by Tniz Ren Rey
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Standing under fluorescent street lamps, the parking lot was a sea of asphalt that softly swayed with their bodies as the tapping of moths vibrated from above. The four bodies stood huddled close together near the hood of their car, the warmth of miles driven rising up, the cold November air piercing through their layers of cotton. All of their teeth chattered in unison.
He took out a ziplock bag, its contents jangling in mid-air, as he teased the bag in front of everyone’s faces. Four capsules, filled with bright white crystalline— the more he shook the bag the more their mouths watered for salvation.
She rolled her eyes and grabbed the bag from his hand, sighing as she pried the flimsy plastic bag open. She dug her nose into the bag and took a whiff of its contents, imagining freshly baked bread, but instead smelled something like battery acid, partitioned for the four of them.
She looked at each one of her friends, gazing so intently into their eyes, and she noticed how each strand of hair rested against their skin, their mouths half smiling. All of their eyes shifted from one person to the next, going in circles until infinity.
Carefully, she picked up each capsule and placed one in each of their hands. Receiving holy communion under the halo of a parking lot lamp post, they dropped the capsule into their mouths and threw back their heads, imbibing whatever bottle of liquid was thrown in the back seat the night before.
“Holy shit that tastes like ass, I need more water.”
“That seemed like way more than last time.”
“Didn’t we just swallow toilet paper last time?”
“It was pressed last time, we didn’t have it like this.”
—
Four bodies crammed inside a cold, stationary car. The static of the radio was a fluctuating hum that swam underneath their legs and nestled behind their knees. Palms were sweaty, their eyes rolled so far back as if they were weights controlling the equilibrium of their heads. No one noticed who started playing something from their phone, but the drone of the music enveloped the space and held their vulnerable bodies into euphoric harmony.
“Fuck, what is this? This is so good”
“It feels like a warm sweater”
“Fuuuuuuck, that guitar part though”
“Wait, so what is it?”
The substance was reaching its climax and everyone could tell from the lack of banter that normally happened at this point in the evening. Their words were lodged in between the roof of their mouths and tongues, each word being saved for another tender moment. Their bodies melted into the flannel car seats, heads resting on shoulders, laps and stomachs. Hands were laying wherever offered refuge from cold empty air— a car seat crevice, inside a pocket filled with old post-its and candy wrappers, interlocked with another hand.
The car expanded as the minutes accumulated, the back seat becoming more spacious, the front seats inching closer to each other. Looking up, the ceiling of the car all of a sudden possessed a beautiful pattern of dots and squares that lined up neatly and formed more complex shapes; hexagons and triangles all morphing into one another.
Their altered state made them forget where they were, until they heard a door slam shut next to them, and footsteps shuffling down a metal ramp a few feet away. A collective sigh was presented to the black asphalt of the parking lot as they peered carefully out the window, the four of them offering their vulnerable bodies to the discomfort of passing time. They were still stationary, in the back seat of their car, in a euphoric stupor. Restoring themselves, they held hands and comforted each other through ecstatic laughter.
“How long will this last?”
—
Hours morphed into each other.
He noticed he had been crying for quite some time. A sadness filled the car as they witnessed the sun wobbling onto the horizon. Wispy beams of yellows and reds circled the perimeters of their eyelids. Lips trembled in the morning haze as the serotonin dipped below the ground. They adjusted to their comedown, gathered themselves, and looked out the window— glistening asphalt, shimmering in the morning sun, blinding their sense of reality.
A collective sigh, an offering to the parking lot.
She started the car and maneuvered out of the parking spot. A song started to play:
Listen close and don’t be stoned
I’ll be here in the morning
Cause I’m just floating…
Four heavy heads drove past familiar light posts and concrete parking blocks that outlined storefronts and the town’s main grocery store. The sun settled above the thin mist, in its usual spot, creating moving shadows for them to follow from inside the steady moving car. They all took in the smell of an early November morning, damp and new.
“I’m stopping by to grab some coffee, anyone else down?” “Yeah, sounds good.”
“I’m down.”
“Yeah, I’m down too.”
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I’m currently trying to daydream more. I spend time thinking about vegetables and how they feel under the blade of a knife. I daydream a lot about one day finding a morel mushroom, thinking perhaps I’ve walked by one at some point but never noticed. I especially like daydreaming of the stranger I’ll be standing behind the next time I’m at a coffee shop, wondering if they know I’m staring at the stray hairs on the back of their t-shirt. - TRR