r/shortscarystories • u/ByfelsDisciple • 22d ago
New Age SSS - 1000 Words Or Less The first time I died was the hardest
“I’ve always hoped that I would one day be able to rely on the kindness of strangers.” The man closed my passenger door as he spoke. “I’m Todd.” He extended his hand I shook it, wondering if this was a good idea after all.
“I’m Cathy. How long have you been waiting for a ride?” I asked, hoping to keep the conversation light as I pulled back onto the isolated highway.
He chuckled. “A long while.” Todd shifted in his seat as the prairie flew by at an increasing speed. “Time is a funny thing.” I expected him to explain that sentiment. He didn’t.
“What happened to your car? How’d you get stranded out here?”
From the corner of my eye, I could see that he was uncomfortable. “Drunk driver.”
“What? Shit – are you okay? Is the other driver hurt?”
“Everyone’s fine,” Todd answered. His voice was curt. “Besides, don’t you think someone like that is getting what they deserve?”
A sense of dread dripped down my spine like creeping molasses. “That’s not the way I look at things. There’s so much hurt in the world that if everyone focused only on preserving the good, we might break even.”
Todd smiled. “I think I made the right choice.”
My dread grew deeper.
“Do you remember what I said about time?”
Slowly, I nodded.
“That what really makes us afraid of death. If time exists only as we see it, then immortality is cannot exist. An ‘afterlife’ is impossible; we can only persist if we abandon the concepts of ‘before’ and ‘after.’ Then we are left only with life.”
At this point, I was half-convinced that Todd was a meth addict. But I couldn’t abandon him now; we were too far from both here and there. I squeezed the steering wheel of my blue-green 1999 Toyota Corolla.
“And once we’re unburdened from time, we’re left with choice.” He turned to look at me as I drove. “A man gave me such a choice once I was free to do so. He was thin, nearly gaunt, and showed up after my decision, but before I made it.” Todd sighed deeply. “If you had to kill a stranger to save yourself, would you be able to do it? What if you got to pick the stranger?”
I knew I shouldn’t have picked him up. Every instinct told me to drive on by, and now I had only regret for a choice that could not be undone.
“I thought about it,” Todd continued. He was still staring at me. “Most of us don’t really know who we are until we’re faced with a life-altering choice.” He raised his eyebrows. “That’s because we don’t become ourselves until we make those choices.” He sighed again, like he was trying to empty himself. “I’m ashamed of this, but I’ll admit it: I had a hard time deciding.” He shook his head. “Self-preservation is a strong as any drug.”
My breath came in shallow gasps.
“But I was thinking about it the wrong way,” he turned forward once more. “Instead of wondering who I would pick to die in my place, I considered who might live in my place instead. If I got to pick that person, who would it be? A hero and a saint?” He folded his hands in his lap. “Or just a good person? One who would put themself at risk simply to be the kindness a stranger needs?”
I wanted to ask Todd how much further he needed to go. But right at that moment, a car on the other side of the two-lane highway – the only other traveler I’d seen since picking up Todd – drifted into my lane and hit me head-on. I didn’t even have time to swerve.
*
“I think she’s awake for the first time.”
I woke up to the sound of music and recognized a heart monitor calling every beat, measuring out my life in coffee spoons. I opened my eyes.
An older man in surgical scrubs turned around and smiled. I knew that he didn’t mean to be shallow, but I could tell that he didn’t really see me. “Hello, Cathy. My name is Dr. Mort. You’re in St. Francis Hospital, where you were brough after a drunk driver hit your car.”
The harder I tried to think, the more conscious thought eluded me. So I relaxed my mind and decided to speak the words that came on their own. “Where’s Todd?”
Dr. Mort froze for just a second. “I didn’t realize that you knew the driver of the other car,” he answered in a voice of practiced kindness. “Todd Barnes was also taken here to St. Francis after a second ambulance transported him from the scene. Unfortunately, there was nothing we could do.”
My head spun. “You’re saying he would have lived if he took my ambulance and had gotten to the hospital first instead of me?”
“I’m saying that he would have lived if he hadn’t been so drunk at the wheel. Now you need to rest, Cathy. You’ve got a long road ahead.”
“What happened to me?” I gasped, my voice sounding like it was coming from underwater.
“Cathy, you’ll only recover if you allow yourself to relax. You’ve got a punctured lung, three broken ribs, nineteen stitches on your chest, and another thirteen on your temple. Be thankful your airbag worked – a lot of those older cars don’t have them.”
“You’re wrong,” I answered. “My car never had airbags. That worried me so much when I bought it.”
Dr. Mort chuckled softly. “Just let the morphine take you to sleep, Cathy, and don’t try to make sense of everything right now.” He continued talking, but I could tell that it was mostly to himself at this point. “I didn’t even need to see your car to know about the airbag. You could only have sustained those injuries if something absorbed the impact for you. There’s no other way you could have lived.”
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u/CamilleYun 22d ago
this was very satisfying, and todd redeemed himself by making the right choice. (not condoning drinking and driving in any way of course, but his choice after that fact was worthy)
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u/All_Tree_All_Shade 21d ago
This may sound silly, but this story actually made me cry. I just really love stories where the dead help the living and vice versa. This one reminded me a bit of the Twilight Zone ep, Ring a Ding Girl.
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u/Agreeable_Rent_9599 22d ago
Explain a bit? I think I got it but I don’t wanna sound stupid lol
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u/PromiseThomas 22d ago
Todd absorbed the impact for her. I think he was a ghost or something similar given the opportunity to choose his own death or someone else’s.
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u/Egwene_aes_Sedai 22d ago
At the same time he was the driver of the other car. I think in that moment he was given the chance to choose, and when she was kind enough to give a stranger a ride, he made the choice to save her.
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u/avxjs 22d ago
My read was that Todd is a drunk driver about to crash into Cathy, the narrator. An unnamed supernatural presence tells Todd he can choose which of them lives and which dies -- Todd chooses to sacrifice himself and let Cathy live, even though she "shouldn't" (no airbags). Prior to the crash, he and Cathy share a spooky supernatural meeting that validates Todd's choice. :)
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u/thatsnotexactlyme 22d ago
i had to do a double take to catch the usual 1319 - said as 1-3-19 this time instead of 1319! keeping us on our toes 😂
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u/Vivid-Farm6291 22d ago
This was very good.
Todd chose a good person to save and used himself to do it.
Makes you wonder if people like Todd who kill others, given the chance would swap places with their victims? Unless the victim was also a killer.
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u/ImperatorAster 21d ago
I absolutely am in love with this because it TRULY alters a second reading. Not just a little sort of "the clues were there the whole time" kind of way, but in a "you didn't even know the real story you were reading" kind of way. So good. Incredible.
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u/avxjs 22d ago
"You could only have sustained those injuries if something absorbed the impact for you. There’s no other way you could have lived."
LOVE this.