I Really Did Want to Live a Simple Life

Prologue: Everything Ends

 Warmth, something so simple that nearly any person who doesn’t experience the cold or extreme heat on a regular basis takes it for granted. In a world of increasingly hot temperatures and stale air, a moment where a cool breeze created by an open window of a moving car, combined with the sunlight trickling in through the windshield, felt relaxing after being dragged around a park by powerful creatures now holding their heads out of that very car’s window. It had taken some time for the driver to train the animals correctly, correcting bad behavior and introducing them to people in a slow, controlled manner so they didn’t scare the life out of people. They weren’t bad animals, by any measure, but they were protective. The two beasts, large dogs, a subtly brindle-patterned mastiff, and a fluffy white furred husky mix had, had a simple life, and before the dynamic change of their owners' relationship, had two people they cared for every day. The training was slow, coming from a desire to move on, the driver, a young transwoman, with brown skin the same color of coffee with a splash of creamer in it, with long black braids, didn’t want to push the dogs to the point of mistrusting all other people. 

 Looking up, the driver locked her green-blue eyes onto the green traffic light, and pressed her foot onto the gas, just as she lifted her other foot off the clutch, the movement practiced and fluid, allowing the car to move forward with ease. She remembered the feeling of the warm air on her arms and chest, just as she could hear the sound of wheels and brakes slamming into each other, the high screech, the smell of rubber burning. Her attention seemed to speed up, or maybe time itself slowed to a standstill. Her eyes were able to move; she could see things for what they were. The massive semi truck was moments from colliding with the car. There was a moment where her mind began to form the images of her life, as if she was preparing to die, as so many others have claimed to happen before a near-death experience. For the young woman, however, she didn’t want to relive the life she wanted to protect her precious animals, the creatures who had kept her from breaking down every night when the strongest thread of security snapped, leaving her alone, as if she were floating alone in a lake. 

 With an unnatural strength and speed, her body moved, in the breath of a moment that her mind had somehow created in her perception of events, the woman turned, her body diving through the two seats, a crack sounding out as she slammed her shoulder through the head rest of the passenger seat as she clutched onto the bodies of the final anchors she had to this world. The final sounds that echoed in the air, glass breaking, metal bending and breaking, then with the final moments her vision remained, she locked eyes with the two beasts, as the image faded into nothingness, the warmth of their bodies lingering before it all went dark.