Nothing But Stars (standard:Inspirational stories, 4134 words)
Author: Mick@Nite	Added: Apr 27 2003	Views/Reads: 3741/2378	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A man awakens on the side of a frozen highway. Together, reader and protagonist learn the truth about what happened that terrible night.

The first thing he remembered -- after the worst of it was over -- were
the stars.  Looking to the heavens, incandescent bodies glimmered and 
winked at him from a lush canvas of indigo: bejeweled timekeepers, 
watchers of the universe, billions of light years away.  Oh my God, he 
thought, his eyes overflowing with the splendor of diamonds and 
sapphires suspended in space, they're beautiful. 

Nothing but stars, so many of them, infinite and eternal.  Dazzling gems
spilled upon velvet, blushing flirts, seducing him from celestial 
thrones.  If only he could touch one, feel it in his hand, share in its 
luminosity.  He reached for one, a great and pulsating jewel, just to 
see if he could.  Movement was not difficult, just...awkward.  He could 
feel gravity's weight but it acted upon him as if from every direction 
possible: drawing his hand to where he wanted it to go yet still trying 
to hold it in place.  Beautiful, he thought once again, reaching for 
something he was not yet prepared to touch. 

An elusive stillness surrounded him, not real silence but rather a low,
rushing pulse: a heartbeat; a sound he imagined the unborn might hear 
within their mother's wombs.  It was the sound of sanctuary.  He could 
not recall how he had found his way into such a surreal and tranquil 
setting and at that moment, he did not care, but he believed he had 
lost consciousness -- was quite sure of it in fact -- and was now just 
coming to, lost somewhere between awareness and circumstance. 

His efforts to grasp the heavens continued and for one splendid moment
he swore he had actually touched the star he sought: not that he had 
reached it really, but more like it had reached him. 

This novel world, this marvelous environment beckoned but for one
instant when he afforded himself a single distraction: a different sort 
of light, one that was artificial and unnatural.  The night sky began 
to flicker in reds and blues and in turning his attention his ears were 
filled with something other than the satisfying whoosh he found so 
comforting.  Unrecognizable and unpleasant, these intrusive sights and 
sounds rudely drew his attention even further away from the wondrous 
ambiance above him and back down to the lonely frozen earth on which he 
lay. 

The ground was icy cold though he was far too numb to recognize it.  As
reality domesticated his senses the stars above him began to lose their 
magic and suddenly they were nothing more than the cold distant bodies 
he would too easily ignore on any other night.  The light of his own 
world filled his bleary eyes and as he focused them downward the 
shadows yielded and his vision began to clear.  He did not like what he 
saw. 

Before him he could barely make out a gaping fissure of twisted metal:
torn and fractured beams of steel snarling and lashing out at him like 
some dreadful monster.  Behind this disarray the red and blue lights -- 
the monsters terrible eyes -- grew larger and more sinister in 
rhythmic, orchestrated winks.  As the radiance of colored light 
intensified, so too did that awful noise.  Wailing and screaming, 
jarring his senses further into focus, he slowly recognized the morose 
cry of approaching emergency vehicles. 

Orientation suddenly felt crucial.  His eyes darted wildly about,
anxiously scanning the remainder of his surroundings.  The ground was 
powdered lightly with a fresh dusting of snow and he seemed to be in 
some sort of depression.  Shallow walls of earth encompassed him and in 
one paralyzing thought he imagined he might be entombed. 

Stricken with terror, unable to obey his brain's demand to rise and
scramble from his would be grave, he returned his attention to the 
mangled catastrophe above him and with clearing eyes and mind forced 
himself, for his own sanities sake, to acknowledge that it was not a 
monster at all but rather a roadside guardrail (or a former one at 
that) eviscerated violently by something large; but by what, he could 
not tell.  Faculties gathering but still awash with fear, he began to 
make out the droning engines of heavy equipment, voices and shouts and 
the intermittent squawking of police radios.  The lights behind the 
wounded guardrail were quite intense now casting long menacing shadows 
into his new and frightening world. 

But it was what he could not see, nor remember, that was far more


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