Dark circles bag under your sleepy eyes as you try to keep your feet up, eyelids holding up as every breath sighs fatigue. You attempt to finish writing up the last problem, but your hands can’t keep up with the your mental calculations as your entire energy span pours into staying awake. You close your eyes. One, two. Open. You feel two seconds more refreshed, just a chip off an iceberg of deprivation and lack of liveliness.
The clock hand hits the end of library hours and you slowly get up, and the few students remaining expectedly shoot up like bamboo weeds and skirt out of the space. You put your jacket on. It’s cold. Laptop, pencil case, papers get neatly placed in the deep pocket of your backpack, and all get zipped up, hoisted up to your shoulders. You meekly nod to the librarian staring at you as you head out. Your legs feel like those of an elephant, heavy, and feet drag along the carpeted floor. Today, you’re tired. Today, you crave the softness and warmth of your bed more than any other day in the years you’ve stayed awake.
Only your footsteps guide the path of the empty hallways, and you slowly make your way through the zig-zag of blue floor and unoccupied couches. The door. You push it open. Cold air rushes in, but not only that—water. Wincing at the unwelcome spiking sensation of droplets hitting your hottened face, you swing the backpack around your torso, opening it just enough to fish the umbrella out. Opening it up, you remember you broke it a couple days ago. You walk with the broken umbrella along the dark streets. The streetlight, like straight out of a horror movie, flickers as you pass by, illuminating the fat sheets of dense mist splattering against the ground, the grass, your pants, your umbrella. Your socks are wet, just a bit. In an attempt to cheer you up, your brain has decided to let you skip into subconsciousness as you arrive at the parking lot, on full automation.
Throwing the backpack into the front seat, you realize that all the water from the broken arm of the umbrella has dripped onto the vulnerable fabric containing your electronics and paperwork. You weakly brush it away, but the damage has been done; the water has seeped in. You sit there miserably without turning the engine on. The rain sounds thunderous as it slams against the windshield and roof of your car, and you can see clearly out the front because it’s glossed half-inch thick with flowing rainwater. Dark, damp, hair wet, shivering, you breath out a puff of white vapor barely seen from the dim glow of the parking lot. You need your temperature back up. Almost frantically, you turn the engine on, and unlike you, it powers on full of energy with a loud vrrpth, sending the yellow of the low headlights and the red of the brake lights a foot front and back of the car. Your phone connects to the aux, and ukelele sound starts playing as Vance Joy softly sings away.
*I was scared of dentists and the dark… *
Reverse. Why can’t you see? Oh, right. The windshield. The wipers start, and you back away from the space. The water makes a muted splash outside as your tires turn and lead you out the narrow street. You crank the volume up, and start singing as you turn the right signal on, looking left and right for invisible cars that won’t pass by for another few minutes.
Oh, lady, running down to the riptide, taken away to the dark side, I wanna be your left hand man.
You curve around a bit too fast, and the backpack gets thrown onto the floor. Now, it’s straight on for a mile or so. You lean back. The headrest feels spongier than usual, and the dull ache in your eye sockets lessen to a negligible extent as your eyes peer out the smudged windshield, blurry from the water. Every step on the accelerator is a bit too hard, and the car bumps along the puddles of the asphalt. You up the volume a little more as the car jolts past a jutted curb you didn’t see.
I got a lump in my throat, ‘cause you’re gonna sing the words wrong, and I got a lump in my throat…
The constant waves flowing into the glass slows to a patter as you pull to a stop sign. You go two feet over the white line that you can barely make out through the overwhelming darkness of suburban streets and translucent mist in every cubic inch. The rain really isn’t as fast as you thought. At least, your car is faster when you drive properly. Right turn again. A bit too fast, again. On the next traffic light, the green shines on the watery road just enough so that you can make out about a tenth of the lanes, and you guess where you are by pure muscle memory as you gently tug at the wheel. It’s not you driving; it’s your subconscious. The dozens of hours that you drove by these very curves and straights now take over your tired nerves as your eyes fail to distinguish features in the night and precipitation.
A car drives by from the opposite side. You nearly graze the side of the white, or gray, or whatever shade of SUV; you were a bit too close to the middle. But it’s alright, because now you’re on your turn to the highway. Another right signal, and you make your way to the ramp. Press on the accelerator. It zooms. The meter jumps every split second, from thirty-seven to forty-two, fifty-three, sixty-six miles per hour. You’re on the high.
It’s been a few songs since Riptide. You turn the volume dial even more until it crowds out the deafening thuds of raindrops into the front of the car, the wind, and the speeding cars around you. Cage the Elephant comes up, and you start singing as loud as your vocal cords allow, and the speed meter reads eighty-one on the wet highway.
