I didn’t even know I was dead. At first that is. One minute I was walking along the side of the road with my daughter. Next I was lying next to her with people standing around me. Only I wasn’t lying down, I was looking at myself and her lying down. My body was on the ground with my brown hair splayed out around my pale face. My normally sparkling blue eyes were staring motionless at the dark sky above. I remember looking around worriedly; the place was alight with blue flashes and people shouting at each other. Ambulances and police cars dotted around. The road that I was walking down was packed with crowds that formed a circle around the police cars and ambulances. They were kept back by a line of blue tape. A car was in a nearby ditch to my left with smoke billowing out from the sides of the bonnet which was twisted and squashed up to the windscreen. It was a car crash.
“Help” I said to the nearest person, a paramedic. He just continued talking to the person next to him. “HELP” I screamed right into his ear. He ignored me, without even flinching at my voice that echoed around us. I stood between the two men. Why couldn’t they see me? I sunk to the floor with a single tear dropping from my cheek. I placed my hands in front of my face and cried. I think I was hysterical. The paramedic and other person’s conversation was coming to an end. The last couple of words I heard.
“They’re dead, both of them. Sorry”. The paramedic and man said their goodbyes and departed from my view. I realised then, as the images of my own motionless eyes flashed through my mind. I was dead. And so was my daughter.
Theo slammed his office door shut, sacked, sacked! The day before Christmas Eve! Didn’t anyone know what Christmas spirit was? Scrooges, the lot of them he thought. He stamped through the thick snow, too infuriated to admire the best snow in years. He pulled his big coat tightly around his shoulders and put his head down against the wind. He pushed angrily through the last minute shoppers. He ignored the annoyed mumbles from those he bumped into. As he got further away from the centre of the town, the snow got deeper and deeper until it had soaked the bottom of his smartest straight cut trousers. Inside his head he was muttering words to rude to say aloud. He stopped and pulled his leather shoes out from the snow, only to have them slide back down.