The Knot

A sort of horror meta-story I've come up with recently. Read it and see what you think...

  I’m not driving a car.

  And that car that I’m not driving, it isn’t driving itself neither. It isn’t drifting off into the stars upon a celestial and light-woven road. If I were driving a car, this car, on this road that does not exist, I wouldn’t be steering it upon the shimmering pebbles in a lamp-lit dusk or headed to the Grand Canyon.

  This car of mine that does not exist is driving no such place as might be dreamt or spelt in tongue or dialect unheard, and were it heard, were its wheels �" those spinning plates - to thrum upon asphalt, its bonnet to shear through waves upon waves of moonbeams, its soft engine to hum its lullaby then we would not have this story to tell. And since I am telling this story, and every story requires, at first, the assertion of some reality to embed said tale, then all I have spoken so far must be taken as true in order for any story to start, and our story has started, hasn’t it. And so upon reading this you know already, because it has been demonstrated and determined, that I am not driving a car because that is and has been, from my beginning, reality as my story asserts itself to be.

  So it’s easy to imagine that I’m not driving a car.

  Just let that sink in. I’m not dreaming, my words are just showing us the way. We may have questions tumbling from our lips as we drive deeper into our tale, but as you shall see, it is important that they are placed aside for now and can be returned to later as we steer ourselves solely along the way. The way is the story. Most stories have an ending and most have a main character, and those main characters have endings too �" their destinations driven by the force of the story’s narrative. This is the way of most stories and you may find that this story is no different and so the end of this tale, its peak and climax, will only be grasped upon completion of the way �" just like a car without a driver ; a car that follows its road to its only destination.

  Are you following yet..? �" hold that thought. It doesn’t matter now as this car I’m not driving is accelerating.

  I have no way to steer it. How can I steer something that doesn’t exist? I have no control over its steering just as I have no control over the movements of my hands on the wheel. I have no control over my movements just as I have no control over the moments they exist in �" each moment feeds into another, each action the result of that which preceded it, locked in a perpetual chain of cause and effect in the medium of time and its cascade of instants.

  There aren’t pendulous moons and swishing stars as I swerve into the Grand Canyon that isn’t there and engulfs this car that I’m not imagining �" plummeting, suddenly, into a paradox, a singularity where logic ends and where my universe keeps expanding anyway. I’m not closing upon a black hole cast into the night as it swallows the light from my eyes and closes my sight. There are no thoughts or sounds now �" no one can hear you scream in space. A hand that isn’t there presses upon the back of my head like a thought of a headrest of the car seat pushing me deeper as all roads inevitably lead to Rome and all stories close as they begun �" perhaps even before they begun, before the first sentence was read; a record that keeps repeating…

  I’m not driving a car.

Author's Note

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