Sonus.

Asphyxiate.

    
     "Pathetique" by Ludwig Van Beethoven is recalled from my memory as I scan my

eyes across the page picking apart bits of information. The sonata plays gently in my

mind as my body sinks into the drivers seat of my parked car. The sound of two seagulls

squawking and whining reverberates off the concrete of the parking lot around me

without diverting my attention from the book in my hands, the concepts working in my

mind.          

      I like to park near the ocean in the winter, I like anything vast, empty and silent. To

 be in control of my immediate environment, to focus without distraction, to protect my

 solitude. The faint humming sound of tires flying along the ocean parkway behind me

provides a sort of stochastic resonance. This constant, distant sound of speeding cars

gives me an idea of time, as distant as they are, trifling truths passing like specters

through the back of my mind.

     A narrow street to my left leading to a small block of waterfront residences lay dead

 since my arrival. A small yellow sign read "10 mph." Along the way to this little parking lot

 near the shore, abandoned for the cold, I watched the sea out of my window, rolling

alongside the parkway. I contemplated taking a sharp right turn into it's freezing

greenish depths while thinking, Drowning would be an ideal way to go, my head and

lungs filling quickly with salt water. At this time of year, the pain of the winter seas

relentless cold stabbing my skin like needles to my every nerve as thrilling as the total

numbness that follows... enveloping silence... the ocean forcing me to sleep to my

death.

      The humming sound was now coming from my left, growing faster and louder from

that small empty street. I barely noticed as my eyes and ears cared for nothing save my

 own thoughts.  I would not have lifted my head in alarm  if it were not for the flash of

memory, that picture of the little yellow speed sign... My body stiffened, I gripped the

hard cover of text in my hands as it was thrown from my small, shattering fingers. I had

no time to think, to move as the hood of a truck smashed through my window, crushing

my soft body and every thought I had come to collect.

     Maybe the driver’s breaks had failed. Maybe they had dropped something and was

not expecting a car to be sitting near the shore as they bent down to retrieve it. Maybe

 it was an act of malice, a lunatic driven by a manic rage. Maybe they didn’t care if they

brought another down with them. Or maybe they expected only to end by flooring their

truck into an abandoned car. Maybe they had planned to.. but ultimately couldn’t bare

the option of drowning, undulating slowly in the remorselessly freezing February, Long

Island waters. Maybe they just couldn’t take the thought of floating to sleep in a place

naturally and excruciatingly colder than death.