The dark

The car is out of control and before I know it I'm flying though the windshield, airless floating through time.  Everyone always says it's your life that flashes before your eyes, but for me it is only the last few hours.  Black skeletons of trees surround the car and their imposing limbs seem to mock my fate.  I don't realize I've landed until I feel the pain on my leg of crunched bones, my arm bent awkwardly behind my head and my head forced to stare at the night sky.
She will be so angry about the car.  And here I will die alone.  Those two thoughts are my only company now, aside from the orange tongues of flame licking the carcass of the great metal beast beside me.  She will be so angry, and I am alone and I didn't get to say goodbye.  He will hate me because I can't say goodbye. 
Suddenly a crashing through the trees, loud and metallic- a blinding light cuts my face and before I can shield my eyes I am awake.
I've sweat through the sheets and the stripped yellow shirt- blindly I swat away blankets, swimming in pillows until my hand finally rests on warm skin.  With a sleepy grunt he turns and I take let out my breath, I hadn't even realized I was holding it in.  I am safe, I tell myself; safe and loved and I don't need to say goodbye because he's still right here beside me.  The dreams are getting increasingly disturbing- two nights ago it was an acid bath and before that a train dropping off into the ocean.  The only reason I slept at all was the knowledge that in the morning I would awake to the usual ruckus in the kitchen and this sleeping saviour beside me. 

And now, tonight, what do I have?  Enough alcohol to make sure I fall asleep, surely, but in the morning only spiders and dust bunnies to wake me.  So sleep is, once again, a luxury I will have to do without.  I've been here before, I know that sleepless nights lead to a half life, drifting past people as though nothing really exists outside my own mangled sleep deprived brain.  Wishing only for those few precious seconds where I can sleep without dreaming.