Come Forward

Come Forward

by Irena Pasvinter

I must remember what it was… Forward… Police ask witnesses to… Am I a witness? A victim? What happened? I must remember.

I didn’t care for this damn movie. We had no chance to be there on time, but Rob wouldn’t listen. He raced ahead. A shadow darted across the windshield. A blow followed almost instantly.

“We hit somebody! Stop!”

Rob went pale like a Hollywood vampire, but didn’t slow down.

“Shut up. Just a dog.”

“Stop!”

I grabbed the handbrake, but Rob shoved me away, smashing me hard against the wall.

“I told you it was a dog!” he roared. “A fucking dog!”

“Even if it’s a dog—”

“Will you shut up?”

We didn’t get to the movie that night. We dashed home by the side roads, making a stop in the forest to wipe the blood from the car’s crumpled front. The damage was less than I expected.

“Bloody dog,” Rob murmured, attempting to set the dirty rag on fire with his lighter. The rag refused to burn. Rob cursed and threw it back into the trunk. At home he thrust the car into the garage and ousted me out of his automotive kingdom.

Next morning there was no newspaper.

“Damn dogs,” Rob said emerging from the garage. “Damn postman.”

It wasn’t a dog. It was a boy, five years old. As I scanned through the article on the net, I heard Rob entering the room.

Now I can’t open my eyes. Everything hurts. I hear voices, words. Coma. Accident. Reanimation. Who is in coma? Me? Police ask witnesses to come forward. Witnesses. Forward. I must come forward.

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Irena Pasvinter
Irena Pasvinter divides her time between software engineering, endless family duties and writing poetry and fiction. Her stories and poems have appeared in online and print magazines (Every Day Fiction, Bartleby Snopes, Bewildering Stories, Fiction 365 and many others). Her poem “Psalm 3.14159…” has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is currently working on her never ending first novel. Visit Irena at https://sites.google.com/site/.

3 thoughts on “Come Forward

  1. Gripping indeed. And the story’s power generated a lot of interest on my part. Some concerns: The initial memories problems seem inconsistent with the gruesome recall that follows. I suggest rewording the second paragraph to begin “I didn’t care about that damned movie…” and “The blow…”. Then maybe begin the last paragraph “My eyes are swollen…” and maybe dropping the word “reanimation.” Forgive my taking these liberties \with what is, after all, your story. But I grabbed it into feeling ownership of a sort. AGB

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