TW: graphic depiction of accident
Blood is a darker red than you'd expect, especially when it's pooled on the loose white sand of a Florida back road, with fall leaves drifting down onto its surface. I had been sitting at the front of the school bus when it happened. And now I stood on the metal stairs, looking through the open door as Tucker bled out, his seven-year-old body still partially beneath the tire that had crushed it. They ushered us out through the back emergency door and put him in an ambulance, but even at eleven, I knew it should have been a hearse.
Jeremy Williams is a writer and theatre artist living in the backwoods of the American South. Find Jeremy on Twitter @LoquaciousType and on Instagram @backwoods.theatrical.