The last week or so, I have tried to get into the habit of reading at least a half an hour or so before going to sleep. I enjoy reading but usually only do so when I feel like it. I don't know if that has something to do with last night or not.
I went to bed. I read about 2 and a half chapters of my current book. The windows were rattingly as it was extremely windy with a combination of rain and snow pelting down in between. The clock read 12:38 when I decided to put the book down and turn the light off. I laid there in the dark listening to the wind and rain as I drifted off.
I had a rather weird dream, not that the dreams I usually remember are anything less than weird. I had gone out on a Saturday with a gal from work. She lived to the east of the office so I drove over to her place and we went from there. We did whatever it was that we had planned and I headed home for the night. I took the back roads home as her house wasn't near the interstate. As I crossed one lonely stretch, headlights suddenly appeared to my right. I was about to be hit by a truck that was flying out of the middle of a farmer's field.
The impact was hard, centered just in front of my passenger door. It sent my truck spinning and tumbling across the road. I awoke in the hospital some unknown amount of time later. I had suffered only some minor cuts and bruising. The doctors told me they would keep me overnight to observe me as I was unconscious when the ambulance crew brought me in. I was eventually moved to a room. It wasn't until then that I realized that it was morning.
A state cop showed up and asked me if I recalled what happened. I explained as best I could. The lights seemed to come on just as the truck came to the edge of the field, making avoiding the collision almost impossible. The officer told me that there were 5 people in the truck. The driver had been killed when his truck burst into flame. The impact had trapped him behind the wheel. The two passengers in the front seat had managed to escape the burning wreckage but were both critically injured. Two other people had been thrown from the bed of the truck. The police still weren't sure what the group were doing in the field, but all the occupants of the second truck were drunk beyond the state's legal limit. As dawn broke, they found another truck buried up to its axles in mud far back in the field. Apparently, the two guys in the bed of the truck were from the stuck vehicle.
The doctors released me from the hospital. I was told that since I had a desk job, I could go work if I wanted, but I probably should take a day or two off to rest up. The police officer came back just before I went home to tell me they had questioned one of the lesser injured individuals and now had the whole story. They had notified the insurance company of the other driver and arrangements were being made to replace my truck and pay my medical bills. I went home to rest. On the way home, We stopped at the salvage yard where they had taken the remains of both vehicles. The officer had told us where they were. I wanted to get some pictures to send my insurance company, just in case things fell through with the other drivers company.
The next morning, I didn't feel like staying home to brood on the fact that the driver of the other truck had burned to death in his vehicle. Mom and Dad offered me one of their vehicles to drive to work. I got to work and began doing remedial tasks to pass the time. I was surprised that I didn't hurt more than I did for having been tumbled in what the pictures showed to be now little more than a couple thousand pound piece of scrap. Some time around 10 o'clock, our boss called us all into his office. He told us that one of the guys was killed over the weekend when he wrecked his truck. Instantly, a light went on in my brain. Could it be?! I rushed back to my desk leaving the whole gang wondering what was going on. I pulled up the pictures stored on my jump drive. I looked for signs of what the offending drivers truck might have been. As the boss and my coworkers came out to see why I had left in such a hurry, I explained that I too had been in an accident over the weekend and the driver of the other truck was killed. After looking at the pictures, we decided that the truck could have been his truck. The extent of the fire damage made it very difficult to identify the color or make of the vehicle.
I called the state trooper who interviewed me and asked if he had the other driver's name. He hadn't offered it and I hadn't thought to ask with everything going on. Sure enough, it turned out to be our coworker. The officer said he had talked further with one of the guys who had been thrown from the bed of the truck. Our co-worker had been up in that area for his bowling league night. Afterwards, a group of them had gone off-roading and got one of the trucks stuck. They had been riding out to get someone to help pull them out. They were thrown when the truck hit the ditch just before the edge of the road. The police now estimated the truck was going between 50 and 70 miles per hour when it hit the ditch.
That's where the dream ended and I awoke wondering why I would have such an odd dream. The guy who died in the dream is one I would consider a friend and he's not a bad guy. Odd... Odd indeed.
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