..written from an accident I was in, and the dreams that would haunt me about the day. The recalling of the close call.
In the pages where I begin, from a waking mind when the description would remain from the sleep of the unsound. The detail of the dream would be similar to the night of the accident that took place on Dec. 04, 1996. Haunting is the word I try to find to describe the detail in the sound of the impact–I didn’t feel much after the falling over the Lexus, but my body shook like it was on a block of ice. I wasn’t sure of how long that I was laying there upon the wet street. I knew it felt like hours. I heard the car stopping really fast then the door slamming. My head bounced twice violently as I hit the iced over street, a searing pain was thing which ripped into my left side. It was from the left side where I felt the pain the worst. In the pain is where I managed to stand up on my own, and my body was still shaking while I took off running after the late model Lexus. I had no sense of time when I was laid out on the street, and this would be as it plays out within the nightmares to this day. The impact of the black car sending me over the top of the vehicle – I didn’t have time to even say, “Oh shit.” The fright of that taking place would at times keep me awake, more so on the anniversary of when it happened. It still gives me the nightmares. “Oh. My. God. Are you all right?” The lawyer asked as he exited the car he was driving, “I was just putting my cell phone away when I seemed to lose track I was doing. This is my fault. At least let me take you the hospital.” All I really thought about was how was I going to get to class the next day or get to the office I worked at. I was forced to call into the job at the college telling them I was sick, where I was bed ridden with the pain in my back. I was more worried about my transportation than my health at that point. He offered to take me to the hospital but I made a mistake by refusing the ride to the emergency room.
“Just take me home, I don’t want to go to the hospital or anything like that. All I want to do is be in my own bed,” I ordered. I was looking for the bike that I was on coming home from class. It [the bike I was riding] was wrecked, the back wheel was bent in half like a jack-knife. While in the car he asked me for my name, “What is your name by some chance?” “Nickolaus Pacione, I live right up the road across US 64.” I responded, my voice was that of somewhat badly shaken up. I wasn’t much for speaking that night because I was in a lot of pain and the shock had started to kick in. It was in the shock that all I wanted to do that night was sleep. I could not explain why all I wanted to do was sleep but I knew I slept a long time that night – woke up long enough to call the college telling the boss at the time I was not able to make it in because I was weak from the impact. Thought to myself, fuck, this cannot be happening – a nightmare that I could not awaken from. Of all the nights, why the fuck did it have to be this night? That it would be to this day that I remember the details after the events of what happened of that prior night – it had to be about 9 am when I awoke; but long enough to make the call then I collapsed again for another seven hours. It was the fifth day of December when the magnitude of the events sank in of what happened, where the dreams played out in graphic detail. That it would be from the dreams of where the horror of losing my ability to walk as I saw myself go over the Lexus, it would be in pitch darkness that the lawyer put his head under the dashboard to put his cellar phone away. In that it would be where reality turns into the nightmare. That it would be from them where it descends into the different horrific possibilities that draw into an edge of madness as time puts the event into perspective.That it would be about ten minutes to eleven at night when I saw myself get thrown over the car. Where I wrenched in pain to walk over to the car that night – it would be from the pain that came about years later that would remind me of that night. From that night I had the first wave of the nightmares that would now be lasting for close to seven years. They would not be constant but they would be there from time to time, but in a persistence they would become the echo of the time when it first happened on December 4, 1996. That it would be from the dream that I found myself not being able to walk, and in that where I would not be able to move my legs. While the dream would play itself out; I would hear squealing tires as the breaks make a high-pitched scream. The impact of hitting the black ground was that which created much of an impaling type pain. Describing of this–would feel as my entire left side had gone limp -– that it would be a horror that one cannot begin to describe unless one had known a person who lost their ability to walk after being able to walk for most of their life. I kept having that dream every once in a while, it was its way of saying that it would be there in one way or another. It came the strongest when I had passed out from exhaustion in the nurse’s office at the College of Du Page. Often end up being jumpy at the sound of grinding breaks. It follows from the years as to the day when the horror took place, and was haunted by the memory as it became the nightmare in my sleep. That night would be one that I relate as it would of happened a few days ago, though the events of that day is something that will stick with me. Beneath the years that it remained buried in the back of the mind and from them in the dreams as one writes from a barely wake body, and from them in the sleep that would pass in years – the dreams have their way of becoming the accident revisited. That there would always be something I end up seeing that would become the trigger for the memory. That it would be a certain place, namely the Five Corners intersection that would be the place that comes to mind in the dream. That it would be close to seven years – it would happen in the dream like it was a few days ago. The nightmare shifts as I write of this and from them – I knew what was in my mind needed to be written. Penned from the ink, I write this with a pair of eyes that I had not been able to sleep without a single nightmare that had became a single reminder of what happened when I was the age of twenty years old. That it would be when I see a Lexus down the road which the