Camilla looked down from the road at the clock in the dash. It read 11:42. She took a hand from the wheel, loosening the top button of her blouse, letting the Jaguar drift into the side lane of the M3. She smoothed her blond hair behind her shoulder as she stepped on the gas, headlights white on the cold expanse of asphalt. There were no other cars on the road. The cabin of the Jag smelled faintly of cigarettes and new leather. She remembered those nights a few years ago where Lucien would have a meal waiting, but now she just gritted her teeth at the thought. A light mist had started as she approached her destination. Turning on the windshield wipers, signs floated by in the dark: Speed: 80 km/h. London: 30 km. Reaching over into her white faux-leather purse on the passenger seat, she produced a package of cigarettes. She turned onto the the exit to Shepperton, pushing in the lighter in the dash. Driving faster, she started over the Western Avenue bridge. She looked at the instrument panel. The needle registered 130 km/h. Fumbling for the cigarette lighter, the wheel jumped out of her hands. There was an ear-splitting crash, a glimpse of the guard rail, then nothing.
The first sensation was one of freezing cold. Her hair was matted in front of her face, but she could feel that she was in surging, dirty water up to her waist. She opened her eyes. The seats were engulfed in a muddy torrent that had flowed in through the instrument panel. It had buckled inwards from the impact and left a gash between the engine and passenger compartments. The steering wheel protruded in an absurd angle from the dash with the spent parachute of an airbag dangling from it. Underneath the water, she could feel her legs pinned in a razor-sharp vault of metal. She untangled her right hand from the seat belt, and moved the hair out of her face. She could now see out the broken windshield. The bridge continued over the marsh, and the road continued to Shepperton, miles away. If she squinted she could see the bright red sign of a restaurant, miles away. Everything was closed by now.
The neon world of the twenty-first century had been shattered as she laid in her glass and metal prison. Absently, she reached down to unbuckle her seat belt. It slowly retracted, dragging the buckle across her soaked top. She tried to picture Lucien, what he might be doing in the apartment. He was probably asleep on the couch. The new girl from accounting had probably been there too. Her half-empty glass of champagne probably still stood on the coffee table.
She tried the door handle. It wouldn’t budge. Even if it would open, how would she walk? The water made her legs numb, but she could tell from the first few painful moments that it would impossible to move them without ripping the flesh from her bones. The car settled down further into the mud, sending a new rush of water in through the cracked instrument panel. She reached out to grip the steering wheel, pushing aside the spent airbag. How long would it take for her rescuers to arrive? She would probably see the lights and hear the sirens across the overpass soon. She would be cut from the remains of the car and airlifted to London for treatment. Lucien would drive in that Saturday and bring flowers. They would kiss, he would smile and say “Is there anything I can get you?” Like that would happen. He probably wouldn’t even notice she was gone.
The muddy bottom of the marsh sighed again as the car sank, submerging her up to her chest. It wasn’t until this moment that she realized the lethal nature of the . Another few feet and the car would be submerged, her with it. It was unthinkable that a few hours ago she had sipped champagne and talked with with her coworkers about the weather. She pulled on her legs, but pain shot up through her body. They were trapped. Could she actually—die? The word rang hollow in her mind. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. She was alone in the dark. Lucien was supposed to come to her bedside and whisper in her ear that he would love her forever. Long-forgotten acquaintances and lovers from college were supposed to send her flowers and kind cards. But that was all ludicrous. Surely cars had passed when she was unconscious. This was a well-traveled road, an exit off the M3, for god’s sake. Thousands lived in Shepperton. The call had probably already gone out, with ambulances speeding to her rescue. She looked into the passenger’s seat. Her purse was floating upside down against the passenger door. No cell phone, that’s for sure.
She began to shiver. With every shake her legs were torn against their jagged metal prison. She clenched her eyes shut and tried to distance herself from her pain, cursing herself for not bringing home Dieter, the new information technology guy for her department. Her boss had invited everyone to a party at this hotel on the outskirts of London to celebrate record stock prices. She had pretended to have a conversation with Li from personnel while Dieter surreptitiously eyed her from his perch on a stool at the bar. She didn’t really have any friends at work, although she did maintain an elaborate facade to make her coworkers think the opposite. She had ignored his gaze while Li told her that Dieter’s wife was indeed Lucien’s new lover. Neither of them had usually kept their lovers long, but she sensed that this one was different.
