Drive-By On 5th Street

Just something cute, I suppose. I forgot I had this account tbh.

I’m not good at explaining things, but I’ll try my best.

It was dark. Not too dark, because there were streetlamps casting an orange glow across the tarmac, which looked really nice in the rain; the way the colour streaked across the black as though it had been spilled, a careless person’s mistake into a miracle.

We were driving. Not too fast, not too slow; a comfortable pace from A to B. Or would it be B to A? I don’t know. It was a nice drive, anyway, the kind of drive you’d hear about in your head when you listened to the movies they played in daydreams. My favourite theater.

The rain. My gosh, the rain. How it cascaded down and yet was a gentle kiss across the window pane, passenger-side door. I was alive that night, drowsy lids fluttering. A sense of calm inside a little moving box, a smile on my pale face. I was alive.

The engine was a soft roar that hummed to the tune of however many horses it took to power a four-door family car. As it hummed, I felt my seat warm, and I felt at one with the car. I know that sounds strange, but I guess what I’m trying to say is: I could have fallen asleep there and then.

I was strapped in tight, polyester webbing holding me down with a mother’s touch. I raised a hand to touch the window pane and felt the cold rush through my nerves. I recoiled in shock, amazed. I rubbed the tips of my index finger and thumb together, and felt the rain. Cold and wet and jagged, like a knife. But then why, in another world outside of the car, did it gently rattle the window pane? Perhaps kisses are knives to some people. Strange.

I turned my head and smiled through a haze of tiredness and satisfaction.

“Thank you,” I said, quietly but just loud enough to hear.

“For what?” The response I received made me laugh.

“For this,” I said, again quietly, and I turned my head forwards once more.

In the distance, I could see the vibrant reds of car brake lights oozing out into the world. I could feel the warmth radiate from them, and I wondered just where their drivers were heading. Home, perhaps, or to work? Or maybe, just on a journey, like you and me.

“Everything’s gonna be fine,” I heard. And I smiled, because I knew that it was true.

“Everything’s gonna be fine,” I mimicked, still smiling, eyes closing.

I was alive that night. And for the first time in my life, I had felt happy. I had never experienced life in the way that others had, but inside that car I discovered a glimpse of a new life; one that would take me all across the world to see the impossible, do the unthinkable, and revel in the unimaginable. I was alive that, and even as I failed to fight the urge to sleep, I couldn’t help but take solace in the fact that I had solved the biggest problems plaguing human existence, even if nobody would ever know.

I was alive that night, because I had told you not to worry.

I was alive that night, because I had stayed up far too late again.

I was alive that night, because I had mentioned it before.

I was alive that night, because I had fallen too far, from a castle made of sand.

I was alive that night.

Author's Note

The usual stuff: praise me, belittle me, critique me.