Skip to main content

Driving

 Driving in the dark, tired. Trying to remember something. Out into night beyond the road is endless, still fields. Tall shadows under a clear and moonless sky. The backbone of the Milky Way sprawls in glorious omnipresence, and I feel diminished beneath it, rightfully. Window cracked so I can smoke because Stacy hates getting in and smelling the signature Camel scent. Radio crackles to me in whispers— think it’s jazz. 


Driving. A straight road to the end of the horizon. A pre-Columbian vision where the world ends, drops off into the dark, and I can imagine so many castaways drifting as payment for their reckless exploration. Twist the dial for the radio, looking for WQ34-9, thinking they’ll say something about the game—


I blinked. Jolt. The road is dirt. Narrow. I’m in a field, surrounded by tall shadows. The radio hisses in long, droning notes like I’m listening to the sea crashing on the shore. Sitting in the dark. No wind. No stars. Fingers caked in ash from a stumped cigarette. Something ancient twitches inside me and makes me look skyward, pressing back into my seat, hand clawing for the glovebox, for the gun— 


The stars are going out. Darkness spreads. Silence. The radio hissing mixes with the rush of my blood until it’s all I can hear, all I can feel. Something above, something coming, shaking hand closing around cold metal, fumbling and grabbing, trying to pull— 


Light cuts the darkness. Bright, unnerving sunlight done in red. An ugly sunrise at midnight. I’m shaking. Sweating, drenched, pulling at the seatbelt, throwing the door open. Run, run, run— 


The red engulfs me. Numbness erupts, engulfs me. I can feel it looking down at me, looking into me, and the familiarity all comes back, the memories explode from hissing silence. Driving to run from the light, to hide. Hoping if I cross state lines I can retreat— 


D O   N O T   B E   A F R A I D


A chorus of voices. 


I’m surrounded. The red light dominates the sky and the darkness of the night fills countless, bottomless eyes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Something Growing In My Basement

Something is growing in my basement.  Plump and bold red mushrooms coat the stairs like little crimson forests, and through what little light remains I can see their spores drifting. It’s damp, humid.  When it sighs the whole house shakes, my windows rattling by a wind not from outside but *below*.  I dream of horns, black and curving and many, like bony branches thrust up out of the dirt. Crisscrossed by red roots.  The mailman throws my packages, hurls my newspaper. My neighbors eye me and my home like it’s something mad, something hungry, and when I finally sit at the table to read I can’t help but feel that the floor is sinking under my feet. Listing into swallowing earth.  I know soon I’ll wake up, stiff, entombed by so many blood-colored caps. Tenacious roots spilling over me. The thing in my basement will speak instead of sigh and all that rotting wormwood will come down, down, down. And it will be free.
Post a Comment
Read more

Lepidopterophobia

You are dying.  Doesn’t matter how.  Feels so far away now— doesn’t it?  That’s it. Take it easy. Let that last breath slip away, like the warmth that comes in a killing cold. Gentle into a silent night. No more looking up at those crowding, concerned faces; a herd of pale, pained moons.  - - - - - ___________ A dark tunnel. Familiar, but not. You’re welcome all the same. Hands groping, grasping against glassy coolness, stumbling—  Light.  The most perfect, pure sunlight. Every idealized summer, every perfect candlelight and warming fire, all that condescend sun-sure dances across a lifetime of days. It’s mere existence is the most pristine invitation. In illumination alone it says come closer . If you had a heartbeat it would be racing.  Up. Up. Forward. Scuffing, almost tripping. Surging forward, hands outstretched.  You’re here.  The Light. The Light   It’s so— wrong . It’s purity vanished, replaced with an organic and oily sheen. Like firefly glows made rotten, morphed in the shape
Post a Comment
Read more

Betty and the Storm

 Betty takes a mercifully long drag on her All-American Stag , feeling the Kansas breeze. It’s a beautiful summer day with big sky country blueness everywhere and only faint, grey-streaked clouds far off on the horizon. Betty loves prairie storms, how they turn her world into blues and blacks cut ragged by hungry lightning. That familiar, lovely earthy smell that lingers even after the clouds have gone southward, down to the more welcomingly humid gulf.  A bit of incoming stormy wind snaps at the clothes on the line and Betty stands sighing and a halfway laconic smile, feeling long hours of chore caused aches lessening with each puff of the Stag . Reaching out a hand to fix one of Teddy’s work shirts, Betty unclips it, hoping to smooth the wrinkles with an absent hand as she turns again to watch the storm roll in.  When Betty sees it, it’s almost slippery in her vision. Like she’s got something in her jade green eyes, something that makes focus hard and dizzying. Betty squints. Scrunch
Post a Comment
Read more