surreal experience – Life, Love & Strength

Today’s Daily Prompt asks;

Ever have an experience that felt surreal, as though you’d been suddenly transported into the twilight zone, where time seemed to warp, perhaps slowing down or speeding up? Tell us all about it. If you haven’t had an experience in real life that you can draw from, write a fictional account of a surreal experience.

Photographers, artists, poets: show us SURREAL.

I’ve had a few surreal incidences in my life. I’ve spoken about them earlier in my blog. Like almost being killed by my best friend. That was scary and heartbreaking all at once. But it was also surreal in that moment she was standing over me with that huge butcher knife in her hand. Time slowed, almost stopped as I waited, silent and still, to see what she would do next.

Or when my ex, after stalking me for years, showed up on my doorstep after almost a year of silence on his part. Showed up unexpected and unwanted. Where he proceeded to try to talk me into going someplace alone with him. For me, time sped up, as I watched in my mind all the crazy things he did to me, or tried to do to me. As the pictures flashed in lightening speed, the voice of my best friend at the time, yelling at me not to ever go off with my ex as she was terrified he would harm me.

I also remember a time when my mother and I were driving to work one cold winter morning. We worked at the same place, my first job out of high school. We cleaned the heavy frost off all the windows while the car heated up. It was about 4:30 in the morning. Still dark and so very cold. We got in the car, my mom driving and headed down the quiet street. There was one stop sign before we hit the main road to work. I remember the car as it was the ugliest orange-brown color. But it worked and got us back and forth to work. It was a small car I remember that too.

We stopped at the stop sign and both of us looked right and left, even though it was a 4 way stop. Neither one of us saw anything coming. So we slowly start to move through the intersection when I looked out my passenger side window and saw this car driving fast headed right at us. Something in the back of my mind screamed…..”It’s not going to stop!”

Sure enough, even though it was a 4 way stop, the man driving did NOT stop and hit the passenger side of the car and we spun at least 3 times before finally coming to a stop. We were quite scared and shaken but unhurt. We got out of the car and so did the man who hit us. He started yelling at us! I was so angry I got right in his face and started yelling right back. He was a good foot taller than me and probably had 100 lbs on me too. But after I got over being scared I was damn mad.

He started yelling that we should have stopped and stuff about stupid women drivers. I looked at his car with hardly a dent in it, but I also noticed that he hadn’t scraped his front window! There was this tiny clean space and the rest was solid frost! Hell, there was no way he could have even seen us much less the stop sign! That just made me more angry. About that time the police showed up and one officer took me aside and the other officer took the man off.

I told the officer what happened. I also pointed out the ice on the mans windshield. All though the guy left his car running to hopefully defrost the window before the police arrived. Didn’t work, as the police showed up rather quickly that morning for a change.

I remember though the feeling of calm come over me as I saw that car getting bigger fast just before he hit us. It was slow motion that time too, but quickly sped up after the accident. I also remember vividly the police officer looking at my mom’s car and telling me that if my mother would have been just a few seconds slower, the car would have hit my door and probably, if not killed me, injured me greatly. As it was, I was just shook up, but alive.

So yeah, I’ve had my fair share of surreal happenings.