Chapter Text
Jimmy is dead. Dead as a doornail...whatever that means. What Jimmy does know is that he is freezing, as if he’d been buried in an iceberg in the dead of December, and that he hurt, everywhere.
Struggling upwards, Jimmy surveyed his surroundings. Bright lights and sirens circled him where he sat in the center of a highway, shut down, with an overpass high above him. If he strained his ears, he could hear people talking with emotion dripping from their voices.
“It’s horrible, maybe the city should just shut down this highway.”
A pause, then another voice, “How many people have crashed here?”
“Like seventeen since what happened last fall. First one to have killed somebody though.”
“Holy crap, what do you think could be causing it?”
Jimmy shakes his head, urging himself to stand, and waves of phantom pain radiate through him. Wiping at his eyes, he sees a car a little way from him. It had crashed into the road barrier and seems to have exploded in some way or another. Jimmy grimaced, a wave of nausea hitting him. It was probably trying to avoid hitting him.
Jimmy set forward, towards where a line of road barriers had been set up. Growing closer he notices the man sat on the ground just outside the barrier, crying ugly tears. He holds his glasses tightly in his hands, eyes covered by his brown hair anyways.
“Aw, jeez...” Jimmy mumbles, feeling sick as he uses the barriers to hold himself upright—then feeling even sicker by the fact he even can.
Suddenly, the man’s head jerks upward, teary eyes blinking rapidly as he struggles to put his glasses on his face. Jimmy startles, standing straight and taking a step back. The man looks up again, now with his glasses, and his face contorts in confusion for a moment before a police officer steps up behind him and eases him to his feet.
Jimmy watches as they walk away; the man’s head craned around to look back at where Jimmy stood. Jimmy stepped forward, then stopped, turning around to head toward the burning car.
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It was a month later when Jimmy saw the man again.
Jimmy had been crossing the four laned highway when he caught sight of a man sitting in the grass a way off from the road. He was wearing a light coat with the hood up to block his face, not that Jimmy could make it out from this far away anyways. The man had a bundle of fake flowers that he was trying to stick into the ground that had begun to freeze. Jimmy stopped where he was, watching guiltily.
Suddenly there was a blare of a truck horn as a semi passed in front of where Jimmy stood. Jimmy didn’t move but followed the vehicle with his eyes until it was a safe distance away. When Jimmy looked back up he saw that the man was looking right at him, flowers abandoned. Jimmy blinked, stepping forward again, then stopping...right in the track of another vehicle. He braced for impact, squeezing his eyes shut and tensing his shoulders.
When Jimmy forced his eyes open again and looked across the highway the man was gone, and his memorial having long since blown away. Jimmy took a glance at the overpass beside him, then gritted his teeth and began to walk in the direction of town.