The seat belt bit into her chest, pinning her in place as the car spun through the air in eerie silence.The car hit the ground with a bone-cracking thud and continued to roll, faster, harder. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think; she felt like she was looping the loop on a roller coaster, but the grinding crunching sounds in no way resembled anything she had ever heard at a fairground.Something hit her wrist and punched the side of her head. When she opened her eyes the sickening whirling had stopped, the car was stationary and the world had turned red. It took long seconds for her mind to accept that the color splattered on the deflated air bags, coating what was left of the windscreen and soaking into her clothing, was blood.She couldn’t see her legs, and for a frightening moment she wondered if they were still there. The front end of the car was buckled like a concertina, the hood snapped up in the air and hanging at an odd angle. Experimentally, she wiggled her toes in her school sandals, then tensed her calf muscles and realized that part of the weird feeling was that water was lapping at her feet.
