Someone's in There

Broken tears of glass kissed the pavement. Wrangled, metal arms screamed for freedom. Tires bled rubber. Wires dangled along silence, electric with fury at being cut short. Headlights begged to break the darkness but fell dim. All that remained was the corpse within.

My hands screamed with agony. Someone's in there. Someone's in there. I pulled pieces after pieces of metal, cutting flesh. The wind whipped by, slicing through my fingers, but nobody stopped. And then my hands grew numb, and all I could do was stare at a car now a tin can.

Someone's in there, but I shouldn't have stopped. I unplugged myself, disconnected from the machine, and it drove on with nobody behind the wheel. It steered itself off course and crashed right into a large, oak tree. I could see the smoke for miles, but I had to stop. I knew. I knew someone was still in this car, buried under six feet of metal, and their cries crawled through my circuitry, tearing at my mind. Save me.

Harvest moon tonight. Bloody red like the river flowing under what remained of this car, a life never to be known, and the speed demons raced on. Nobody wanted to stop. Nobody wanted to know, but I stopped. I knew, but I could not save them. And now I could not save myself.

They were coming, hungry to burn rubber. They were trying to outrace time, launch themselves into the heart of eternity. They wanted to forget, and flesh became metal. Minds melted with wires, and hands curved over steering wheels. Nobody was home, but a light went off behind my eyes. And I stood out in the open, in the lane, and they didn't hesitate, mowing me down, and leaving me for dead. Of all nights, why tonight, why on Halloween did I have to remember being human?