Freewrite 3

Jared hung from the rafters. Swinging slowly from side to side, the rope tightened around his neck, cutting into his skin. He tried with one final effort to take a breath, but his strength failed. His brain, screaming from lack of oxygen, flicked off. And then, in an instant there was nothing. No color, no sound, smell, taste, texture. He was not conscious of anything.
Two months ago, Jared had been studying hard, preparing for his MCAT exam. He was 27, and finally ready to quit trying to make a living playing guitar and pursue a real career after living on couches and in basements for the last few years. The med school thing seemed like the only logical choice. Jared lived in Parkview, Maryland in a two bedroom apartment in a brick building on 12th street. He spent most days working bagging groceries at Kroger, and most nights either drinking wine and talking with friends or writing poetry. Life was good, though perhaps not what he had dreamed he’d be doing at 27.
Jared’s body hung, limp and colorless from the thick rope. His bare feet were about 18 inches from the floor of the carport. There was silence. Stillness. And then a light flicked on and Jared was suddenly conscious! Though he could tell it was not his mind that was causing him to be conscious. He knew who he was, but he wasn’t sure where he was. He felt that there was motion taking place all around him, like the sensation of being held up by air. Jared wanted to speak then, but he could sense the absence of a mouth (or even a body) with which to exercise that impulse. Though he couldn’t yet say that he was in a “place”, Jared began to perceive that he had been here before. Slowly, Jared became conscious of the presence of other beings in his immediate vicinity. He sensed a motion, as if all of them, thousands were funneling into some narrow passage. Jared wanted to know where "everyone" way going. As he felt this, his intention propelled him towards the funnel and he began to perceive a strengthening, perhaps magnetic pull. Swirling through the funnel, there was dizziness, and suddenly an awareness. An awareness of a Presence, something with more weight that the other moving bodies. Spinning free of the funnel, Jared felt something like clear cold balls of silvery glass all around him. He couldn't see any light, but he felt a warmth that might accompany sunlight.
The car's tires squealed and Jared gripped the cracked leather passenger seat. It was 3 AM and they were out for a joyride. A friend had proposed it, but Jared had been too weak to say no. The engine roared, and they hurtled down the 97 freeway in the direction of Annapolis. The man in a drivers seat was someone Jared knew well. Stephen, a blond haired thirty something kid, a frat brother from college. Stephen said “Jared, are you ready for this?” Jared was too terrified to speak. At the end of the 97 freeway, near Edgewater Beach, across from Lee airport, there is a bridge that is only halfway complete. Jared and Stephen were on their way to drive off that bridge. The speedometer read 110MPH. “Stephen, maybe we should stop and get something to eat?” “We just ate before we came. This will all be over in 20 minutes.” “But I’m hungry. Waffle House is open 24 hours; there’s one in Crownsville” “I promise you in 20 minutes you won’t feel hungry anymore” “But I want to eat now. Can’t we stop?” There was a pause. A hint of red and blue light flashed in the side view mirror. Stephen had his right foot flat on the floor - the accelerator was fully depressed, and their speed climbed from 110MPH to 120MPH to 125MPH. A siren became audible, then a second set of red and blue lights appeared alongside the first. Screeching around a bend in the freeway, Stephen and Jared came face to face with pure fear. A wall of police cars, lights flashing and sirens blaring, and what looked like a strip with spikes stretched across the road about 50 ft in front of the police line. Stephen hesitated a moment, and then, his right foot still pressing the accelerator flat against the ground, he angled the car for a collision with maximum force with the center of the line of police cars. Then Jared reacted. Twitching from his state of shocked paralysis, Jared violently took hold of the wheel and turned it a full 180 degrees to the right. The car swung to the right, flipped over the left font tire, and entered a barrel roll, about 100ft in front of the spike strip. Time seemed to freeze. The sensation of temporary weightlessness seemed to create an erie silence. Crash! - The car finally landed, and came to rest on its roof, about 25 ft in front of the police line. Stephen’s body hung, blood soaked, suspended by his safety belt. Jared was loosing consciousness, suffering from a severe concussion but only minimally bleeding, mainly from his arms and legs.
The cold, silvery balls of clear glass seemed to carry him, like a stream with a current, into the Presence of a being whose size and shape he could not perceive, but whose greatness he could immediately feel. Jared tried to cover himself with something, but the glass would not stick together, and for that matter it was not clear what part of “Him” he might be able to hide. Jared heard a voice, speaking slowly, quietly, from the midst of the Presence. “Jared ...why are you here?” “I think that I have died, “ Jared mouthed, blubbered “I feel bodyless” “Yes I know, but why are you here” “The glass balls brought me here, through the vortex. It seems like everything is coming here. Where am I?” There was silence for a moment. There was a sense of rapid and swirling changes in temperature and brightness, though nothing was truly visible. The voice said “Come a bit closer, and I will tell you a story”