It WASN’T a dark and stormy night – and therein lies a tale – that once upon a time – would have made her blood run cold.
Such were the phrases that Girly conjured to try to alleviate the horror that engulfed her. This was not the time of Victorian gothic, and – it was a bright and sunny day. Neither the contrast nor the humour cured the fact of the matter. She was trapped in her car and she was going to die. A victim of modern technology. And she’d left her cell phone at home!
It had started with such good intentions. Take a few hours off from a busy schedule, drive out into the country, meander road to path to trail and then test the car’s four wheel drive up an incline that was neither road nor path nor trail. Park and marvel at the view. Decide to get out. Open door and manage to drop car keys outside just as wind and slope of land slammed car door shut.
That’s when the car’s ‘brain’ overworked. It locked her seat belt in crash mode. Girly could not move her body; the seat belt was the latest in restraints that hugged waist and torso. For some reason the release mechanism, which she could bend her arm to reach, would not release.
She could open the door but not even see the keys; they must be under the car. And the door with wind and weight swung heavily shut.
All this she had tried in the first few minutes. She had now been trapped for hours.
The details had unfolded. She had no food, she had no water. Girly had not thought to tell anyone where she was going. Her roommate was away for the week. Girly worked out of the apartment and her clients would begin to phone after a day or two about their jobs but it would take a week or more (she knew from experience) before they became exasperated enough to perhaps make more of an inquiry than phone message or e-mail. The car was well out of sight.
A major attempt to struggle led nowhere: she was pinned tightly, and she stopped suddenly with the thought that further effort might activate the air bag and then she would be crushed.
She spent considerable time pushing on the release button, trying different pressures, different angles.
At times she would open the door and hold it for as long as she could, get some fresh air. She could see birds in the trees. She could look across a vast distance of wilderness but she wasn’t really seeing it. Her world was confined to little more than the space of her body.
The late afternoon sun got to her, her favourite time of day. “This is really silly,” she said, aloud. Then she started to cry. Then she let the
book phrases dance across her mind and gave up to death. Thought, this car is going to be the death of me, it won’t give up until I’m dead.
Suddenly she felt quite calm, a serene giddyness. Why, the car isn’t trying to kill me, she realized. It is protecting me with this damned seatbelt in a mistaken way.
It would let her go when it thought she was dead. Oh, great.
Sleep was said to be little death but she could not fall asleep on demand and suspected that she would not be able to come back to an awake state with enough awareness to release herself before the car took hold.
Once she had known how to meditate. Meditation could bring on the effects of sleep.
What had she to lose…
She positioned her finger on the release mechanism and began… Maybe she slept. Maybe she ‘died’. Whatever it was – it worked. Some time later she was free.
Girly found the keys and started the car. All’s well that ends well and I intend to live happily ever after was what she thought as she drove home.