Alternatively

Born Once,

Her head pounded, like a headache one would get from hanging by the knees on the monkey bars at recess. Blood rushing in her skull, her face numb, the pressure building behind her eyes. There was a ringing in her ears, high and disorienting.

There had been a crash.

Her seatbelt dug into her neck and chest and her eyes were painful to open, eyelids tacky with something warm. Even squinting through the substance, she couldn't see anything beyond the roof of the car. Annabeth craned her neck and wondered just why her hair was floating above.

I'm upside down.

She fumbled with the buckle, fingers slick with blood and slipping on the shards of broken plastic. It was hard to breathe and she tried not to panic, but her entire body was numb. Something glimmered out the window, light reflecting off broken glass, and she struggled more fervently with the seatbelt.

Why didn't I stop?

Annabeth dropped out of her seat, landing on the roof with a thud. A nerve pinched in her neck and she scrambled to roll off her back. There was a lot of pain she would definitely feel later, throbbing and stinging, but at the moment, her tossing stomach posed a bigger problem.

Get out of the car.

Glass dug into her hands and knees as she crawled to the window, lungs practically caving as everything closed in and down and entrapping her in disfigured metal. Her elbows ripped on the asphalt and she gulped back a series of heaves.

Get out of the car.

Her legs weren't, what was the phrase...working. The same could be said for her brain. Still, she managed to weasel out of the wreckage, slumped on the edge of the road. It was raining, but she couldn't feel it. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and squinted across the street.

A blurry blob of car glistened at the edge of the tree line smouldered and sizzled in the night, lit by her one working headlight. No one seemed to be moving, but that could have been her impaired judgment and fresh blood leaking into her eyes.

Was this my fault?

Her head continued to reel as she tried to process her own flipped car. It looked like someone had run it over and dropped it back to Earth from Mars. She could safely declare it totaled, but she still didn't remember what led to the crash. Thinking too hard jabbed knives into her skull and she finally hurled her stomach contents.

Through her hacking and heaving, Annabeth heard something curious. It wasn't rumbling thunder or an approaching car, but a low humming that made her hair stand on end. Her ears popped, as if the air changed in pressure, and someone was standing in the middle of the road.

She wiped her hand cross her mouth, staring at the figure. She was positive he hadn't been there before, but maybe the driver of the other car was alive after all. That would have certainly eased the tension in her gut to some degree, but it was ultimately wishful thinking.

The man leisurely walked to the wreckage, arms hooked over the scythe resting across his shoulders.

Annabeth glanced up and down the road, suddenly acutely aware of how desolate it was. It seemed like a good idea to take backroads when she was planning her trip, but two hours of traffic would have been preferred over surviving an accident only to be murdered by some cryptid. She scooted herself closer to her overturned car because he probably didn't hear her loudly vomiting.

I'm going to die in the Garden State, she thought miserably.

She couldn't find her phone on the roof of the car, but she doubted it would have had signal in the first place. There wasn't anything heavy for defense, but she did find the two chicken nuggets she didn't eat from earlier that day.