Eternal Return
When I slip through the seams I return to the same place.
On a section of highway without beginning or end, a small car and a tractor trailer change positions again and again. The speeds are always within the same range. In the pouring rain, the sounds converge in a hissing.
I am the passenger in the car. An old friend is driving. We pass back and forth a bottle of Don Quixote wine.
When the truck pulls in front of us, the windshield goes white and the car shakes. We count sequences of beats. The truck is now in front of us.
When we pull to the outside of the truck, the windshield goes white and the car shakes. We count sequences of beats. The truck is now behind us.
In between, we are thickets of sentences about the story we are caught in, its genre and what awaits us. We are young, speeding and drunk. Our speculations disappear into the hissing rhythms of a highway that crosses the in-between.
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Author's Note
Eternal return would be shaped by remembering and not being able to remember, yes?
Other stories by stephen hastings-king
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"We are young, speeding and drunk"
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what meg said. peace *
oh my "we are thickets of sentences about the story we are caught in" *
thanks very much for the reads and lovely comments. this is a difficult piece for me to evaluate as it's tied to something quite specific...which it triggers memory of for me...but the problem lay exactly there, with the particularlity. i'm pleased that the piece seems to work for you.
"a bottle of Don Quixote wine"
Want some.
*
Intense piece. I pictured the highway as the seam - the dotted line - stitches. The weaving, drinking, speeding, the windshield - white - blank - as if you are blind from drink. This is frightening, like a reoccuring nightmare.
The speculations disappearing into the hissing rhythm of the highway is a very chilling end - as if the highway is a monster sort of, the devil, the serpent - hissing - sealing your fate or altering your future, possibly devouring it.
I may be off base, but this piece got under my skin and made me uncomfortable, tense, as if something bad was happening and I couldn't do a darn thing to prevent it or change the outcome.
Wonderful writing.
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