*Got so much to lose, got so much to prove. … *
You make a lane change one to the left, because a truck starts jamming the right lane to the sixty-five mph posted speed limit. Other cars behind you follow your example. Not a single car seems to mind the lack of visibility of any of the white dashed lanes as they carelessly zoom along, not that you care. Your eyes are dry from the maxed-out heater, or from the sleeplessness, who knows? They dry up, and you scrunch your face together, hoping that squeezing the eyelids together will force some moisture out of the tearles tear glands. The constant pouring of rain contrasts heavily with the desert of the car, and the windshield wipers flicker back and forth at top speed so much that you worry that they would fly apart into a million pieces. As the car ducks under a tunnel, the rain stops for half a second, and back again; only then you realize how hard the droplets hit the car when you’re going fifteen over the speed limit.
But you’re not the fastest. Cars pass you in every direction, weaving in and out of trucks and passenger cars like they’re the main characters, completely free of any accident waiting to happen and seemingly confident in their ability to navigate through the weather. Meanwhile, the dull ache deep inside your face spreads. Your hands are still cold, but your arms are weak, hot. Your ankles hurt from the pedals, your joints jelly. Your back comes off the seat as you sit forward, squinting at the lanes and trying to make out if you’re halfway between the rightmost and second lane, or if you’re steering within the emergency pullover lane. Another car speeds past your left as if your car is at a dead stop, maybe it’s the other way around. Your eyes can’t make out the difference, or your brain can’t process. You check the meter, and only then you become aware of how hard your feet presses against the gas as the orange lines read: 95.
Trouble on my left, trouble on my left, I’ve been facing trouble almost all my life…
You nearly scream out the lyrics as your back bolts straight up, and you become so situationally aware of how fast you’re going that you slam on the brakes, effectively reducing the speed to fifty-five, turtle velocity. Three cars pass you within a span of less than twenty seconds. The fatigue is still there, but you’re holding onto both your conscious, unconscious, instinct, fear, and the surroundings that still pass by you at ungodly speeds. Some cars over in the distance have their emergency blinking lights on, which help you guide your way through the lanes; you wonder if you should do the same.
God don’t let me lose my mind…
The song ends, and the awkward silence that fills the void between the two songs lets you relax, and your mouth closes as the highway straightens out. Just two seconds to regain the freshness, two seconds to gain a little less fatigue.
In the middle of the highway, second lane from the right, second lane from the left, you close your eyes. One, two. Open. The cars around you are still in the same position, and you’re still in the semi-visible white lanes. You’re safe. And you feel two seconds more refreshed.
Your voice rasps as a simple piano melody comes on. It’s your breakup song, the one you listened to over and over again in the days, weeks following the end of a relationship. You throw your head back against the headrest, and look down on the highway lanes; you’re the main character now, the higher up casting a gaze down at the floor. Nothing is still visible. The wipers still frantically wipe away, and the cars still pass by you as you go sixty-five at the speed limit. The music cranks up to the maximum level of volume as the rumbling of the raindrops get drowned out by the man and woman singing.
If the world was ending, you’d come over, right?
Exit 6 flies by, and you realize that you have almost arrived at your destination. It’s time to move to the loser’s lane, the slow lane where the trucks crawl by. No, that’s not right. It’s the lane where people actually follow the posted speed limits. And your nonfunctioning white and gray matter can’t process the fact that you are actually tailgating right up the exhaust pipe of the blue, or green, or black Nissan in front of you at seventy miles per hour. It gives you two blinking signs to scold you before desperately making its way to the next exit, allowing you to zoom past it like so many others have done to you before. You’re not thinking. You’re not sane, but you have to get home. You think about your bed as you keep singing. Your mouth isn’t yours, it holds the last thread of your attention span and keeps you focused on the road as your orbicularis oculi beg to relax and give your eyes the sealed moisture and ease it deserves after a long day.
Monday left me broken, Tuesday I was through with hoping.
You open your arms, tilting the steering wheel to the right and letting your feet off both pedals, guiding the car in its natural projected trajectory to Exit 3, where you belong.
I’m burning like a fire gone wild on Saturday…
You sing, nay, you scream. The traffic lights signaling the end of the ramp and the beginning of the residential streets goes to yellow, then to a bloody red as you realize you need to slam on the breaks. Taking control of the wheel, you halt to a wet stop, the rain impeding any effort the brake pads fought to exert. The rain slows once again, and the splattering spaces out, and the music is too loud. You lower the volume. It’s back down to where it was at the parking lot, and you’re two blocks away from your house, where the bed lay waiting for you. You are ready to arrive. The last set of traffic lights obstruct your clear path the heavenly place of which you so await. It’s coming home. You’re tired.
Falling on your knees, praying…
With the quiet comes another overwhelming wave, not water from the clouds, but exhaustion from your own foggy mind. You decide to take another two-second refresher; the green light would come in more than a minute; you knew the wait times on this traffic light by heart. You close your eyes. One, two.
And the music stops.