Rangan waved his arms at the man, trying to catch his attention, saw him take notice.

“Can you RUN?” Oscar yelled.

He pantomimed taking something off, a jacket, off one shoulder, off one sleeve, then the other. Take off the jacket, man. Take off the fucking suit!

The man stared at him blankly. Rangan heard a sound behind him, suddenly found the car more full of light.

Then he realized he was wearing a prop.

He pointed at the man, then pointed at himself, and started pulling off his own hoodie in an exaggerated show. He had the left arm off when the car door to his right opened, Oscar reached in, and grabbed him by the sleeve.

“RUN!!” Oscar yelled, pulling hard on Rangan’s sleeve. His eyes were huge, focused on something beyond Rangan.

Everything happened too fast, then, and too slowly.

Oscar pulled.

Rangan turned, to see what Oscar was staring at, and saw the black-masked figures crouched at the other side of the car, about to lift it up and over. His heart pounded.

Rangan felt the other sleeve of his hoodie yanked off his right arm. He turned back, saw Oscar crash backwards to the ground just outside the car, Rangan’s hoodie in his hands. He saw confusion in Oscar’s eyes, then fear.

Then Rangan felt the car tip up, the other side, the side away from Oscar, rising higher and higher. His open door was suddenly down and it was full of the street and Oscar’s legs and Rangan was sliding towards it. He threw out his own legs and caught himself against the frame of the door.

Oscar screamed, loudly and clearly. Rangan heard it above all the other noise, above the pain in his own guts, above his own fear. He saw the younger man’s legs, mangled as the now half-open car door came down over them.

Rangan threw himself backwards, against the car’s seat, what had once been down, trying to tip it back the way it had come.

Instead he bounced off, came forward onto his face onto the ceiling of the car, as it became the new down, as the vehicle kept rotating, kept fucking rolling.

Oscar screamed, “FUUUUUUUCK”.

And then the scream ended as the car came crashing down to a new horizontal.

Rangan found himself sobbing, sobbing, crawling, knowing he had to move, sobbing, reaching for the door, trying to pull himself out.

Hands grabbed him, hauled him out roughly. His head banged into something as they did. Pain burst through his ribs. The world swam. He heard voices.

“…fucking dead…”

“…accident…”

“…oh shit…”

“…he’s a witness…”

“…just fucking scatter…”

He heard something clatter to the ground next to him.

Consciousness receded.

Rangan opened his eyes, found himself on his back, still here, still where he had been, just seconds before.

Not in heaven, then.

Still in hell.