En Route
Rating: Harmless
Disclaimer: The idea that I would be making money from this drivel is ludicrous.
For August who sucked me in.
"I’m a rabbit in your headlights
Scared of the spotlight
You don’t come to visit
I’m stuck in this bed"
-
Unkle Rabbit in Your Headlights
Driving, she always thought, could be an hypnotic experience. Especially at night on a long freeway. Large signs, swung past and like a pendulum’s return they reappeared. Like the lamplight which rose and fell. It was all in waves. She closed her eyes for a second to see what would happen. How quickly she could lose control, and whether she had that kind of control over her own destiny. If she wanted, could she die right here?
In the opposite direction she passed a crash site. The flashing lights of a police car interrupted the serenity of the experience, but as she surmounted a hilltop she saw a long bright ribbon of headlights backed up for a mile behind the crash. When she reached the bottom she could see the same ribbon in her rearview, only this time it was the red as the tailights ascended the peak behind her. It was absurd and beautiful at the same time.
To them she must seem lucky. To be on an open road. To be going in the opposite direction to the flow.
She didn’t know whether she believed in luck. She realised she was a paradox of beliefs. She believed in God but not ghosts, she believed in Jesus but she didn’t believe in miracles. She believed in divine intervention but she didn’t believe in extraterrestrial intervention. Or she hadn’t. Or she didn’t want to.
Did she really believe there was a reason why she was often found driving on a lonely freeway like this one en route to Mulder’s latest discovery of paranormal activity admist the height of normality somewhere in middle America. The frequency with which she found herself talking about unexplained phenomena and extreterrestrial life in the past few years had become alarming. It had to be luck, fate, destiny, because there was no way she had figured this in to her life’s plan.
She always expected answers. Occasionally she found them.
She had done stranger things than trust herself to what will be.
She knew that when she arrived she’d shower the remnants of the journey away. When she checked in to the hotel she’d find a message waiting for her from him and he wouldn’t even ask if she’d had a pleasant trip. Probably just an address. She’d ask herself what she had expected, but she’d be disappointed all the same.
Her mother said she was looking a little thin but she been buried under a mile of ice in Antartica and she couldn’t vouch for her nutritional regime at the time. Next she’d ask her if she’d been going out much lately. She’d tell her she should socialise more. Meet people. Nice work if you can get it.
"What are you talking about Scully, We’re always meeting people." he’d say, and he wouldn’t be joking entirely. What would it be this time? A woman who hears aliens talking to her everytime she opens the fridge, or a man who sees little green men dancing on the roof of his barn every full moon.
"Lot 97. Six miles past the city limits. Jefferson Rd. First turn left pass the rail crossing". She’d call after the shower. She’d have a meal and a coffee and be back in the car in under one hour
If there was a truth to this, if there was a reason, it would be inconsequential compared to the nature of the search, which involved many long hours on lonely roads, many dark nights watching for signs, many moments of sheer terror when it all might have been swpet out from under them. There was purpose in believing and in believing in him. Together they were the sum of each others parts and together they were meaning and order in a chaotic existence.
A large percentage of automobile accidents involve drivers who fall asleep at the wheel. And the laughing irony of the statistic is that many of these drivers are saved by the lucidness that has caused them to crash in the first place. The body folds like a blanket around the impact of the steering wheel - or that’s what it looks like in the slow motion re-enactments.
She imagined herself wrapped around a steering wheel. Or worse, him.
Sometimes the road has its own momentum and if she just lifted her hands off the wheel, and raised her feet from the pedals, it would carry her forward.