Miss Rita
“Get out of the way, worm”
That was Vicky Stendhal speaking, to me. Except my name’s not ‘worm’, it’s George. She’s my other cousin, the one that’s younger than me. She’s moving to Canada to join some conservative workers commune.
"Why are you so mean to me Vicky? Especially now, right when we realized we have to leave the gameboy behind”
The sky was as orange as a teardrop squeezing out of an eyeball. The sun was falling like a baseball about to smack home plate. I think the Rickity Sparklers lost today. That’s the team my girlfriend plays on, or she was probably my ex by then. I don’t know why I was thinking about her. Exhaustion maybe. We were all tired. Rita the most, she’d been arguing with her mom all day.
We all packed into her sedan with the faded blue coating. All three of us rode speechless. I zoned out into the yellow landscape. Next thing I remember is McDonald’s and the sky being shut off. We spent a long time in that shed earlier.
I couldn’t bring the gameboy but I did bring a hefty amount of opiate powder. Fast dopamine blend for when I’m driving, slow oxytocin mix for when I need to focus on navigation or resting in the backseat. That’s how I’ve had it planned ahead. Every two hours you take a spoonful of what depends best on each situation. The McDonald’s, or any food, will interfere with the potency. That wouldn’t be a ‘waste’, it would ruin my tolerance frequency. So I’ll have to wait some time after eating to take any. I’ll probably just go to sleep.
“George Luke, Geeeoorrge Luke”
Vicky batted her eyelashes. She was being nice to me for some reason, probably didn’t want to drive. I haven’t been sleeping much I’ll tell you that. But I know it’s been a good chunk of hours, or maybe even a whole day. There’s been nothing but desert rock. I remember some light in the morning I could’ve seen and then I might've fallen asleep until the sun went down, it's winter. All I know is it’s night time again.
Rita's been rambling on the phone the past hour but I wasn't annoyed. There was always a certain amount of gravity when she spoke, even when it wasn't addressed to me. To the point where it's strange she wasn't older than us, I was the elder in the car by a half a year. She went to school and could stand getting along with the city kids who knew everything. She wanted to make friends just like they did.
Right now she wanted to preach about art. She’s gotten particularly good at that lately, with me and Vicky as an audience. She ended her phone call and slid the phone into her pocket without looking down.
“The Sistine Chapel Ceiling: God Dividing Land and Water. Ignore any dramatic theological presumptions about what I’m going to say” (she must’ve caught me rolling my eyes) “with that section of the ceiling Michelangelo did something astounding. All the ‘severity’ around our trip and getting everything ready today reminded me of it. That’s what Michelangelo painted there. The beginning of something long and arduous. Look at the shock on the angels faces, where would that shock come? It’s not that they were confused and they didn’t know what he was doing, the problem was they had an approximation of how long it would take. They could see the wide, long scope of it of all. The earth stretched out and placed one piece after another. That’s the shock. They could imagine the full space and renewal of dirt that the task at hand was going to need to take up. They were feeling the full weight of space and time together, and seeing it in the empty expsanse. The weight of the space it would occur in and how long it was going to take it to get to the end. All that is represented there. The beginning of something severe and grand and everyone not being able to understand why. There's literally a crying baby in the back of the blanket carriage with the perfect expression of "what's happening now, when is this going to end". And the other baby anxiously fixing the blankets and looking out the window. It's the perfect most human expression of people's confusion when they try to do anything with legitimacy. And then there's God's expression remeniscent of another part of the ceiling, the Prophet Jeremiah in thought. It's the universal look of 'they don't even know what I'm planning. They wouldn't understand if I told them but they'll have to trust me for us all to see it through until the end.' The most important part is what it was supposed to mean to the citizens of Rome. It's the perfect most primitive and modern representation of 'we're doing something grand' 'everything about us is getting stronger and we're all increasing'. Michelangelo always had his art in that scope, towards Arete. That's literally what they must've saw and got out of it. A complete mature actual severity. He always had that aspect of scope about his art instead of techinque like Da Davinci or beauty like Raphael."
