The Epilogues and other short stories

The reason for living

1

She drives through the empty midnight street again and again and again, passing the same block and the same shadows that remind her of the same digital clocks and constellations and countdowns, waiting and waiting and waiting for her turn to steer the slick pointy streamline lead grey armour car onto the oneway entrance ramp which connects to the cement pillars of the underground shuttle train "drop off" and "pick up" spots. Thousands of fishplates and sleepers and rails are in their proper prescriptive perceptive situations below the street. She can see the riddle of the structure from above through the depth of scaffolding intersecting with its many superfluous levels. They are as Relativity under the water of Three Worlds; the reflection and the surface and the Möbius beneath.

She drives like yesterday's past blown into swirls of blizzard by winter's time flowing through the womanly hourglass of spring and listens as soft certain rain pelts the sunless sunroof. She anticipates the windshield wiper thump every ten seconds or so. Beyond the glass, the distant sky encompassing her vicinity pours like an over-wrenching faucet; bursting when the tap twists counterclockwise and drips when, like all yesterdays, the valve closes.

The action of waiting for her time to enter the below is like hoarding space for the sake of a full room. The horology occupies what seems to be forever's clutter. She drives toward the lineup of vehicles parked on the descending five percent slope of a ramp. The cement descent is full of exact bulbous toaster shape iron silver vehicles which aren't moving. They are a wall of wheelish paperweight toylike boxcars; a simulacra of a train waiting for trains. And she can't get in line yet. There is no opening. A street sign like a Tartar beard gatekeeper reminds her of the antecedent credo.

Everything is empty where she is but where she wants to be is completely full. Is this necessary? Does she really want to be stuck doing this while her life slowly creeps away? The purgatory of time holds her in a seatbelt which satisfies the judgement of her inner panopticon. But she's tired of time. Tired of the wait. Tired of the weight she feels. The subjugation of the handless clock presses upon each second like meters traveling in and out of miles. She thinks about speeding up and crashing the car into a wall or oncoming traffic while negotiating her body in a JG Ballard fashion; murdering herself at the point of climax.

Instead, she watches her lifeless ornament; a black crucifix on a shoestring. The cross dangles from the rear view mirror above the catafalque dashboard. She's not a believer, her faith is settled, but most of her passengers have been and are again. It's a symbol of a shibboleth which she hangs from a tiny noose for them and not for her. The judgement is a dead religion of resurrected resurrection, at least in this city and at the very least, in her mind. She doesn't know why the God or the Christ is popular again because no one is really saved from anything. Salvation is only salvation like the sweeping dust unknowingly exists as the present countenance of the dead past.

She looks at her face in the mirror. She watches her winter eyes and is always waiting for the spring which never seems to come. Waiting. Time. Driving around the block clockwise like a slowly tightening screw.

Memory grips. Tightens. Wrenches. Slows. Her foot presses down. The car speeds up. She remembers that her mother is waiting for her to get home and so she'll try to accommodate the intention after this particular pick up. Waiting. Hopefully. Maybe. It feels like she's been driving forever tonight. Hours seem just as eternal as seconds. It's hard to tell one category from the other anymore. She can't remember if she ever really could.

'You said you were proud of me when I left the life I had. The life that began so strict and stiff and eventually became worth living. You were proud when I decided to leave and join you. Proud that I finally followed through on something. Like I finished something. Did I? What did I finish? I'm here now in this place, this job, this loneliness. You're proud of me but I regret what I gave up to be here...forgive me mother, but why would you bother? I watched you. I listened to you and in the end, you destroyed me like destiny...this isn't what I really wanted. But there was no choice after I made my choice. Oh, mother, I miss him. I was wrong to leave him. Oh, God. Why did I have to fuck everything up like that.'