dream would be the strong reminder of that night – the black car sending me over the roof of the car. That the dream as I wrote of this would be the echo of the accident revisited. That when I was asleep in the nurse’s office during the time when ill, I would have that dream even there and it would be more frantic in the details. “Bad dream? I heard you gasping – you were breathing like someone who had bad fright,” the nurse said to me. I basically asked them what a dream like that meant and then there was a deep discussion we had about the dream then I fell back asleep for a few hours. I kept seeing the black Lexus and the lawyer ducking his head under the dashboard. Then woke to feeling myself dropping back into my body. Haunted by the memory as the sleep would come upon the physical body. As in form of the dream in the present day is where the sleep -– from the places which are written in the back of the mind. While the body sleeps, I begin to dream; it would begin to turn into the nightmare in form of the accident revisited as it took place on December 4, 1996. December 4, 1996, the day that I would never expect to create an impact like it did – that it started like a normal day but did not end up like one. The day which ended in a nightmare as I relate the detail as they were happening a few days ago. I relate this like it was frozen in time, as it would be the most accurate way I can describe this to be. In the nightmare I kept reliving that day, in form of the last ten minutes of that day -– where it was almost the end of the night when the black car sent me over. My body shook like a leaf, trembling like when someone appears in a revival – though the dream would be there; frozen in time and the night had an eerie calm. Cold – typical of Illinois around the time within the Chicago area. That it would be from the dream as the details would become in their most detailed, and from them in the detail it would be from the bloodcurdling scream from the lawyer, “Oh. My. God. What have I done? He is laying there without movement in his legs.” I would hear the scream of the breaks at the same time as the sound of the wind from the winter air. It would be similar to the ghost stories of four teens who died from finding black ice on the road, and in the dream all those ghost stories would play out in one form or another. It would be the Lexus squealing down the road. Skidding as he had his eyes off the road, and then hitting a cyclist which was heading up to the five corners before Glen Ellyn would turn into Glendale Heights. It would be about two hundred feet from the White Hen Pantry that would be right before the five corners intersection where the car made its impact. Where those last ten minutes before eleven of the clock would tick like an eternity when my left and shoulders hit the surface of the road. That it would be while I would be on the plane going up to Toronto where it sank in on me –- the anniversary of when I was hit by the car. That even when I managed to get up to Sudbury, I would still have the dreams about that night – the dreams which would be the accident revisited. That in my mind when I got to Canada it would be from the thoughts that would be there -– the reason why I took the trip was to get a better memory of that day, than the day of being the horrible accident. Though it would be planted in the back of my mind like it was a kind of a movie theater that kept playing a horror film, No matter what I would do to wall out the memory, it will always going to be there. The image of the black Lexus hitting me from my left side – throwing me over the car. As much as I try to make sense of the events of what happened. The nightmares are going to be there to greet me as the sleep would come to me. That no matter what I did or see, there will always be something that will take me back to that day. The day of December 4, 1996. Even as I write of this now, as it would be two days after the seven year anniversary of when it happened. I still will get the nightmares, that it would be the dream where the accident would be revisited. In them which I write knowing that they would always end up being there in one form or another – where they would be among the dreams that are spoken from one point and time into the next, that where the day would be frozen in time. In them where they are drawn from a memory that is burned like a photograph. A photograph that is there which it would be a photo of a memory that is written out of a darkness that one would never wish to fathom – that fear that would be losing the ability to walk. In that it would be from them in the dream as they paint a photo of something that haunting – the memories of the accident revisited.
A very descriptive account of your unfortunate accident - written with great clarity as if the reader were present during this sad occasion ... nightmares are a haunting remembrance of what we would rather forget ... thanks for sharing!!
Excellent write. You did capture the physical aspect of pain in this story, but you did an awesome job of capturing the deep emotional despair that one goes through during an accident of this type. So glad I came over for a visit to read your writing!
Sherry
www.sherrygibson.com
Only a Game
Very revealing story. Very candid and I felt you captured the feel and the physical pain of the accident very well. I could definately "feel" it. I also thought of PTSD as I read it and wondered maybe if that came a bit into play as you were writing? Very gripping read.
Chilling and heart-wrenching. Sometimes dreams are real and life is not, ever think that? Such concious thought and ability to write it is a rare talent. I felt myself scream in accordance with your fear and pain. The reader and the writer. Good stuff.
Having been in an accident a few months ago that was also caused by a driver who had taken their eyes off the road and instantly admitted fault, I really can identify with every word of this - a harrowing write. Well done.
vivid account of a harrowing event in your life; so glad you survived, nicolaus! excellent write; well done! (((HUGS))) and much love, your tx. friend, karen lynn. :(
Democratic Dilemmas and Divine Inspiration examines the significance or relevance of the idea that the U.S. Constitution was, as many believe, divinely inspired. How much did that belief matter to founders of the nation and how much does it matter no
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