I Am Her - ONC 2024

Chapter 1 - The Crash

The night began with a lot of fun. Angela and Cristina had gone to Las Vegas the day before, and they were truly revelling in the atmosphere of the big, bustling city. First, they went to a local beach, where the sky was a bright, stark blue; where the palms' stalks grew tall and wide and their leaves fresh and voluminous; where the waves clashed bravely with the wind; where tourists of various figures and styles of dressing swarmed the sandy coast with their towels and bags. 

There was some activity to be observed around every corner, and as a famous photographer, Angela could not stop thinking of the beauty of her environment even on vacation. It was why she had become a photographer in the first place - ever since childhood, her eyes were wide with an appreciation for everything the world had to offer, which remained despite all the things that happened to her.

They went shopping after that, which silenced the photographer in her for the most part. The mall they went to was vast and sprawling, and they explored various stores and bought a bunch of stuff, their hands shaking with a hedonistic need to place piles of pretty and expensive things into shopping bags, and carrying it all felt quite nice, despite the weight of it all.

For lunch, they both enjoyed a filet mignon and a tall glass of red wine, after which they returned to their five-star hotel and went into an eerily comatose-looking state until the evening. They hadn't slept in quite a while, and thus they needed to conserve their energy for later, when they would go to a nightclub and get stupid drunk. Cristina thought it was a decent form of fun, but it was Angela who expressed an overwhelming tendency to engage in such an activity. They woke up at six, spent two hours dressing, and then, at last, they went to the club.

In the beginning, everything seemed the same as always. What would otherwise have been an overwhelming, penetrating darkness due to the absence of the Sun and the bloodred curtains, was illuminated sharply by the purple, blue and red disco strobes that came from the ceiling; crowds of people swayed their bodies intensely to poppy music like ragdolls swaying in the wind; the smell of countless glasses of alcohol lingered in the air, and for those four hours of their lives that they were there, Angela and Cristina had a great time. Little did they know that Fate would greet them with a cruel end.

A paranoid person would immediately notice something ominous about that night if they looked outside. The sky was pitch black, and high above the club was a dark yellow full moon. A murder of crows flew right above Angela and Cristina's heads in a split second. There were no people, only the long, winding road that seemed to go on for eternity, along with rows of trees that stood beside it. However, neither Angela nor Cristina were such types of people, especially not while staggering out of the club with limited vision, feeling unwell and wanting nothing more than to go home.

"Are you sure you can drive?" Cristina said as Angela struggled to unlock her car, her keys repeatedly falling from her shaky fingers into the grass, her voice laced with worry.

"Sure as hell," Angela said, grinning stupidly. "Don't you worry about anything, dear. I can handle myself."

"But what if-" Christina began before Angela unlocked the car at last, taking the driver's seat, and Cristina followed her with a heavy sigh.

They were supposed to arrive at the hotel in half an hour, but Angela, who had put the radio on blast, drove twice the normal speed, glueing Cristina to her seat. She'd become unaware of the reality around her for a while, objects devolving into mere colours and lights, and it overwhelmed her mind so much that she couldn't handle the steering wheel properly.

The car started spinning; Cristina held tight onto her seat, regretting not having said anything; Angela wasn't conscious enough to drive normally but still conscious enough to anxiously pace her hands around the steering wheel, twisting them quickly and furiously as she struggled to remember which direction she was supposed to go in, the car swerving at all sorts of angles within seconds, both women crying and screaming and praying for their lives and hoping that their lives would not be ended with a stupid drunk driver accident and knowing nothing beyond fear and despair at the moment and-