Timeless Snow ✓

Ch. 46 - Snow

It was Sam's birthday weekend, he had gone out with his friends on that Friday night to celebrate. The back seat, middle space, was left empty in his best friend Nathaniel's absences. Unable to attend the festivities due to illness that he was laid up in a hospital bed for months at a time. Nathaniel still wanted his best friend to go out and celebrate his nineteenth birthday, even if he couldn't be with him. They had grown up together, forming a brotherly-like pack since elementary school. Sam stuck by him through all of his hospital stays, even when things got worse in high school. A few days sick here and there turned into weeks, then months. 

Sitting in the passenger seat, his three other friends from his high school years filled the other seats in the Nissan Altima that Zack's dads gave him for his sixteenth birthday. They hadn't been drinking, the only one of legal drinking age was the eldest of them, Emry. He had a good moral compass though and wasn't about to buy booze for four 'minors'.  

The roads were slick. It had been snowing for a week straight. The drawbacks of having a birthday in December. It was right after the holidays and everyone was in good spirits. That meant little to the cruel lady known as fate. No one saw the black ice camouflaged on the road. No one was there to stop the car from spinning wildly out of control. It was incredible how a patch of ice could change the lives of countless people on a cold December night. 

Taking a left turn on the road, the right wheel picked up the patch of lethal black ice. The car swerved outward beyond Zack's control of the wheel. Sam heard the horrendous sound of metal scraping metal before his world was turned upside down. As if being out in a dryer and turned on, articles in the car went flying free mid-air as the car rolled over the guard rail. Hitting the nearby ditch, the tires slipped in the snow causing the car to continue to spin with four young souls trapped inside.

Sam couldn't register what was happening until everything came to a painful stop. Choking for air, Sam coughed blood onto the airbag. All he could hear was the hissing sound of the car screaming, gases releasing. No voices, no cries for help. Sam tried to open his mouth to call out to his friends, but blood only rushed up.

"Sam!" Finally, Sam heard Zack's voice call out. Forcing his eyes open despite the pain Sam looked up and over to his friend. "Oh shit.. Sam!" Sam should have known by Zack's expression that things were far worse than they seemed. He couldn't see himself.

The airbag had broken his nose and bruised his eye. The door had caved in the spin and a shard of metal had left the door and pierced into his side. Far larger and deeper than anyone in the car knew how to handle, not like they could fix a punctured lung.

Unable to speak, Sam looked toward the back seat. Flicking his eyes back and forth, he tried to tell Zack to check on the other two. Zack noticed Sam's eyes bounce to the back seat and quickly came to his senses. Not that anyone could blame him, how hard did his head bounce off the steering wheel?

"Alex! Emry?!" He could hear his friend. A deep grumble came from Emry's throat as he signaled he was still alive before following it with a simple. "Yeah!"

Things started to fade in and out for Sam at that point. Blood pouring out of his body, blood filling his airways. He fought to stay awake to ensure to safety of his friends. He had to assume he'd just wake up in a hospital later. No time to worry about it. His eyes fluttered as Sam heard a single word. "Dead." come from Zack's lips.

"I think Alex is dead..." His voice broke as he turned his eyes away from the back seat. No... Alex was the youngest of them. Having just turned sixteen months prior.

The group took Alex in after he transferred to their new school. After a couple of weeks, they noticed he wasn't fitting in with the usual crowds and took him under their wing for the past year. The white knight group, not that anyone called them that.

"Sam!!" Zack cried out, turning back to him in the front seat of the car. He grabbed Sam's arm tight, realizing how grave the situation really is. As he realized this, as did Sam. The blood filling his throat felt warm now, the feeling of drowning was starting to fade. He realized fighting was futile. He'd be joining Alex on his journey into the great unknown.

Sam tried to offer Zack one last apologetic look, wanting to portray so many things to his friends. His dying declaration if only he could. Those words were never said as Sam slipped into unconsciousness. Hearing the roaring hiss of the dying engine and the echoing call of his own name was the last thing he heard before the movie reel to his life was clipped short.

A rare phenomenon happened. Samuel's soul remained present despite the death of his flesh. Normally, a soul would fade out and awake in the next moment in time that they felt contentment. For Sam, his desire to see the fate of his friends was so strong that he manifested himself close to his own death.

He hadn't realized the reaper summoned to his death was death himself. He hadn't even realized he was standing off in the distance. His stark black clothing made him look like another tree in the dark evening.

Sam stood just outside the passenger door looking in on his own body was it slumped in its place as Zack beat on Sam's chest, hoping to rattle him back to life. A lost cost, but Sam could see the devotion behind it.

It took twenty minutes for the ambulance to make it through the snow, but there was nothing that could be done for Alex and Samuel. Alex died on impact, Sam struggled for a bit before succumbing to his injuries soon after the crash. Emry and Zack made it out, living to tell the story of their lives, and the lives of the two that ended that day.

Sam's death hit Nate the hardest. An already sick man now riddled with guilt. Nate's health declined fast after Sam's death. Never having another 'good day' after that night. Nate had convinced Sam to go out for his birthday weekend despite Sam's insistence to hang out at the hospital with his best friend. Nate felt responsible for the accident, no one could convince him that it was just that - an accident.

There was no simpler way to say, It took Nate two weeks to die after that. If you asked Nate, he died that same day Samuel did.