An angered scream sounded out into the night. Jacob wasn't sure how long he screamed for or whether he maintained the same volume throughout, but he knew at the end of it his throat felt raw and used and that was all that mattered.
He turned to look back at the miserable state of his broken-down Opel Astra in the middle of the empty parking lot, then cursed and turned from it.
Goosebumps raised on his exposed arms as he finally noticed the once thick air of summer had turned cold and windy. The storm clouds of earlier that predicted rain were gathering and he already smelled it on the wind.
Heaving himself up from the stone seat he stretched out his aching legs and arms. Having had a hard day of work at the construction site, his body ached to be under the warm spray of a shower.
He wondered if all turning-twenty year old kids usually spent the eve of their adulthood in their broken-down apartment with the presence of only his one-eyed cat. He shrugged. There was worse company to be in.
He swore to himself as he fell onto the dusty seat of his pre-owned car, holding tightly onto the steering wheel like he was trying to clutch onto reality- or a reality where he wasn't spending the night in such a pitiful state.
The car finally started just as the first droplets of rain fell onto the windscreen and he drove off onto the freeway leading home. The radio station in his old Opel Astra played a song he didn't know, but the tune was familiar to him, so he strummed his fingers on the chipped paint of the black steering wheel as he drove down the wet road.
Jake figured it was sort of a momentous something to be turning twenty. If anything it was a physical defiance against the sisters of the orphanage who had told him he'd never make it out; and if he did he'd turn out nothing better than the misfits and miscreants that lurked in the alleys near the old orphanage. As if he were doomed to a fate due to consequence.
The night seemed a good a place as any for a beginning. What better place for an orphan to start their new life than at the cusp of twenty? He rolled his eyes at his ridiculous thought.
The bright blinking red dots of the clock on his dashboard alerted him to midnight's approach, it read 23:59 in blaring neon, and had his eyes been on the road when the clock struck 00:00, he might have seen the oncoming lumber truck headed toward him on the wrong side of the road.
A blaring hooter sounded in front of him and his eyes snapped to the road again, screeching tires sounded on the wet asphalt of the road and a large wave of water swept up against the windshield and blurred his vision.
Then the world came to a silencing halt as his car did; a deep breath in, then another, and another. His lungs burned and he realized he had yet to release the air in them and he let go of the deep breath in a shaky exhale.
“Okay, Jake… calm down…" He heard himself speak. He was alright. The lumber truck that had almost crashed into him now a long ways down the road and honking in dissatisfaction, then the night goes quiet.
He puts his head on the steering wheel and closed his eyes, trying to quell the raging of his thundering heart and head; the adrenaline from earlier still coursing through him as he took in slow breaths.
He lifted his head and made to start driving again, yet just as he turned the ignition on a thud came from before him and he saw a small white body of a bird on the hood of his car. He stared at it for a long while in hopes it would move and fly off, but it never did.
“What the hell is this night even turning into…?" He grumbled as he got out of his car and picked the bird up from the hood, its body limp and unconscious. He felt around on its chest for a heartbeat and breathed a sigh of relief when he discovered it, then searched the bird for any injuries and found one.
One of its wings was badly broken from the outward appearance, and Jake wasn't sure whether it could even manage another flight if it hadn't been unconscious.
Jake looked down the road at the blaring lights of the oncoming traffic shining through the thin mist of the downpour and considered leaving the bird on the side of the road; he was just a construction worker for Pete's sake, he didn't know the first thing about animal aid.
However something tugged at him at the thought of the bird dying alone on the side of the road, whether it came from his sense of backwards morality or the fact that the image of his own pet flashed through his eyes, he didn't know, but something made him curl the bird up in his leather jacket and place it in the passenger seat of his car.
Once he was in the car and driving again he pulled out his phone and immediately began searching for the nearest wildlife clinic in the area.
His mind was still strumming with adrenaline, whether it was from his near accident with the lumber truck or the dangers of having an unconscious wild animal in his car- he didn't know.
And yet it was like the universe heard his worries in that moment and all of a sudden Murphy's Law seemed to come into play, and all that could go wrong did.
From his side the bird let out a cry of anger as it came into consciousness, screeching as it expanded its wings in defence against Jacob, yet the pain of its broken wing must have alarmed it even more and before he knew what was happening the bird was attacking him and he had let go of the steering wheel in an attempt to defend himself.
In those moments of shock his small, beaten down Opel Astra slid across the wet asphalt of the uneven road of the highway before him and toppled over.
He heard the painful squawk of the bird as the car tumbled down a small cliff side and onto the abandoned road at the bottom of it. Raging hooting sounded from around him as more cars skidded to a blaring halt in the downpour and he realised the sharp squawking of the bird had ceased.
Then ringing bells sounded and he couldn't remember the last thing he did before his eyes shut. But the image of his single eyed cat and a small, broken down apartment he wouldn't return to flashed quick and steady, and then it all slipped away.
