Ghost Orchid

The high-pitched, grating sound of twisting metal chased screaming birds into the sky. A sickening rumble erupted as the car dove into the earth, upside down, crushing the roof. The screeching tires etched black marks on the highway for several yards, carving trenches in the shoulder as the vehicles left the road. The bright, red sports car glanced off the white sedan, but slid safely along the edge of the blacktop and stopped just short of the ditch. A plume of smoke and dust almost concealed the careening vehicles.
The shocked dump truck driver, pulling a heavy load of gravel, lost control and the truck slammed into the ditch on the other side of the narrow two-lane highway, the impact jamming the doors shut. For a moment in time, a deafening silence filled the air as though the crash sucked the life out of the universe in exchange for the life of the driver who attempted the left turn from the sanctuary road. Her car was upside down across the ditch, her bleeding torso visible half out the window, suspended by the hanging seat belt and the deflating airbags.
The contents of the car—shoes, a jacket, a briefcase, a computer—flew with abandon across the field as the doors popped open on impact with the red car and the final slam into the earth. A silver disk hung precariously from the player slot, the music from his heart collected just for her now useless, empty. The cell phone that was in her hand at impact flew out the window and found its resting place in a clump of brush, well hidden from the carnage. In that split second, in a blink of the eye, a snap of the fingers, the time it takes for a sip of coffee, to change a computer disc, or to glance out the window; in that split second, she was gone. All that remained was a broken shell of the person who just moments ago validated life in her beloved sanctuary, the sanctuary where her heart resonated with nature, transforming all the doubts in her life into new hopes and longings just beyond her reach.
The dazed truck driver tumbled out, hitting the ground awkwardly as the door broke loose. Landing hard at first, he seemed unharmed. The driver of the red sports car ran toward the overturned sedan; but the truck driver, reaching for his fire extinguisher, dialing 911 on his cell phone at the same time, stopped him. He pointed to the raw fuel that poured down the side of the overturned car, filling the air with its ominous odor. Traffic stopped. A few people dashed from their vehicles in useless attempts to help, some to gawk. The site was terrifying: the tires still spinning in the air, the blood still oozing from the lifeless body, and the growing pool of potentially explosive fuel spreading ominously.
Everything that mattered before was no longer of any consequence: not the important papers that blew down the highway or the projects on the computer or the lists of things undone or the secrets that would never be revealed. Death was like that; or is it?