Parked

The car had stopped. As he listened to the tick tick ticking of the cooling engine he wondered if a car was lesser for it not being in motion. A person was defined by what they did. They were constantly questioned as to their role in life. Accountant. Lawyer. Mechanic. The job came first. Then Dad. Then Husband. Somewhere further down the pecking order was friend. Hobbies were a distraction from the seriousness of life. An affectation. One should never turn a hobby into a living for fear of crushing what little love there existed in the frivolous pursuit of something other than money and obligation.

A car was its speed and handling. And right now, this car was nothing. Worse than nothing. When a person died, they became an obstacle. Something to remove. Burned away, or buried like any other problem.

The tick of the engine pained him. Time bleeding away in the quiet moments when nothing happened. Most of life was erased in this manner. Pensive existence in a waiting room filled with strangers. Unread magazines providing no respite from reality. This was no place for dreams and so here there was no fulfilment to be had. Waiting for your name to be called whilst nurturing an insane notion of salvation.

When the engine’s ticking ceased he layered the ominous silence with his own emptiness. A force of will that took very little effort. This was a long held habit and came far too easily to him. His was an aggression that crept passively alongside him. Untamed yet uncertain. Hiding in his shadow in an uneasy companionship. Never an ally. Only a grim witness to the performative waste that fear demands.

His head swam with thoughts as he sat in the car. He liked to think that he was an overthinker. The truth was that he was no thinker. His head obese with sluggish fat thoughts that weren’t his own.

Tyres.

Not tires. Who thought it acceptable to plunder a perfectly good language and do yet another half job upon it? Stealing the occasional u. Swapping perfectly good letters around to create even less consistency. Damage familiarity. Provide further excuses for misunderstanding. Yet another war that left a legacy of chaos and confusion in its wake.

Now he flitted to the Welsh language. Here was a brutal conviction to words he found inaccessible. Words with no vowels. Warrior words. Brutal yet beautiful. He mourned the loss of Wales. Found his soul dragged along twenty mile an hour roads. A protracted torture that bored a person to death. An injury of nothingness that spoke to an empty heart.

Then he was back in the moment, only to obstinately kick back towards thoughts of tyres. He’d become lax. Fallen into a state of inertia. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d checked the tyres on this car. This car. Not his car. There’d been a time when he’d cared far more.

Remembering the police officer coming to school. The man had ridden in on his BMW motorbike. A black one. Contrasting with the white one that he rode for work. Showing them his hand. Pointing to it. Explaining that at any one time the contact his ‘bike had with the road was no more than the area of skin on his palm.

Always a curious child, he’d gotten the policeman’s lesson and taken it further. In his mind’s eye the palm was on the tarmac. Torn to shreds as it was pulled along by an uncaring engine doing what it was built to do even as it ceased to make any sense in the world. Even as it inflicted pain upon someone who loved it.

He was the palm and the world didn’t care about the wounds it had inflicted upon him. The world wouldn’t remark his passing. It wouldn’t remember. Just as he disregarded all the rain drops that had fallen in his sight.

The glass pane of his bedroom window when he was seven years old. A stubborn drop of water clinging on for all it was worth, whilst all about it rivulets of water collected its friends and family. He’d been with that droplet until the very end. Just as he’s witnessed the swaddled fly as the spider straddled it. Beheaded it. Sucked upon the wound like it was a strawberry milkshake. He’d been hypnotised by the drama of it all. All the spider’s eyes regarding him. Willing him to understand that this was life. He was the fly. He was the tenacious rain drop. Clinging on even in the face of a bitter ending.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

He’d twisted these words and found lesser meaning.

Endure it while it lasts.

No one came to save the fly. He could’ve at least tried to intervene. But instead he’d stood and watched. Not wanting to get involved. And this was how he’d lived his life. Even after standing in the sight of God, family and friends and vowing to stand by another human being and be there for them. He hadn’t been there for himself. Didn’t know how to show up, let alone stick around.

Considering the loss of meaning was a cruel trial when there was precious little meaning to be had. He’d failed at this quest before he’d ever begun. Walked the path well-trod and called it anything but the rut that it was.

Cars were a wonder of a modern age that was long past. Cars today had been diluted and violated until they resembled nothing more than white goods. You were what you did. Driving a new car took something from the driver. Cars of old were visceral. They required input and that input was living.

You checked the tyres on a V8 car. The engine roared defiance and that defiance was a warning. Here be dragons. Buckle up cowboy. I’m all your dreams. Your nightmares too.

Worn tyres. Slow punctures. Leaky valves. Incremental risks that tipped everything over an edge that could never be returned from. No rewind on life. Only a pause before the closing credits.

He sees his reflection in the cracked windscreen and watches the curtain of night come down. The silence is eerie now and he has nothing to give it. He doubts whether it truly is silent out here in the woods. Wonders whether he ever heard which senses go first. Bemoans the loss of his hearing in any case. Watching as reverent tears of rain wash his broken car. Readying it for the funereal crusher. A droplet hangs on the other side of the glass and reflects him a thousand times over.

All those prying eyes.

He falls before the inevitable river of progress sweeps that tear of finality away.