Slow Learners #fridayflash

Sorry. It's a little rough. They can't all be winners.

The road salt coated Brian's car. Melting ice on the roof drew lines down the doors. The salt was so thick, that when the driver of the semi later took the stand in his own defense, he affirmed and swore on a stack of Bibles in his Blessed Mother's name that he couldn't even see the car on the road. He swore and affirmed that he was as surprised as anyone when he hit the car. He and a dozen witnesses confirmed that the salt billowed out from the accident site like a cloud from a falling skyscraper.

The accident left the driver of the car in what the doctors described as "Temporally Hindered State." His mind, damaged as it was, was not without function. Brian percieved his own thoughts as normal speed, but the world seemed very fast. The whole world was in time-lapse.

Not long after, they put him in among other people in comas, vegitative states, and so on. He didn't move, not really.

Doctors changed before he ever caught their name.

His only child, a daughter--in kindergarden when he got into the accident--married, had twin sons, and divorced before he could have picked out the college graduation gift. His grandchildren married.

His wife grew old. She was diagnosed, treated, and died of pancreatic cancer in the time it took him to think up a haiku for their 35th wedding anniversary. He breathed slowly. His heart beat on. Slowly. The doctors had to rig the heart monitor so that it wouldn't go off in alarm.

After Brian processed that his only child had died, he started to make noise. It was utterly facinating to the Neurologist. The pitch was low and barely audible. No-one understood what he was saying. The sound was low and quiet. It just became part of the ambiant noise. The Neurologist forgot about Brian after a week.

Some punk kid who never really visited his comatose mother except on her birthday heard the noise for what it was.

"Record it. Speed it up. Listen," he told a nurse on rounds. The nurse said, "Right on," and then forgot about it.

The next year, when that same punk kid visited his mother again, he asked the nurse what the dude was saying.

"What's that dude saying?" he asked. "Did you do what I suggested?"

The nurse said, "Uhh."

The punk kid pulled out his phone, started a recording program, and put it in front of Brian. For an hour, the kid talked quietly to his mom, held her hand, told her he loved her but it was hard to see her like this and that he was sorry that he had spent so much time away but he had met someone and wanted to bring them to see her, but it might be awkward.

He stopped talking and left the room to go get something, anything, a smoke, a drink, a bite to eat, a little time alone. The cafeteria was the first sign he saw.

When he got back up to the floor, the phone had been recording for 2 hours. He picked up his phone and started playing what he recorded. He sped it up two times. Four. Sixteen. Still nothing real. Thirty-two. Sixty-four. At 128 something comically slow could be discerned. 256 a bit better, but still not quite. At 1024, he heard it clearly, even though he had gone a little too fast.

"...my..." It took Brian 2 hours to say "my."

The punk kid looked at Brian who had, very slowly, started to smile.