11:38PM, August 13th 2004. Payne's world.

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It was a beautiful afternoon. The sky was a majestic shade of auburn. The sun wasn't completely out of hiding just as yet. One of those type of days when you really feel like clicking down the windows(powered) and enjoying the breeze against your face. No real point in turning on the a/c and shutting myself up in this heartless metal box. I say "breeze" only because I was cruising. It was, after all, a beautiful setting and I had every reason to live the moment for all it was worth. You know what they say, right? "Live everyday as if its your last, because one of these days it will be." Well, if all went to plan, this would be my last, so I guess I was justified for living the moment.

That morning, I had no idea life would take me down this very stretch of road, right after a week(of course I didn't, I wasn't some goddamn Nostradamus). Ah yes, the week. Now that I'm telling you -the world- , this, I may as well give an insight or atleast a glimpse into the events which've brought me spiralling down here. This road, another car(smaller), she'd always preferred the small cars. Always referred to the big SUVs as testostorene-oozing trucks, never really understood that, 'coz my mom drove a Chevy. Well, my mom,she's weird that way. Oh shit, I didn't mention who the "she" in the above sentence is. Does it matter? Yes. This is my fucking story and I wanna remember her one last time. Fair, yes that she was,not pale-fair like Suzanne Khan, no ,she was just about right. She had a long-face with ironically, a very small mouth. Ironic, only 'coz she liked to eat a lot but the size of her mouth betrayed her. Sure, she ate a lot, but she was one of those lucky people who never gained weight(Jughead types). People said she was awkwardly tall, to me she was divinely built. Just right, I would say...and then, those eyes. The eyes which had me lost in them, the eyes which helped me find myself again, the eyes which echoed her inner light..tch, I'm drifting here.

The cops had said she was drunk, "inebriated state" so to say. Maybe it was the night before, the argument in which so little had been said to each other, but so much assumed. Maybe it was all those nights leading upto that night. Maybe it was the fact that she didn't know I had taken the evening off to cook up dinner(atleast I tried to cook sometimes), candle-lit and all. It was supposed to be a surprise. Surprise? Sure as hell was. The cops said she must have died in the impact itself, said she wouldn't have felt the pain, it was a matter of moments, so they said. Dingy little car never did have any airbags, not that it'd have saved her. Hope is a cruel thing. The windows were pulled down, just like her. She never liked the a/c, always said it'd isolate her from the world outside....

It was beginning to get hot now. The clouds had given way and the sun was starting to make its presence felt. I still refrained from turning on the a/c. Living the moment I was. Plus, I was nearing the bend anyway... They said I was a good writer, but on this road to perdition I had no idea why I was so tongue-tied, why my thoughts were so incoherent, why I was so short of words in my own mind. At least, I knew why I was doing this, or did I? I knew I wanted to feel what she'd felt in that moment. To see what those breath-taking eyes had seen. No, that was not it. Morbid curiosity, perhaps? Bullshit. I could not live without her, I did not care what those eyes had seen, all I wanted was to look into them once more and have them look back at me. One more time. The bend approached, I was doing more speed than I should have been, but heck, when you are in an accident thats what you do. The break in the fence drew closer by the second. By the time I'd gone past it, I was living more "in the moment" then I'd ever been. A strange sense of weightlessness hit me as all the four wheels left the ground. Within nanoseconds, the car was plummeting down with all the grace of a guided missile. The rocky shale below seemed like it was rushing headlong towards me.

They say that your whole life passes by you in that last moment. Well it did, just like in that movie. My first conscious look at dad, my first day boarding the school bus waving at my mom through tearful eyes, my first crush, the trees on both sides on the way to college, the fight with the school bully, the finals of the state-playoffs, those nights spent dreaming of being a superhero, fleeting glimpses of faces throughtout my life -smiling,angry,crying,peaceful-, walking into college, seeing those eyes for the first time, that kiss behind our block, the sheer thrill of being on the road, graduation day, being on bended knee -with my heart drumming away- waiting for those words, "i do", our song, that wretched mangled piece of metal, those eyes with no life in them. A life which had given me reason to live, a life worth dying for? I blinked, one bead of sweat fell from my eyelid. Before it landed, gravity wrapped up the job. Darkness. The movie in my head had been abruptly halted. Eternal silence.

Me, myself and the road.

We are together all the while now, forever now. That sense of weightlessness courses through my veins. Apparently, killing yourself doesn't get you to the same place as dying accidentally. Those eyes continue to haunt me.

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Payne


 



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