I never watched Life on Mars, but now I'm thinking I should have.

No.

I'm writing this because nothing like this has ever happened to me before.

True, but wrong genre. No.

Middle of nowhere. Lost between universes. Low on gas.

Good use of the line, but no.

The hardest part of starting a story is getting the first line down.

True, but no.

Single white male looking for sanity.

Has potential, although it was true before this happened. Not very pithy. But run with that and see what happens.

If what is real and what is not real are distinguishable, then sanity is the ability to recognize the difference. If the difference is indistinguishable then one's sanity should be questioned, provided one recognizes there's a difference in the first place. Alternatively, if the difference is indistinguishable then the reality with which one is faced should be taken at (ahem) face value, at least until further evidence is available. Of course, that's what leads to things like choke holds, tazing, tranquilizers, restraints, and other things that can be kinkily fun in the right application but usually not when applied by police and orderlies.

So here I am, stuck in a situation that I would have to be crazy to believe I'm actually stuck in. On the other hand, by accepting its true I've finally justified carrying my Swiss Army knife around with me all these years. But on the gripping hand, I'm too old for this shit, and my knee hurts.

Okay. I've read that half a dozen times, and it makes sense. Let's assume that what I'm experiencing is real enough that I need to treat it as such. If th

Okay. Needed some time to calm down and make my writing legible again. I'll back up and go through what happened.

- Left the house.

- Drove to Home Depot.

- Bought what I was after, then remembered to grab A/C filters, too. Paid cash, walked out, and threw it in the car.

- Returned cart.

- Left Home Depot.

- Drove south, heading home. Hit all the lights-

Fucking a. Goddamn snow birds. I had the green at BST and the dipstick in the RV rolled through the light anyway. Now I remember. He wasn't there, but then suddenly he was in front of me. Even with video game reflexes I didn't have time to completely miss him and I caught the right half of my car against his front left corner. I heard a bang; I assume that was the passenger air bag deploying seeing that it's hanging out of the dash. It appears the driver's bag did not deploy. (Knew I should have got it checked per the owner's manual.) But...

The old Outback is not damaged the way I'd expect if I'd hit a RV. Oh, it's got damage all right, but I'll get back to that in a moment. More important is where it is. It should be in the middle of an intersection, not out in the middle of a field next to some old-growth forest. I should be in the same place. But that's not really important right now.

I'm not hurt. At least, I don't think I am. My knee hurts, but that's expected. My neck is a bit stiff and the palm of my right hand is tingling, but that's not really important either.

And the damage? The right front bumper is crunched in a bit, there's a nice dent in the hood, and the windshield is cracked in front of the passenger seat. But even that isn't important.

What is important is that there is a DEAD FUCKING DARKSPAWN on the hood of my car.