I drive across state lines. Trees, mountains, small towns, hand painted adverts for fentanyl gummies, scraps of unknown roadkill resting by the roadside with the wind whistling through their skulls like woodwinds of eternity.
Georgia on my mind. I flip backwards and present in time, unsure where the balance is. I pull the station wagon outside Braselton, sitting in the lotus position on the front of the car as the sun set off towards the West. My final destination. You remembered the West as that was the direction the cowboy rode off into. Eastward was the House Of The Rising Sun, the animals, an endless light show to remind you that even the worst night would fade into pink and red and yellow.
Nuclear weapons used against cities. A consciousness that one
of the worst dreams of the Cold War would awaken, suddenly realised, escalating
as a wild man is disturbed, hands replaced with atomic grenades. I update
social media feeds. The television flicks between CNN, FOX, HBO. I have been
wearing the same clothes for a few days, eating from drive-thru restaurants and
sleeping in car lots in the dawn. In the morning I would brush my teeth with
energy drinks and ketamine, spitting out the foul slime for the worms to partycide.
I felt as if I was an indestructible slab of stone. The end of the world was coming yet I would live beyond its death, as a bacteria thrives upon the corpse of the body it occupied.
My editor called. As the phone rang I knew the outcome of the conversation. They were concerned about me. I had been acting erratically; my mood swings caught in multiple angles by camera drones, my expense claims more lavish than usual. My elbow was propped on the table, the heel of my palm buried deeply into my cheekbone, squashing the fat of my face like a bulldog. I sighed.
“Do you want an ultimatum?” said the Editor. We waited in silence for a few seconds.
“I just uh…think, that uh…um…” I said, moving the phone further away from my face and closer to a desk fan. The phone plunged into the whirling metal blades, cracking the glass, it was unfixable, surface like a fractured puddle. I had sealed my fate.
I leave the tv on. I walk out of the motel room and get into the station wagon. I turn the radio on. It’s Limp Bizkit, My Way, and it had just started. I reverse the car out of the lot, driving at the minimum speed the law would allow. A bare lightbulb, green, was positioned at the bottom of the car, giving everything a sickly feeling. I crack open a vape, take a sip, and cruise down the highway and towards Atlanta.
How far had I come? What had I done. I pull the car up onto a grassy verge by the side of the highway. I turn the stereo up. Somewhere along the line I had picked up a bird. I raised the cage above my head and walked into the trees. I opened the door, watching the bird in the moonlight. It didn't seem real. In the distance I could hear the music swell and the bird flew from the cage and overhead military jets flew in preparation towards the end.
