​Intermission 9. Mark

The explosion. The impact.

He felt it—like a giant hammer had crushed the car and slammed him into the seat. The cabin erupted in fire. Not even fire—just pure, unbearable heat radiating from everywhere at once.

He screamed when the first droplets of molten windshield struck his face. Molten glass burned his eyes out instantly and bit into his skin. His scream died in his lungs as liquefied glass filled his mouth.

The pain was everywhere. Scalding, viscous liquid—the melted dashboard, the dissolving seat lining—clung to his clothes, to his skin, and the heat ate down to the bone. The cabin was engulfed; the air itself turned to fire, incinerating his lungs with every ragged breath.

With a hiss, the automatic fire-suppression system kicked in, coating the walls of the cabin—and Mark—with thick white foam.

A detached thought flickered through his burning mind: “It’ll only prolong the agony.”

The car—his loyal, soulless partner—was trying its best, flooding the cabin with extinguishing foam, but it no longer mattered.

The world collapsed into blinding, white pain that seized him in monstrous, pulsing waves. His clothes burned, his flesh liquefied. A living piece of meat roasting in a metal box.

The car moved on its own, obedient to its emergency routine, but for Mark there was no street, no City. There was only the fire under his skin, and the pain that had become his universe. Time dissolved into an endless, torturous second.

Then the car stopped, the engine fell silent.

All he wanted was to tumble out of the blazing hell into the snow. To cool whatever was left of him. To let the white, clean cold swallow his torment. That thought—just that one thought of saving cold—kept him conscious.

His fingers—chunks of charred, useless flesh—managed to hook onto something, press a handle.

The door opened, and he spilled out into a soft, deep drift, letting out one last moan of agony as the snow touched what was left of his scorched skin.

Then consciousness shut off like a blown fuse.