"You see, everything exists on a node. And that node is towards Arete, towards greatness. All life in their heart values pride the most. They want to do something for Arete, that's the logic of their life. Everything outside the node is frozen base material for the 'Doctrine of Plentitude'. Whatever the the members of this doctrine haven't got their suckers and bristles hooked into yet. But I'm probably speaking too iro-
It seems Rita did get too passionate, although I guess it really couldn't of been her fault. No one would've seen that patch of ice in time. Our blue skidoo's front end ripped right over it. The back turned perpendicular and started violently screaming. The car made a circle and gently skipped into the correct orentation on the shoulder... Right when I was about to take my bi-hourly spoonful of opiate powder. The cloth bag went inside out and regurgitated it's contents. We were completely covered in the heavy mesh. It looked like magnetic sand out of an etcher sketch. Except ours was somehow glittering and sparkling brightly in the finely cut power. Probably what they use to chop the plant material. Little metal parts of giant machine blades.
My turn to drive. I'm not above taking some opiate power with a little bit of carpet and dust in it, but I'd have to work fast to scoop any up and with only my hands at use as an efficient tool it's going to turn into a mess real quick. As I'm thinking of the right course of action, I mindlessly open my door so I can get out and assess the situation with an open view. Bad move. The wind picked up, tore into the car and gathered all the finely cut powder into it arms. It sat in the back seat for a second, inspected it's whole bounty, and then carried itself out the back window giving the powder up and throwing it everywhere. I managed to cup a little bit into my hands during the scuffle, enough for a couple nodes from now. My turn to drive.
'What are the aspects of something being frozen, like a landscape'. I'm trying to distract myself from the monotony of the road. 'Anything outside the node. Y'know at first it sounded like nonsense but it's starting to make sense to me. Take this car, it needs to hit every gas station node along the way for it to make it to it's destination. If it falls outside the node, it freezes. It can't move anymore, nothings around it. Any sort of aspect of 'coldness' is all secondary. Vicky was sleeping in the backseat. Rita was talking on the phone, to my aunt. I'm suprised she's up this late. I only have one spoonfull left. I must've been driving for 8 or 9 hours now. The cars are blending together as they circle towards each other. My visions getting blurry, my brain's starting to starv. I know because there's a weird tension setting around my teeth and eyes, like it's getting heavier to keep both maintained. The only thing keeping me stimulated now is a growing curiosity towards Rita and the strange whispers she's dropping.
The car is basically on auto-pilot. Circling forward with the rest of the fish over an infinite amount of empty space after empty space. My sense of time is becoming elongated, a symptom of withdrawal, but this time it's bordering into a psychotic sense of anxiety, probably just stress. It feels like Rita and my aunt have been talking for half a day. Did Rita wait until Vicky fell asleep to call her? Probably so, time would've felt a lot faster if I was distracted by her rows and verbal sparring. Rita whispered again, this one caught up in my ear like a razor blade.
"Grandma's will"
I had to dodge another ice patch. I caught it when the head-lights made it sparkle. There was big semi behind me creening over with a loud groan. Then it started laying on it's horn almost absentmindedly. Vicky opened her eyes for a second and rolled over.
Rita began speaking again. There was always a certain amount of gravity when she spoke. I looked over and caught her looking forward with a glint in her eye, a smug smile, and a proud chin. Vicky was probably just going to give it all to the commune anyway, maybe they talked it out already. Well whatever happens, it's probably for the best. Rita better spot me on another bag if we hope to make it to the end. My bones are somehow getting rusty being weighed down by this emptiness alongside the road. Spot me and do me good to make it to the end, because even a lie is more truthful than being in the frozen wasteland where nothing goes. The lies probably for the best, something the plentitude doesn't know. But it's there chugging along until the end. Maybe I'll join Vicky in the commune.