Entry for the competition, "Passenger"

The highway I was driving on seemed to go forever. The black asphalt like a frozen river, and I just flowing with the current, not knowing the destination, just giving myself to its hypnotic monotony. I could only hope that when the black-river stopped, I was as far away from home as possible.

Inside my car, my radio was tuned in on the After midnight jazz with Chris Bartlett. Bartlett was playing the latest Diana Krall, unfortunately not one of my favourites, but I kept tuned in, hopefully he’d play some oldies soon, and as the car kept rolling along in the darkness, I sang along to “Little Girl Blue”.

I glanced at the gas gauge and realized that I needed a refill. Soon after, I saw a sign with the gas pump symbol with the words 5 MILES next to it. Turning signal on, drifting onto the exit. I rolled up to the gas station right when “I’ll be seeing you” started to play over the FM. Turning off my car, I reached for my wallet on the passenger seat and stepped out of the car to fill it.
I paid for the gas and got back into my car and continued my journey to God-knows-where USA. I had bought a Pepsi, a bag of chips and a new pack of cigarettes, pushed the built-in lighter and waited for the button to pop out. More Krall, doesn’t anyone play Quincy Jones anymore? Krall can’t be the only thing people want to hear anymore can she? She’s the Britney Spears of the Jazz world, I wanted Jones, or Cole, or even Sinatra, anyone but her again.
The sun was slowly coming up on the horizon; I was driving through the country side of Maine already? Had I already driven into a new state and hadn’t even noticed? I couldn’t even remember the border patrol. I decided that the first motel I see, I would stop and sleep for a few hours.
After taking a hot shower and packing up what I had brought, which wasn’t much I got back into the car and headed back down the highway. I tuned the radio until I found a music station that wasn’t playing any pop music.
When night came, I started thinking about it again. I couldn’t help it. Not being able to forget about it, like the first time I saw “The Exorcist”, for months I couldn’t put the image of Regan crab walking down the stairs, it scared the shit out of me. This memory was like that, I tried and tried not to think about it, but I couldn’t help myself.
It was dark and raining outside. I couldn’t take it anymore, not from him, not him. Picked up the cleaver and… I turned up the music, Coltrane drowning out the memory like a river washing away the word you wrote in the sand, SOS. That’s when I realized I had driven into a small town.
This town was the quaint little village that you see in Martha Stewart Living, not that I read the magazine. And as I drove up the road, I came to a covered bridge, it wasn’t made for cars, only people, and today no one was walking over it. I decided to drive over to the bridge and parked as close as I could. It called to me, for some reason, I was being lured.
I stood on the bottom step. Looking across to the other side the bridge wouldn’t be satisfied with me standing right here. I climbed the last few steps until I was standing on the bridge over the water. I looked to the other side, it was a portal to the unknown, it was my right of passage and I knew that if I wanted to be free of all the baggage I had been driving with in my car, I needed to cross to the other side. I walked back to my parked car and collected my one pathetic suitcase.
Crossing the bridge I knew I would never look back, not back on those horrible times, that one bad memory that I just couldn’t shake, no, I would just keep moving forward into the unknown, on the other side of the bridge, back to purity. With my suitcase in one hand, I held my head high and crossed the bridge, leaving everything behind I didn’t want to be a part of anymore.

For the bridge was my guide, and I was merely it’s passenger.

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Tags:

bridge, forward, life, moving, mystery and photo