I hear the sound of his skull cracking before the spray of blood reaches me.<\/p>\n
I gasp, then take a quick step back toward the sidewalk. My foot sinks in, and the heel of my shoe won’t keep up with me, so I grab onto the stake of the “No Parking” sign for fear of losing my balance.<\/p>\n
The man had been standing in front of me just seconds before. We were among a crowd of people waiting for the crossing light to flash when suddenly the man crossed the street prematurely, causing a speeding truck to hit him. I lunged forward, trying to stop him, but I couldn’t grab onto anything, and I saw him fall to the ground.<\/p>\n
I closed my eyes before his head was under the wheel, but I heard something pop like a champagne cork.<\/p>\n
The blame, all the blame, falls on this man. He was looking carelessly at his cell phone, perhaps because he had crossed that same street many times before without incident. Perhaps it was death by routine.<\/p>\n
People gasp, like me, but no one screams or shouts. The driver of the offending truck jumps out of his wheel and immediately kneels in front of the man lying there. I step back slightly as several people rush forward, wanting to help. I didn’t need to look at the man lying under the wheel to know he hadn’t survived. Just looking at my pristine white shirt\u2014now stained with blood\u2014was enough to tell me that a stretcher would be of more use to him than an ambulance.<\/p>\n
I pace around, trying to get away from the accident\u2014hoping to find a place to catch my breath\u2014but the traffic light is now green, and the crowd is turning towards it, making it impossible to swim against the current and go back in this torrent of Manhattanites. Some of them don’t even look up from their cell phones as they pass near the scene of the accident. I stop walking forward and wait for the crowd to thin out. I glance back at the truck, avoiding the view of the man lying there. The truck driver is now standing behind the back of his vehicle, staring at a cell phone in his hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A gripping psychological thriller about a writer who finds herself immersed in terrifying secrets and mysterious diaries that reveal shocking truths, making her suspicious of everyone around her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":26304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_cat":[2469,927,905,911],"product_tag":[1293,1138,1082,1191],"class_list":{"0":"post-26306","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-detective-literature","7":"product_cat-horror-literature","8":"product_cat-world-literature","9":"product_cat-novels","10":"product_tag-crime","11":"product_tag-horror","12":"product_tag-novels","13":"product_tag-world-literature","14":"pa_book-author-colleen-hoover","16":"first","17":"outofstock","18":"sale","19":"shipping-taxable","20":"purchasable","21":"product-type-simple"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/26306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=26306"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=26306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}