Traffic (Complete two-hundred pages) (Moving to Kindle Vella in 30 Days! )

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IN AN HOUR THE PLANE LANDED and Jack and Pat grabbed their luggage and drove home to LA. Pat loved the city. Jack hated it. The night air was fresh but the stench of money mixed with poverty had an unsettling acidity to it. Skyscrapers passed by and Pat let himself off at a local bar. He'd see Jack at the party tomorrow. They might as well go because they had returned home so soon.

Jack remained in the passenger seat of the autonomous vehicle and drove with their luggage home. The car lifted off at a 45-degree angle as the hills turned into mountains. And the view of La La Land turned from beautiful to sickening while the altitude sickness almost became a reality for Jack.

When the Soroche wore off, the car came to a gated community, and off in the neighboring hills Jack could see the craterous full moon glistening over the land like the spectacle of God. And it was watching him. Spying on him. The gate sensed the magnetic key in the car's glove compartment and opened. The car pushed them onward up mount Olympus and eventually homes came into view. Higher and higher the car climbed and the homes grew larger and larger. The mansions peaked to ridiculous colossal magnitude and finally it reached the home at the very top. A pink and white Malibu Barbie-esque mansion. It was a sight to behold but a sight Jack was sick of. Then again Jack was sick of most things these days and perhaps, he wondered, his worst sickness was ingratitude. Ingratitude seemed to be the dominant plague of La La Land and perhaps America in general. He would not be surprised the rest of his symptoms were an effect of that in the first place.

The car rolled up onto a beautiful cobblestone driveway and parked. The door opened for him automatically and he stepped out. "Trunk," he grumbled and the trunk popped despite his slurred speech. The car had remembered his signature grumbling.

Jack pulled out the luggage and noticed Pat's luggage was heavier than his by far.

"Probably panties," Jack sniggered to himself.

He carried the load to the front door, unlocked the lock and stepped inside.

It was a dark eco-friendly palace inside and the hallway opened up to the mouth of a circular granite staircase. The staircase was in no way safe for children or the elderly and was in dire need of a safety carpet. Jack left Pat's luggage in the closet and carried his own up the lavish fleet of stairs. Step by step a soft red LED light followed his ascent and lit the steps at his feet as he climbed. Reaching the top, he passed a hall of rooms and left his luggage in one of the closets.

He made his way to a room with a pink door that had a hello kitty sticker and photograph of a purple dinosaur on a sandy beach somewhere in Paraguay. He entered the room where a bed of stuffed animals featured a young girl in Power Puff Girls pajamas lying at the center of the bed. He knelt over her. And he kissed the little girl's forehead.

Elise. Three years old. Today was her birthday. He petted her long blonde hair and took a moment to adore his child. Afterward he left, and the door closed behind him, silent as a feather.

He made his way down to the end of the hall, where a floor to ceiling window feature the ocean on the other side of the mountains, the moon waving at him with a more prominent craterous chin than before.

He opened the door to the right, and stepped inside.

A lavish master bedroom with a bed that seemed even larger than a king-sized bed sat in the silver moonlight of the balcony, and the city lights on the driveway side of the mountain glittered like orangey gold on museum display. And the woman who lay in that bed lay sprawled like a starfish; her shirt was loose because it was his shirt. And he rolled onto the bed and climbed over her to press his nose into her chest. His shirt smelled like her perfume.

And he pressed his lips and then gnawed at her hills. And the land came to life as she moaned. And he peeled off the blankets and threw off the sheets. The heat of summer blew in like tear gas through the cracks of the balcony doors. Two volcanoes. And they erupted.

Their sleep was short that night. But it was deep until morning.