Our Only Hope

Fear quickly turned into a strange, euphoric feeling that moved from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. It was an amazing feeling that I had never felt before. It startled me, not in a frightening sort of way but to the point that I stopped to look around. I’m not sure what I thought I might find, but nothing looked out of the ordinary. I thought, I know what it feels like to be intoxicated, and this is not the same. It’s like a sense of peace and comfort all wrapped into one. As I was contemplating what this all meant, the sound of an approaching car engine brought me back to the reason why I was walking on this dark, desolate road. This car sped right by just like the first one.

In what seemed like just seconds later, another car started approaching, but this one sounded like it was traveling much faster than the last two. As I spun around to stick out my thumb, I was met by blinding headlights. It happened so fast that I didn’t have a chance to get out of the way as the car tossed me in the air like a rag doll; I began to wonder if I would ever land!

With a loud thump, I landed on my back in what appeared to be a field of tall weeds.

I tried to get up and walk but soon realized that my lower extremities didn’t work. For whatever reason, I noticed that my boots were gone. The strange, euphoric feeling I had just felt a few minutes earlier was replaced by terror that welled up in me as I remembered the alligators and wild boar that frequented the natural lakes in this area! I listened intently, and I could hear something moving in the weeds off in the distance.

“Is this where I’ll die?” I asked myself as I lay there on the damp, cool ground. My head was spinning, and I started thinking about my wife and my children. “What would they do without me?” I panicked. I thought about Andy, my oldest, who came to live with me when he was seven years old. His mother, whom I had never been married to, said that he was too unruly, and she thought he would be better off with his father. I gladly accepted her offer, and she put Andy on a plane. After a few years of hard work and discipline, Andy and I were finally very close. What will he do without me? I wondered. I thought of my youngest daughter, Denise, who couldn’t wait for me to get home from work each day to buy her ice cream from the ice cream truck. My wife had a child from a previous relationship too, and I loved Nancy as my own child. I also had three other children named Sara, Berny, and Vicky, not to mention my beloved wife. Will I ever see any of them again? I wondered.