Page 42 of Crashed (Driven 3)
Go, go, go. C’mon, one-three. C’mon, baby. Go, go, go.
Too fast.
Fuck!
Spiderman. Batman. Superman. Ironman.
I jolt my eyes open as memories lost to me rush back in high definition color.
My stomach tumbles to my feet as the forgotten feelings hit me. Fear strangles me as I try to piece the crash together from the Swiss-cheese sized holes still in my memory.
The anxiety attack hits me at full force and I can’t shake it. Dizziness. Vertigo. Nausea. Fear. All four mix like a Long Island Iced Tea I’d kill to fucking gulp down right now as my body trembles with the tiny bits of knowledge my memory has chosen to return.
I feel like I’m on a roller coaster, mid free fall as I struggle to draw in a fucking breath.
Suck it up, Donavan. Quit being such a pussy! Fuck me because all I want right now is Rylee. And I can’t have her. So I rock myself back and forth like a goddamn puss to prevent myself from calling her on her first full day back with the boys.
But fuck if I don’t need her, especially because I get it now … get her now. Understand the claustrophobia that cripples her, because right now I can’t even function. All I can fucking do is lie flat on the floor with the edges of my vision blurring, the room spinning, and my head pounding.
And in a moment of lucidity amidst the strangling panic, my mind acknowledges that if I didn’t feel like myself before, then I most definitely hate this fucked-up pussified version of myself—falling to pieces, lying on the floor like a little bitch because of a few memories.
I close my eyes as my mind swims in a fucking fog.
… If it’s in the cards …
More memories graze my mind, but I can’t reach them or see them long enough to hold on to the fuckers.
… Your superheroes finally came …
I push the memories back, push them down into the blackness. I’m so fucking useless right now. As much as I need to remember, I’m not sure if I can handle them. I’ve always been a balls-to-the-wall kind of guy, but right now I need motherfucking baby steps. Crawl before you walk and all that shit.
I close my eyes to try and make the room stop the fucking Tilt-A-Whirl it’s become.
Thwack!
And another flash of a memory hits me. Five minutes ago I couldn’t remember shit and now I can’t fucking forget. Fuck being broken or bent, I’m a motherfucking scrap yard of parts right now.
Breathe, Donavan. Fucking breathe.
Thwack!
I’m alive. Whole. Present.
Thwack!
I take in a couple of deep breaths, sweat staining the carpet as it pours off of me. I struggle to sit up, to piece together the parts of me scattered all over the fucking place to no avail, because it’s gonna take a whole hell of a lot more than a torch to weld me back the fuck together.
And it hits me like a motherfucking freight train what I need to do right now. I’m on the move. If I were more coherent, I’d laugh at my naked ass crawling across the floor to reach the television’s remote, at how fucking low I’ve stooped.
But I don’t give a flying fuck because I’m so goddamn desperate.
To find myself again.
To control the one fear I can control.
To confront the memories and take their power away.
To not be a fucking victim.
