Headlights

They’re too bright now. Headlights, I mean. Well, they’ve been too bright for a while: since whenever the first car released with LED low-beams some twenty years ago. But some time between then and now — a moment indiscernible from the rest, before every commercial was for a vaguely dystopian concept but after the McDonald’s PlayPlaces had lost their color — these lights became half-standard. Prior to that horrible moment, being suddenly blinded by an intensely luminous white was enough of a rarity that you would wonder to yourself, Did that asshole have his brights on? If there were others being transported with you, surely a speculative conversation would begin about the nature of the transgression, and your party would fluctuate between semi-congealed hatred for the driver or the auto manufacturer depending on where the majority of the blame was assigned.

That line of questioning is no longer relevant. In part due to the fact that if you were to stop and wonder each time your retinas were scalded whilst driving late, you would certainly have to pull over to ponder the dilemma, lest you risk crashing from absentmindedness. But the pondering would be pointless anyway, the answer is already known. No, that asshole did not have his brights on, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he did because the goddamn LEDs were dazzling enough as-is. It really is rather infuriating. Otherwise, I like driving in the nighttime, when music is blaring sufficiently loud and the car is trembling with every beat and the night is clear or it’s raining, but it’s not raining enough so that your visibility is affected, just enough to cool the summer air and provide a wetness that, when combined with my halogens or a set of streetlights, creates a gleam that soothes my nerves. In conjunction with an unending synthwave playlist, I am allowed to pretend that I’m Ryan Gosling in a retro-futuristic aestheticized film as I speed through neon streets with a mission far greater than my own self.

But it’s foggy right now: the kind of murky, deep fogginess that occurs in the dead hours of early morning after a previous storm, where using your brights is truly useless because all that is illuminated is more mist, and revealing more of the unending expanse you traverse is honestly just depressing so you may as well go without the brights. This haze is especially thick too, ostensibly unnatural in its heaviness. Even the speakers seem to have been invaded by its presence, leaving my electronic tracks and fantasies muffled and far-away sounding, an afterthought to the present. All that currently and veritably exists is the universe and its darkness, the fog that fills the space, me and my black Honda Accord, and the vehicle following too closely behind, their LEDs unpleasantly reflecting off every mirror I care to glance into.

It shouldn’t be possible for those brilliant whites to create such a powerful glint in these circumstances. Either this mini-SUV is truly willing to die in their desire to pass, or their headlights must be divine in nature, anointed by the Father himself. Perhaps both, but certainly the former. It is infuriating. I hate drivers that ride my tail, especially in these conditions. I may not know the speed limit of this back road, but I am undoubtedly over it by an already significant margin despite the dreary and dangerous weather; and yet, the machine does not waver in its pursuit. It’s almost as if an invisible string is fastened between our two modes of transportation, enabling the heathen to keep a perfect, unchanging distance that permits them to keep their beams at an ideal vision-obstructing angle. I suppose it would have to be a steel bar rather than a string, since a string would grant a closing of the gap should either of our velocities trend in such a direction. Regardless, my anger is piqued by the results. I reach across the center console to grab a joint from the passenger seat.

My hand meets open space before coming to rest on dirtied polyester. My backpack isn’t where it should be. My mind has a tendency to drift and wander, particularly during stretches where I need it not to: in class, at work, in the middle of conversations when what I was attempting to convey is suddenly emptied from the box that constructs my mental volume, leaving me embarrassed and red in the face and scrambling to replace that information with a reasonable substitute so as not to provoke suspicion from others. But I never forget my bag when driving. I doubt I could stand the monotony of such an activity otherwise. I doubt I could stand much of anything, for that matter, without a recently dulled mind — I have an insatiable thirst to forget. Forget myself, that is: the memories, the person I once was and have now become, the part I have and will always play in this rat race; every little facet and detail that makes up the tale of my existence must be burned away with greenery and paper. Without doing so, I remain painfully, brutally awake, not solely in body but in mind too.

Another beacon from ahead draws my attention back to the wheel. A mini-SUV, similar to the one shadowing my journey and with equally terrible LEDs, passes by in the oncoming lane. Were it not for the radiance, I may have had a brief chance to determine the shade of the automobile, but the lack of visibility made that impossible. I could make out nothing for an instant, nothing but the fog and the lights to and fro. My hands clench and tighten around the faux leather. Before they are given the opportunity to loosen, an additional car goes by me and my threaded companion, and I am again beset by flashing and obscurity on every front imaginable. I may not have been able to discern the details of the first passing mini-SUV, but I am still positive that this one was exactly the same: same color, same headlamps, same everything. And honestly, both oncoming vehicles had appeared identical to the one trailing, at least from what I could tell. If my pursuer is at all affected by these grievances, they show no signs. Their ceaseless hounding remains steady in its flare.

Clearly, I must find an exit. This experience is no longer pleasant. There are no tunes serenading me with dreams of self-importance, meaning, and interconnectedness with the society or the universe. There is no marijuana and I am not Ryan Gosling. It’s just me, me and my metal container and the fog and the ever-rage-inducing headlamps, and I am being constantly eclipsed by the non-dark darkness that is replacing the comforting blackness which I mean to break into. But as more and more mini-SUVs drift by, I realize that not a single branching path has revealed itself since my trip began. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t elucidate when my trip began, but I am sure that there has only been this winding path where it has taken place, only this path and its lack of exits and lack of trees. If there are trees, then they are beyond any possibility of recognition through the mist and the celestial LEDs that blind me so.

Quickly, frantically, I adjust my mirrors. There is no longer a need to perceive what's behind me. I know what's there. But any relief given by the lack of blazing intensity from my chaser is overshadowed by the now-constant entourage of approaching automobiles, each following another as nearly as my stalker follows me. I grasp, far too late, that I have been caught in a trap, perhaps one set by God himself. For only He could know my hatred towards these abominable, abhorrent lights and the damage they've done to my lovely nighttime.

Beads of sweat had started to protrude prior, but now they crawl free from every possible pore. My heart is thumping internally, threatening to crack a rib or two if way is not given. Saltwater rolls down my skin, tracing my forehead to find shelter in my lashes, my eyes, my scraggly beard. More moisture leaps from my axillae to stain the sides of my tee shirt. It’s hot, horribly so. The headlights, in their nonstop glare, must be radiating heat as well. I hate the heat, but I hate sweating even more. It makes me feel dirty, foul, disgusting. I must find an exit!

There isn’t one. There isn’t anything. There is only the LEDs; they grow ever-stronger, ever-hotter. Even the murk holds no power against them anymore. It’s their fault. They’re so damn unsettling in their violence that nothing can flee their breadth. Of course I was high, but I’m always high. I’m used to it. I’m not affected by that, or at least my driving surely isn’t. But I’m not high at the moment, so I can’t just forget. One foot was put in front of another. I watched as I took step after step and just got back into the car. It’s their fault, the damn LED low-beams!

Despite the state of things, my eyelids now continuously attempt to sag, but each effort ends with a spark of brilliance from ahead and a return to their initial position. It seems that no opportunity for rest, whether through exit, sleep, or death, will be coming. There is the incessant hunter and the never-ending train of opposing machines, all with their gruesome headlights always active, and there is the road that my black and red Honda Accord continues down.