To my favorite liar, to my favorite scar

A short piece based on Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things to Do Today by Fall Out Boy
TW: car wreck, blood, death. This is dark.

• • •

In the silence that follows, you stand up from the guard rail that you've been sitting on for two hours. Warmth and feeling returns to the back of your legs in a rush, rendering you dizzy for a second. You step over the rail to the side away from the street. The land drops away next to you, maybe fifteen feet down to gravel and sparse grass. You stop a few inches from the edge to look down.

There's a lot of blood. You can't see that as well as you can the shining red exterior of the car, though. Broken metal and glass holds two people, now nothing more than broken skin and shattered bone, blood and more blood.

You can't help feeling satisfied.

In the passenger seat, without even the idea of a windshield separating her from you, is the girl. The one you almost pity. The one you had no chance with and never will. Nothing about her has changed but her appearance, as far as you're concerned. She picked someone else over you, but you could have lived with it if the thought of her boyfriend hadn't made your stomach so sick. She gets almost-pity because she was almost-innocent.

The boy with his limp fingers still on the steering wheel meant nothing to you, never did, and he deserved it. You wished with your whole self for this to be his fate. Dreams come true, then. You don't think about his dreams, what he might have done with the rest of his abruptly ended life. You don't think about what his last thought might have been. You don't think about how young he was. You stare at his frozen, bloody face instead and feel your satisfaction.

Then you realize how stupid it is to still be staring at this mess. It's disgusting, and you see nothing that you didn't expect. The girl and the boy aren't the first to skid off this corner, victims of a guard rail that ends a little too soon. The allure comes from the fact that you witnessed it, which was a miracle. It's not every day that you sit on a guard rail at the edge of a quiet back road wishing someone would die, and then they show up and do it.

You don't think the boy even saw you.

So you turn your back to the scene and walk away. Someone else will find them, eventually, and you don't want to be a witness. You'll keep this moment to yourself, the sort of perfect satisfaction you shouldn't harbor. No one will think you had anything to do with it, because you didn't.

Everything about this was an accident.

• • •

I've been drawn to writing darker things recently. I'm not sure how to feel about that.