Competition Nineteen Shortlisted: Biology Lessons by Gary Finnegan

My swimming mind sees, for a beat, a human hair fibre on a cracked slide, backlit on a microscope stage. Flashes of a school science lab.

I blink, think, focus.

No, these are branches of peeling bark, above a ditch into which my Ford Fiesta sits, downside up. Indicators tick.

Through a fractured windscreen, I survey the blurred layers of lime and lemon-coloured leaves in the middle distance that offer no clues to where this journey began or ended. Had I paid closer attention in biology class, perhaps I’d be equipped to name that tree, to locate the branch, locate myself.

It strikes me now, as the red spills in pulses from my temple, that I might enjoy some comfort in knowing the place of my death. The ditch in which I may expire.

Fragments of the night drop in and out of memory’s view. The cold welcome, heated words, a raging exit, a dark turn.

A finch lands to study my wreckage, flits off like she’s seen it all before. Or maybe to get help.

Ice has melted to dew in the dawn rays, but my toes are frozen. My thighs too. Ice from the waist down.

From my pocket I pull a phone, thumb the last dialled number, prepare a final apology, until the melody vibrates beside me and I no longer want to be rescued.

Gary Finnegan is a writer based in county Kildare, Ireland. His fiction has been published in The Honest Ulsterman, The Galway Review, 3rd Wednesday Magazine and Silver Apples.