“Oh man, what the fuck happened?” I moaned. My head hurt but not as bad as my right leg and left arm. The arm seemed to work and looked okay, except for some blood. But when I tried to move the leg, I couldn’t, and it hurt like hell. The dashboard was smashed downward toward the car’s floor. It and the steering column were pinning my leg. The roof was crushed downward, most of the windows were missing or shattered, and the doors were bent inward.

I was lying against the dented driver’s door. There was dried blood on the side of my head. It must have hit the driver’s-side window of the car, maybe multiple times. I figured that my car must have rolled over and over down a slope and ended up on its side. All was quiet other than the sounds of water flowing nearby and vehicles going by on the highway far above.

The last thing that I remember before the accident was leaving Black Hawk for home around midnight after hitting the slots and blackjack tables. I must have fallen asleep driving along the highway in Cleer Creek Canyon. I came to in daylight, sometime the next day.

I tried to ignore the pain but shrieked repeatedly while trying to free my leg. It was hopeless. I called out for help when I heard cars and motorcycles going by, but they couldn’t hear me. I was thirsty but had nothing to drink or eat in the car. Clear Creek flows cool and clean, but even though the water was close by, I couldn’t have any. It was a miserable day and night. My throat was sore from yelling at vehicles up above.

By the next morning, I was losing hope. I was feeling quite a bit weaker and presumed that my leg or foot was or had been bleeding. I had to count on friends or coworkers eventually noticing me missing and alerting authorities. But when?

I reached out with my mind and suddenly managed to grab on to something. Maybe a mouse but a little different. I passed along a greeting as I had done many times since I first learned that I could brain meld or “communicate” using telepathy with small mammals. I first became aware of it as a teenager but thought I was imagining things. Later it had worked when I “warned” invading mice that I would kill them if they didn’t leave my house. I played with it over the years, even getting the attention of rats using my mind, but it seemed a worthless “superpower”, so I disregarded it.

I sensed a response from my greeting, so I tried to transmit a need for help. A few minutes later a bat came and hung upside-down from the empty windshield frame. The bat appeared to look around at me and my prison. It conveyed a feeling of empathy. I tried to communicate, “I need help. Please find one like me to help.” The bat released itself from its perch and flew away.

Several hours later, I heard a faint yell coming from somewhere above. I screamed, “Help, help, I’m down here.”

A guy yelled, “Okay, I see you now, hang in there.”

I couldn’t believe it. Did the bat get him?

Before long there was a major rescue operation taking place that got me free from the car and up the rocky embankment. I thanked Bob, the guy from a search and rescue team who first found me, and everyone else before they loaded me into an ambulance.

Around a month later I made some calls, tracked down Bob, and asked him to meet me at a local bar. Over a couple beers we talked about the rescue. “How did you find me?” I asked.

Bob replied, “It was weird, so I didn’t tell anyone since they’d think I’m nuts. We got the alert from the cops, so I was out searching for you and parked my Four Runner along the road. I was looking down the embankment, heard squeaking, and looked up in the sky. A bat was circling around making noises and acting strange. It would head off, up the road and then come back. It did it over and over. I finally decided to follow it. Next thing I knew I found where your car left the road. A lucky happenstance, I guess. I couldn’t see your car at all from the highway’s shoulder. You and your car might not have been found for a long time.”

I started to tell Bob about my encounter with the bat but dropped it when he started looking at me like I was crazy. Anyway, ever since then, I’ve been working on my superpower. I even bought a pet mouse, rat, and gerbil. Now I can communicate well with all three and have found I can get the attention of cats and dogs with my mind. I’ll continue working on it. Maybe someday I’ll be able to plant the thought, Mike’s a great guy to get to know better, in Stacy’s mind at work.