He wanted to be lost, swallowed up by the darkness to never be seen again and, at three in the morning in the parking lot of a deserted park in the middle of nowhere, Adam felt about as close to lost as he could get. On his drive to nowhere, he’d been able to watch the sun pass the horizon line, painting the sky with a thousand shades of brilliant before the day was exchanged for night and the orange hues were driven away by the dark purples and endless black void.
Parked at the end of the lot farthest from the road, Adam turned the key back once, cutting the engine but leaving the radio and headlights on, though he was quick to kill the lights. In the silence that now surrounded him like a blanket, he could hear the light drizzle that had begun and he vacantly wondered where the clouds had come from; he hadn’t noticed any on his way out of town but to be fair, he couldn’t remember a majority of the car ride anyway. That tended to happen with most of the things he did though.
The heating and cooling system of Adam’s Honda Accord had gone out long ago, as had most of the other systems that were not required for the car to run, and he found himself missing the warm embrace of heat that he had abandoned at home when he had left for his sudden road trip.
With the patter of rain against the aluminum roof filling the car with white noise, Adam reached beneath his seat and pulled the lever so that he could slide his seat back and then reclined the back of it so he would have plenty of space to move. Adjustments made, the man leaned forward and turned the volume up as loud as the stereo would allow, hoping with a sense of indifference that the speakers wouldn’t give out under the harsh treatment; they weren’t cheap, after all.
Pushing a CD into the car radio, Adam leaned back in his seat, laying back so that he was staring at the ceiling of the car. In the dark, it was almost impossible to tell that the soft interior of the ceiling was beginning to sag but Adam knew, so he closed his eyes. A problem for another time, he told himself. Problems could wait. For now, he was lost.
As the music began to play, slowly growing until the song really began to pick up and the metal blasted from the speakers, almost deafening at the volume it was set at, Adam’s hands drifted up behind his head to hold the headrest of his seat. The bass of the song shook the car, making the windows and every loose object within it rattle obscenely. As annoying as that could have been, it was overlooked for the feeling it gave. The trash left in the passenger’s floorboard wasn’t the only thing shaking.
Adam’s body felt heavy but alive, the vibrations of the music making his sternum vibrate within him, sending each of his bones into a shaky, chaotic paralysis. He was essentially held in place by the music, completely at its mercy as it pounded against his eardrums, rattled through his bones, shook him to his core. And through it all, Adam was screaming. As loud as his lungs would allow, so loud that he thought they might pop, Adam was screaming along to the lyrics. The music was so ridiculously loud that Adam couldn’t hear a single word that left his mouth, only knew he was making a sound at all when one of his hands abandoned the headrest to wrap around his throat loosely so that he could feel the vibration of his own vocal cords as they strained under the demand.
Pinched shut, Adam’s eyes burned and when he opened them, black and white shapes danced in his vision, preventing him from seeing a single thing as the tears escaped his eyes and rolled down the sides of his face, becoming lost in his dark hair. The hand above his head gripped the dirty headrest aggressively, blunt nails digging in deep enough to make Adam’s fingers ache but he couldn’t even feel the pain.
Adam’s arms trembled and his entire chest vibrated to the beat, his entire being humming with a rich and heavy sense of life. He was lost out in the ocean of darkness, the black surrounding him as far as the eye could see and farther, shrouding all of existence into the all-consuming void. The burning waves lapped at Adam’s skin, bones, organs, the water flooding into his lungs so that he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, could only exist. Nothing existed outside of that moment, only Adam and the music that was crushing his body, chipping away at his sternum like a jackhammer, making him suffocate.
And he was still screaming.
Hot waves of his own spilled from Adam’s eyes where he couldn’t be bothered to wipe them away, allowing them to drip unbidden into his hair.
He was numb to every sensation, the bite of his nails in the seat, the rawness of his throat, the hot, burning ache of his lungs not even registering in his rattled skull.
He was aware of every sensation, the vibrations in his body, the hotness of his tears, the pins and needles in his legs feeling sharper than before.
And then, quicker than it had come, the song was over, leaving Adam’s ears ringing to the point that he was deaf to the rain that was now pounding against the car’s exterior. His body still trembled, though he remained in a state of numbness to the pain that was sure to linger in his body even after he had left the park.
He was still gasping for breath after the song was over. He was still trembling like a leaf caught in a storm after the song was over. He was still sobbing after the song was over.
