Don’t Look Forward

The tornado wasn’t the first thing I noticed.

It was the silence.

Every morning, I drove the same stretch of freeway just after sunrise. The traffic was predictable. Brake lights. Coffee cups. Morning radio. Semi-trucks drifting between lanes. It was the kind of routine that makes you stop paying attention because nothing ever changes.

That Tuesday morning, everything changed.

The sky had turned a strange green-gray color, but Northern California weather is unpredictable enough that I didn’t think much of it. I turned up my favorite true crime podcast and took another sip of coffee.

Then every emergency alert on my phone went off at once.

TORNADO WARNING. TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.

I laughed.

A tornado?

Here?

Then I looked up.

About a mile ahead, where the freeway disappeared over a slight rise, something black was moving.

At first, I thought it was smoke.

Then it grew.

And grew.

Within seconds, I realized it wasn’t smoke.

It was a tornado.

Not the kind that slowly twists across an empty field in videos online.

This thing was moving directly down the freeway.

Straight toward us.

It wasn’t crossing the landscape.

It was swallowing it.

Cars began swerving wildly. People slammed on their brakes. Some tried escaping onto the shoulder. Others abandoned their vehicles completely.

Then the tornado reached the first line of traffic.

I’ll never forget the sound.

It wasn’t just wind.

It sounded like thousands of voices screaming at once, all being pulled into something endless.

A pickup truck lifted into the air like it weighed nothing. It spun twice before disappearing into the black funnel.

An SUV exploded against the concrete divider.

A sedan flipped across three lanes before landing upside down.

The air filled with glass, metal, tires, and pieces of everything that had been in the tornado’s path.

People were running.

Some were thrown off their feet before they made it ten steps.

I slammed my foot on the brake.

There was nowhere to go.

Cars boxed me in from every direction.

The tornado was less than thirty seconds away.

Then something happened that I still can’t explain.

Time slowed.

Not like in the movies.

Everything actually slowed.

The rain stopped falling.

Every drop hung in the air like tiny beads of glass.

A jagged piece of someone’s windshield drifted past my face so slowly that I could see my own terrified reflection in it.

The roar of the tornado deepened until it sounded like a freight train buried miles underground.

The screams faded into distant echoes.

For one impossible moment…

The entire freeway was frozen.

The tornado still twisted.

The cars still crumpled.

The debris still moved.

But everything was happening so slowly it felt like the world had forgotten how time worked.

That’s when I realized I wasn’t alone.

Someone was standing beside my driver-side window.

She looked exactly like me.

Mid-thirties.

Same brown hair.

Same scrubs.

Same Crocs.

Same little scar on my left cheek.

Except…

She was covered in blood.

Her neck was bent at an angle that shouldn’t have been possible.

One eye was swollen shut.

Tiny pieces of windshield glass glittered across her face.

She wasn’t breathing.

Yet somehow…

She smiled.

Then she whispered:

“Don’t look forward.”

Of course, I did.

A compact car had already been pulled into the tornado.

It wasn’t tumbling anymore.

It was flying.

Nose first.

Straight toward me.

I remember seeing the terrified face of the driver.

I remember thinking:

He’s already dead.

The car crossed the distance between us in less than a second.

It hit my windshield like a missile.

Glass exploded inward.

The steering wheel slammed into my chest.

Everything went white.

Then…

Nothing.

Or at least, that’s what should have happened.

Instead, I was standing on the shoulder of the freeway.

Watching.

My black Honda Civic sat crushed beneath the front half of another vehicle.

Fire spread beneath the engine.

Paramedics hadn’t arrived yet.

I watched someone pull my body from the wreckage.

I saw my own lifeless face.

Blood soaked through my hair.

My neck…

Bent exactly the way the woman beside my window had looked.

Then I felt someone standing beside me.

I turned.

It was the bloody version of myself.

She wasn’t smiling anymore.

“See?” she whispered. “Now you know.”

I asked her what she meant.

She pointed farther down the freeway.

That’s when I noticed them.

There weren’t just a few people standing along the shoulder.

There were hundreds.

Men.

Women.

Children.

Every one of them staring silently at the wreckage.

Some were burned.

Some were missing limbs.

Some were still wearing seat belts attached to pieces of vehicles that no longer existed.

Every single one of them looked exactly like the bodies left behind.

One by one…

They turned toward me.

Then, in perfect unison, they asked:

“What mile marker did you die at?”

I couldn’t answer.

Because I didn’t know.

I looked back toward my wrecked Honda.

It was gone.

The freeway was empty.

No tornado.

No traffic.

No emergency crews.

Only endless pavement disappearing into the distance.

The bloody woman beside me sighed.

“It starts over soon.”

“What starts over?”

She pointed behind me.

I heard it before I saw it.

That impossible roar.

Like a freight train screaming from inside the earth.

I turned.

Another tornado was racing down the freeway.

Behind it…

Thousands of cars.

Driving normally.

Completely unaware.

Among them…

I saw myself.

Hands on the steering wheel.

Coffee in one hand.

Heading to work.

Completely oblivious.

I started screaming.

I ran into the lanes.

I waved my arms.

I begged myself to stop.

She never looked at me.

She couldn’t see me.

She drove straight through where I was standing.

The emergency alert sounded from her phone.

She looked up.

Saw the tornado.

And the nightmare began again.

So if you’re ever driving just after sunrise and every emergency alert on your phone goes off at once…

Don’t laugh.

Don’t keep driving.

And if you see a mangled, bloody version of yourself standing beside your car…

Whatever you do…

Don’t look forward.

Credit: Midnight Buttercup

Instagram