Lenora sat behind the driver’s seat unsure of her next move. To her traveling companion she said, “What now, Danielle? Do we wait or drive on? With near abhorrence in her voice she replied, “We’ve been here on the side of the road for 8 days. I seriously doubt she’s coming.”
“She always shows up, why not this time?”
“She’s not coming. Drive on. ”
The gears strip and the car lunged forward then back as Lenora attempted to drive a beat up manual import down a highway going the wrong direction. While wresting with the shift she can hear the tires struggle for traction, vibrate and quake on black pavement. Then bam! One after the other tires explode. Rubber flies across the sky like black crows and lands where it pleases barely missing families on their way to well planned vacations.
The families don’t seem to notice the misdirected travelers with a defective vehicle. Some vacationers are clearly asleep at the wheel; some are in a rush to nowhere. Then there are cars with children watching separate DVD players as their parents bicker over some insignificant fault that could easily be forgiven and forgotten were it not for a decade of undercurrent. No, they don’t see them, can’t see them or send out a warning to abandon their course and turn back. So they just drive on. They drive on rims as sparks taunt the gas trail from the broken fuel line.
“We’re on nothing but rims,” Lenora said. “That can’t be good for the fuel leak. We’re almost on empty and the next rest stop with fuel is more than a mile ahead. We aren’t going to make it. Danielle, where is she? Why didn’t she come? She always comes.”
“Forget it” Danielle says with irritation. “Just drive on.”
Lenora wondered how they’d make it one more inch let alone a mile. The car was falling apart from all sides. The fuel line spilled any hope of arriving at their indefinable destination. Their protection from rough pavement, gravel, dirt and litter was gone and now fumes have begun to fill the interior and sting the eyes of the one behind the wheel. How was she to “drive on” with a vehicle only good for scrap metal?
As Lenora questioned her own sanity and the sanity of Danielle she noticed her eyes were the only one’s watering and her lungs were the only lungs rejecting the fumes. Danielle breathed in an out with no labor as if her lungs were accustomed to burning and making due with pollutants and contamination. She breathed in as if they’d traveled down a country road past a field of daffodils closed in by honeysuckle lined fences. She remained unaware of the heavy burden the gases placed on Lenora’s ability to think or reason. Danielle did not acknowledge this burden as it stuck to the windows, the seat belts, the air bags and the door handles. She just kept saying, “Drive on” as if it was all she knew to do.
(All therapy related creative writing is here.)
STORY: Drive On – Friday, September 25, 2009 – 1:32AM EST
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