Jack

Hi, I'm Jack.

I'm 26 and a starving artist.

One day I was hit by life.

No seriously. I was crossing the street in colorful Flower District of Downtown Los Angeles when a woman named Life drove her burgundy Honda Civic into me as I tried to shoo away a bee.

After Life hit me, was rushed to the hospital in a bright red ambulance with a shiny white interior and a man dressed in dark muted blue told me that I was going to be alright. The man seemed very tired; he had dark purple rings under his eyes. I wondered what was keeping the man from resting. As he shut the door I caught a glimpse of Life's green skirt and the bee buzzing around it.

I dumped on a gurney and rolled into the hospital. Light blue walls and dusty lighting fixtures flew by me. I was pushed into a small room with green tiles on the walls. There were white blinds on the windows. Nurses and doctors rushed in saying numbers and reporting wounds. It was rather noisy. A fly flew into the room.

Nurses in pink uniforms rush all over the place; every thing was blurry so they seemed like one giant pink blob. I heard a doctor say something about broken legs. An other doctor in a white coat came over and was asking me questions while waving a bright light over my eyes. I made an attempt to answer what seemed like pointless questions, that is until I saw blood splatter on to the white coat of the doctor overhead.

I followed the blood as it spread into the fabric of the coat. I noticed that the room didn't seem as noisy as before. In fact everything seemed to get dull. What had been bright red blood on the coat, now seemed gray.

As the dark closed in, I noticed the fly leave the room.

I came to some time later. I was covered in bandages and had a cast on my right leg. Nurses walked in and took notes on a binder and really didn't pay much attention to me. It's not like I felt talkative anyway.

At some point Life more-or-less paid me a visit. All she really did was stand in the door way and not say a word. The first day she came over she wore a dark purple sweater and pulled it close to her body the entire time. The second day she had a blue skirt with a white trim; she was as silent as ever.The third day she didn't bother standing at the door. She instead sat on a red chair in the hall, across from my door. On the forth day I pretended I was having a staring contest with her as she sat silently. I was winning until a fly landed on her red-orange hair and I blinked.

Life stopped showing up at her spot a few days later. I asked the nurse's if they had seen her. One of them told me she would sit in the waiting room for an hour and leave. Another told me she had spotted her on a brown bench outside the hospital. One of the interns told me he had seen her in the cafe across the street.

I did eventually find out what she might have wanted to say.

She didn't mean to drive her car at 35 miles per hour into my body and she's very sorry to have caused me trouble, or so I was told by her lawyer a couple of days after she was last spotted. He wore a gray suit with an off-white shirt and a charcoal tie with a a geometric design and black shoes and an absolutely depressing demeanor on his face. I think he was trying to match his graying hair and black, soulless eyes. A fly flew near his head.

He didn't say much after the break down of the events, not that I listened. I couldn't help but find the light peach wall behind him so much more interesting. I could have sworn the wall was more interested than I was.

Somewhere between the time he began speaking and stopped a large, black spider made it's was across the wall. It's mere presence seemed to mar the pretty wall.

I made an effort to turn my attention to the bland man in front of me. It was a futile attempt. Luckily he had stopped talking and pulled out a large envelope the color of muddy yellow.

He handed it to me. I made the motion to reach for it.

I never actually reached the envelope, much less get a chance to see what was inside.

I felt a pain all over my body. I looked up and saw the spider catch the fly.

I thought: Stupid fly.

It got noisy really quickly and then it went dead silent.