I disrespected my father again. So I tried one more time, softening my tone, noticing it shake a little and hoping that she understood that I wasn’t just angry, I was terrified.

“Pojalusta mama, tell him to slow down... please I’m really scared.” My voice stuttered and I felt my eyes fill with warm tears. I didn’t even realize how scared I was.

She turned around to look at me with her big blue eyes full of sympathy, as if to tell me “I’m sorry I can’t do anything”, and instead whispered, “mi skoro budem doma solnyshko.” We’ll be home soon, sunshine.

I turned my head to the window trying to calm myself down but couldn’t because I felt the car begin moving even faster. The street lights became quickly passing blurs. He must have been driving at least 70 miles an hour, I was too afraid to even check. Just as I was about to yell at him to slow down again, we blew through another red traffic light when I saw a bright white light coming at us at full speed heading for the passenger side of our car. Where my mom was sitting.

They say time seems to stop before you die. That everything seems to move in slow-motion, as if you’re watching a movie. But not this.

It all happened fast, too fast for me to understand what was even going on. One second I was talking to my mom and the next, the force of a moving vehicle smashed into the side of our car, rolling us over too many times for me to count. I could only remember hearing my mom’s screams, piercing through my ears like a siren, before everything went black.