Wreck

This was one of those really short ones that gets to me when I have it. I've had it before, and every time, I feel creeped out all day afterward. It makes me nervous about being in the car at all.

I'm riding with a colleague to a meeting. We both work for the same department of the same company. We're heading across the state for this meeting, which is about something we did that the company wants to expand to things other people are doing. The meeting is really important, and we're dressed in suits. Mine has a skirt, and I'm wearing a moderately frilly blouse with it.

The driver is one of those medium-height, (around 5'7" to 5'9") energetic, positive attitude guys. If he was a woman, I'd say perky. He's fun to work with, and I'm really glad I'm riding with him. We're enjoying the trip. We had a good lunch at a place we both like, and now we're laughing and joking as we drive.

Suddenly there is a huge, unavoidable accident in the road ahead of us. I can't tell what started it, but there is now a several car pile-up around a tanker semi. I can't see what the semi says it's carrying, but I'm worried. The driver hits his breaks and turns the wheel to avoid hitting the cars in front of us, but we still end up crunching into a little sporty two-door that is just off the right side of our lane. We aren't badly damaged, but the two-door is really crunched up. The people inside are moving, and I don't see blood, but that doesn't mean they aren't badly injured.

We are ok. We decide we should get out and see if we can help anyone. Before we can, another vehicle slams into the middle of the mass of cars all ready crashed. This vehicle is larger, but I can't see it well enough to identify what it is because I'm not looking in that direction.

The tanker truck explodes, sending cars flying. The little two-door lifts up off of the pavement, taking the front end of our car with it, then forces us backward. We're flying back, then falling as we go off the edge of the road and into what looks like a quarry. It feels like we flip over twice. We land kind of on our side, with the driver's side down. All of the glass in the car is broken, and dirt comes pouring in. I hear a sick, wet crunching sound and a scream from beside me.

Then, it's quiet except for the pattering sound of dirt falling into the car, now more slowly. I have dirt up to my knees. I look over, and my colleague is covered up past his chest. He is very pale, and his eyes are red-rimmed with anguish. On his face is an expression of grim determination. He looks at me, and his face bears an intensity I can't fathom.

I'm terrified.

He struggles to speak.. "I'm dead. See if you're buried."

Somehow, I know that he means for me to see if I can get out of the car. Before I can look, I see his eyes kind of glaze over and lose focus, his face loses all expression, and he starts quietly repeating that line over, and over. "I'm dead. See if you're buried. I'm dead. See if you're buried. I'm dead. See if you're buried." He speaks rapidly, and with no emotion, as if trying to remember a list instead of to communicate, or as if he's stuck on that one line and can't move on to the next thought. He is extremely pale.

For a moment, I am confused, and a little afraid of him, and then I realize he's dying. The crunch I heard was something under the dirt damaging his body. The pattering noise I'm hearing is not the only sound in the car. There is a trickle of liquid somewhere that I can't see. He's bleeding to death. He's repeating that line because he is stuck on it. His brain isn't getting oxygen, and he's losing consciousness. His last words were his way of telling me to get out of the car before the dirt traps me in here with him. I want to escape the sinking car, but I don't want to leave him. It's an awful feeling.


He is still repeating that line when I wake up. It's the last thing I hear before finding myself in the darkness of my room.

Every time I've had that dream, I've always awakened with a feeling of sheer terror, sure I'm trapped in that car, horrified at what has happened to my colleague, and filled with dread over the fact that I cannot do anything to help him.


The parts of the dream that I experience are so vivid and feel so real that I can't seem to shake it off when I wake up. I still feel that sense of dread and horror, and kind of a sense of guilt over having to save myself and leave my dying colleague behind. 


One of the weirdest things about how real this dream is, is the fact that the "colleague" and the job are completely nonexistent. The person in the dream is not anyone I've met in real life. He's not anyone famous, or anyone I remember seeing on TV or in movies, either. I've never worked for a department of a company in a capacity like in the dream, either.


The closest thing I have to relate to this is that I was in a terrible accident as a child. My mother, grandmother and I were traveling across the state to see family. I was sleeping in the back of the car when the accident occurred. My mother was severely injured, and nearly died of her injuries. I wasn't hurt, but it was only by chance that I wasn't killed. The only reason I survived is because of the way I was laying. Had I been facing the other direction, the car that hit us would have smashed my head.

The memory is traumatic, but not in the same way as this dream. No one actually died in that accident, and I was young enough to not understand a lot of what happened. There were only two cars involved, ours and the car that hit us. There was no semi, no explosion. It was just a really bad two car accident. They did have to use the jaws of life to get my Mom out of the car.
Some of my memory of that accident is distorted (like the way the car looked after the accident; I remember it looking much worse than I'm told it actually did) but I grew up with Mom & Grandma both very much alive afterward, so I'm pretty sure the death in this nightmare didn't come from that experience.