I'll remember this contest entry for a while — love how there's a fakeout about which side of the contest it is for.
One of the things I love here is how here you employ banality, and that you explore what makes that banality extraordinary. Normally, this wouldn't quite work for the side of the contest you were placed in, but you proved you could do it with this: one of the most normal things, statistically, and one of the most unique things, personally: a car crash. You've taken a car crash and added how normal everything prior to it feels, how distinct things are only because the character was paying attention — and not — in that moment. Delicious. I appreciate how you kept the ending vague, too, and how you never told us that they were distracted, but implied it with their thoughts: they were changing the radio, focusing on the traffic, being annoyed by the history of potholes — anything but paying attention to the road. Well done, Lash.
This tastes like american cheese baking into craggy black asphalt. Distinct, rubbery, forever.
-Styg
What is life if not the contrast between what has been and what will become?