Free Highway To Hell by Alex Laybourne

left before whatever unspeakable event was about to unfold could occur.
    Sammy turned to look and wasted half of his remaining time with Mandy wondering what the hell she saw. Part of him thought it was a meteorite, or for longer odds a UFO. The night sky filled with bright orange sparks that flew across the horizon, tumbling without grace. It was only when impact was imminent that he realized what it was. A Mercedes, he wasn’t sure of the model – not that it mattered when the car in question had become a fireball.
    “Jesus Christ. Mandy, hold on!” he yelled, grabbing the steering wheel and trying to find the brakes with feet that felt as though they were glued to the floor. Sammy’s leaden left foot rose and tried to find the brake that his right foot refused to touch, but it was too late. The noise was tremendous, as the Mercedes, having lost control at a high speed, toppled head over tail towards them, somersaulting like an obese gymnast.
    Instinctively, Sammy reached out trying to grab hold of Mandy’s hand. All he could hear was his heart as it thundered in his chest, while his brain failed to function on a clear or understandable level. Even Mandy’s screams were a mere whisper, a distant murmur, as though she were trapped in another room or at the end of a long corridor.
    The automotive torpedo impacted Sammy’s car on the edge of the hood, causing minimal damage. It was the sudden change in momentum that caused the car to flip over.
    “Shit!” Sammy cried out as he felt the car begin to tip forward.
    Despite the speed with which it all occurred, everything felt as though it happened in slow motion. The change in the weight of the car, the crunching sound of the hood, engine and undercarriage being crushed, the strange, stomach-churning sensation as the car left the ground, flipping over like a disc in a game of Tiddlywinks. Beside him, Sammy heard Mandy scream, her seatbelt forgotten by her intoxicated mind. She fell forward as the car flipped and she fell into the windshield, her head hitting hard enough to crack the glass. As the car continued its first of many cartwheels Sammy saw a bloodied smear mark the glass as his girlfriend’s head bounced free, her body falling against the roof as her head then made contact with the dashboard. Mandy’s body followed a similar trajectory as the car, her legs crashing through the glass of the windscreen as the roof crumpled against the road surface. Sammy heard something snap; a burning pain thundered through his body. He didn’t have any time to look – not that he could see anything anymore, for every image had blended together, his world awash of darkness and fire.
    The car flipped once more, the roof flattening even further, and Sammy’s fastened seatbelt wasn’t enough to stop his head from colliding with the driver’s side window. His neck whiplashed with a loud crack and a burst of pain shot into the center of his brain. He tasted blood in his mouth and couldn’t breathe; his chest was crushed, both lungs punctured. He also had a compound fracture in each leg, the femur protruding at about mid-thigh level. Finally, the car came to a stop, landing upside down in the middle of the road, the engine somehow still revving angrily, the rear wheels spinning, while the aroma of spilled fuel began to fill the car.
    “Mandy,” Sammy coughed, blood spurting from his lips. Looking over to the passenger seat, pain surging through his body, Sammy tried to find the woman he loved. Sammy groped desperate to find Mandy, even as his wheezing breaths began to shallow. He sweated and shivered simultaneously, and the pain began to dull as Sammy’s body shut down. He had lost control of his bodily functions not long after the car began its second rotation.
    The seat next to him was empty; Mandy had fallen out of the tumbling projectile in stages as it had flipped its way along the road. Her head had been the first to come away, cut through as the car descended from its