The Hidden

Chapter 1:

I never believed that one split second could change your life forever. I guess no one really believes anything until it happens to you.

It was the 16th of March 2018, four years ago, on my 17th birthday. Everyone's birthday is supposed to be this happy day, it's the day you arrived in this world, the day your life changed the life of your parents and family forever.

I used to love my birthday. Every year we would go to the beach during the day then head to the Applebee's for something to eat at around 6pm. It was our tradition.

On my seventeenth we did everything as planned, after Applebee's we were driving home listening to the radio, chasing cars by Tracy Chapman was on. Me and my sister were talking about this new hot guy in school who she liked, and my mom and dad were laughing listening to us.

Then the song changed, This Is Gospel, by Panic At The Disco. I loved the song, so I told my dad to turn it up, he took his eyes of the road for a second then this massive 4x4 black Land Rover ran into us. My dad just drove this small grey three doored Volkswagen Polo car. It got destroyed.

When the Land Rover hit it. Our car flipped twice and it through us about fifteen feet back. The Land Rover just drove away, he was drunk, over the limit. He called the police after five minutes of hitting us. Fucking asshole.

I smashed my head against the window, knocking me unconscious the moment he hit us. I woke still trapped in the car, it's still all fuzzy, to this day I still can't remember everything. I remember the paramedics cutting the car door and pulling me out.

I saw my little sister lying there on the cold concrete road with her face covered in blood, she had a massive piece of glass impaled in her chest, with paramedics around her trying to save her, but it was too late. she was dead.

As they lifted me up onto the gurney and I saw my father lying on the ground, as the paramedic pulled a white sheet over him. Then I saw mother she was alive. They put her in the back of the ambulance and that's all I remember.

I woke, six hours later in Scripps La Jolla Hospital in Los Angeles. The doctors told me I have broken my left leg, three rips, and my right wrist. They said I was lucky. Lucky. I asked what happened to my family, they didn't want to tell me, they said I should rest but I wanted to know.

Both of my sisters legs broke, she was impaled, and her skull was cracked opened. She died twenty minutes after impact, five minutes after the police and ambulance arrived. They tried to save her, but it punctured her lungs and she drowned on her own blood.

My father's neck snapped clean in half, he died on impact. Then my mother, she broke her arm, four rips, and her stomach got impaled by metal, she survived but died during surgery from blood loss.

I woke up an orphan, I had lost everyone I loved because I asked my father to turn up the radio. I know it wasn't my fault it was the drunk driver, but it took me years to accept that and forgive myself, hell I'm not sure if I still forgive myself.

I still miss them every day, and that will never change. I miss the way my dad would always make shitty jokes; I miss how whenever he would come back from work; he was grab us and hug the life out of us. I miss how my mother would always fix our hair and leave notes in our lunch. I miss me and sister talking about boys and bitching about everything.

I know we sound like a traditional white-picket fence, apple-pie American family but we kinda were despite where we lived. We lived just outside of Skid Row, Los Angeles, California. Yup you heard me right, we lived just outside one of the most dangerous places in America.