The muck of the marsh sighed again as the brackish water filled the cab. The fit of shivering had passed, but now she couldn’t feel anything from her neck down. She was becoming one with the river. She gripped the side of the Jag’s broken window, pulling herself up to see the neon sign far away windshield. It was her last hope. Her last link to civilization. She strained, but just ended up falling back into her submerged seat.
“No…” she pleaded aloud. “Not like this…” Her teeth started to chatter, silencing her. She held her arms close to her underneath the water, a slight chuckle escaping her lips. She’d seen scene after scene like this on the television: the valiant struggle against the elements, and the tearful reunion with the family. It bored her. She knew that any second the studio audience would pop out of the mass of reeds to the left of the car, the hidden lights would flick on, cameras would the thrust in her face, and the angular face of the talk show host would scream:
“So, Camilla—what was it like to die?” And the studio audience would laugh.
She noticed a reflection on the bridge, and painfully strained to see as much out of the broken windshield as she could. A pair of luminous, titanium-white jewels could be seen moving down the road towards her. Yes! Surely they would see the broken guard rail. She was just minutes from being the center of attention, medical teams dedicated to her ordeal.
“Are you comfortable?” the EMTs would say.
“Can you tell me your name?” another would chime in. Maybe even a brief mention in the London papers about her heroic ten-hour ordeal against the elements. After minor plastic surgery, she would step into the studio lights for a follow-up on the television news.
“Did you ever lose hope?” that same square-faced talk show host would ask. And she would smile.
“No, when I found myself thinking about giving up, I would just think of my husband.” And there would be Lucien at her side, smiling. It wouldn’t be the smile that he used to get right after he’d taken some morphine, it would be a real smile. They would be happy. He would dump that girl. She’d stop thinking about Dieter when they had sex.
She heard a sighing sound and refused to register that the water had reached her chin. She would have to laugh at the wit of the host and tell the audience all about how she suddenly realized that she had always wanted to kickbox, or cook or rock climb. She would invite Li over to the house to have a cup of tea. She would call up her mother and say that the past didn’t matter. She would bring flowers to her father’s grave. She would read the classics. The audience would smile and nod. “What a nice woman,” they would think.
The car she saw before had passed over the bridge without stopping. The water was now at her mouth. She pushed herself above the water with her numb arms. She was sure somebody would be here now. They were probably already at the other shore, putting the rescue boat in the water. They had just turned off their sirens. It was the middle of the night, after all!
The talk show host would be named Maurice. He would be dressed in a blue suit with a whimsical tie.
“So, Camilla, what happened after you lost consciousness?” he would smile.
“To be honest, Maurice, nothing!” she would make a face, the audience would laugh.
“Tell us, what did it feel like?” He would hold the microphone to her.
“I really don’t know. It just happened. It’s not like I was prepared or anything. How could I have been prepared for that!” She would laugh and smooth her hair behind her shoulder.
Her arms were limp and gave way, dropping her head beneath the freezing water. She sputtered and coughed as she tried to hold her breath.
The audience would be hushed as she began to spill the precious secret of death: “Well when it happened at first, it was like nothing. Like being underwater. But then I began to feel something. Well, it wasn’t as much as feeling something but feeling the lack of something. It was being completely empty. It sounds so horrible, but in fact it was a very amazing feeling.” She would look at the audience gravely. “In that moment I realized I was free. I just felt the immense nothingness of the universe—all these trillions of stars, the burning embers of the utopia that this existence was supposed to be, and it was like a million weights were lifted from me. I realized that it didn’t mean a thing. If that second they cut me from the car and airlifted me to the hospital, I would still be dead. You know, Maurice, we’re all really dead—whether we know it or not.”
She struggled underneath the water. The smelly earth of the marsh was everywhere, underneath her skirt, in her brassiere, in her hair, all over her body. She ripped at her legs, but they would not budge no matter how hard she pulled. The freezing numbness was everywhere. The whole universe was with her in the car, suffocating her. Everything would remain. Planets would orbit without her. Lucien would shoot up again in a few hours. He and the girl would copulate. Dieter would wake up and masturbate. It was disgusting. The animals would breed, more animals would come out. Everyone and everything—existing. Stuffing their orifices to please themselves. Ingesting. Expelling. Smelly heaps of cells. She gritted her teeth under the water. She inhaled.