Metal Regression

Sometimes I get remarks from people I know about how I haven’t grown much through the vicissitudes of pleasures, pains, and sneers.

“Some things change but Jairo, he’ll be the same for years”.

I laugh and give them the finger guns, make some clicking noises.

I’ll tell them I just know what I like. Because how could they ever fathom the truth of my foolish choices.

My secret is in plain sight. Sitting right there in the kitchen of my house.

Many moons ago I tampered with forces beyond my understanding, idiocy I did espouse.

I read the books. They were easy to find, most everything is nowadays.

Originally it was only out of curiosity, but as I read my pride erupted into a blaze.

“What do these people know that I do not?!”

“I can do this myself, I’ll put together the ingredients that time forgot.”

So I set about my errand, and had to gather the resources.

There was only one place I could go, the house of sorcerers who dispensed powerful forces.

Bearded men did greet me, and they had all manners of equipment, reagents, and insidious creatures.

I described to them my goal, and if they knew I was a fool, they did not show it on their features.

Happily they sold me the materials I required: dormant ravenous animals, the fluid extracted from living corpses, and grains of sin.

I left there with my hubris on full display, how could I help but grin.

That night was dark and brooding, a gift I thought.

Whether it was my inexperience, naivete, or ego I know not, but ne’er did I get the results I sought.

I spoke the words of power in a hurry, I did not care to keep in mind my quarry, and I haphazardly measured the components.

Worst of all I dropped the final piece into the concoction by accident. No matter I thought, as the liquid dripped from my clothes back into the cauldron. “I have all but bested this opponent”.

I stared into the pot and it bubbled and gurgled as if it was trying to tell me something of great importance in a language I did not understand.

My eyes gleamed with the reflection of my dark victory. But soon I would see the full breadth of what my blunder would command.

The first half of the ritual was over, and the second would take weeks before I could, in my delicious mixture, partake.

But I never would. Perhaps it was the pieces of my dead skin that the brew did take.

But I found myself robbed of my agency, despondent, and lethargic. A sorry state.

I should have opened the vessel soon thereafter, but dear reader, it’s been years since that day and I don’t remember laughter.

It sits in my kitchen still, collecting my worries, anxieties, and fears.

It has imparted on me something I could not foresee. My nails have stopped growing, my hair stays at the same length, even my bowels do not move.

Hunger is but a memory, thirst seems like an old dream. I have long ago decided this calamity I could not disprove.

The truth is I am trapped in this body, in this state, unable to move on, to realize my fate.

The potion that I tried to make took something from me on that night, I realized too late.

A piece of me, one of the most important. My soul, my humanity. It’s robbed me of living but gifted me an eternity.

And still, I dare not open the lid to that ethereal beverage. Will the years of pause suddenly come rushing to my unsuspecting body?

Sometimes, on sleepless nights I can hear a hum emanating from the receptacle and my dreams turn to waking nightmares as I feel the severance of heart and mind.

I have visions of what I think may be lurking inside, a horrible mixture of magicks, spirits, and flesh that I did enshrine.

To look upon it myself would be too much to bear, and so it sits in my kitchen, never to be drunk by mortal hands.

But instead it has imbibed mine own psyche. My body now is but a puppet and my true self swims in the golden dark depths of the beer I brewed then neglected due to life’s demands.

Dual twin guitar attacks blast out of my stereo as I politely turn my blinker on to slowly switch lanes on the 405. “Today is a good night!”, I yell loudly at myself as I barrel down the highway at 5 miles per hour. The passenger in the front seat thinks I was talking to them, so be it.

“Dude, what are you on about”, they say.

I answer and tell them I can taste the adventure in the air is all. It’s a lie though because all I taste is the salty, wheaty remnants of the sesame sticks I was snacking on. I greedily thrust my fingers into small container that held them, finding none. As my fingers flail deeper into the container, they hit pay dirt. The accumulated loose grains of salt have all collected together forming a concentrated package of pure saltstruction that my mouth is ready to receive. An amateur would try to pinch the grains together but I, an intellectual, lick my fingers to make sure the moistness covers the maximum surface area for optimal salt delivery. I slide my fingers into my mouth and the familiar feeling of my tongue dehydrating is there to meet me.

“Awwww YEAAAAH”, I burst out like a salt shaker kool-aid man.

My passenger looks at me oddly never knowing the sheer ecstasy radiating from body.

My voice cracks as I say “So what did you do this summer?” As they start explaining the ins and outs of their job, I take a mental sigh of relief. Good I have them talking for a while, I immediately stop paying attention and let my social verbal cues manage the conversation. My mind has business to attend to.

I need to merge right now but the speed differential between the lanes is drastic. The cars to the right blend together into one color as they warp through the highway at unfathomable speeds. I do the mental calculations in my head, not only do I have to make sure I don’t get rammed by a car, but I need enough time to accelerate to their speed so the car behind doesn’t slam into me. I do some quick finger math and decide I’ll need approximately 2 years to perform the maneuver. It’s those 105 bastards with their dedicated lanes that have put me in this position. They think they’re above us for traveling through the parts of LA no one likes. We 405ers never catch a break, but I’ll have the last laugh yet. They’ll rue the day they underestimated the tenacity and patience of the 405er. The time for politeness is over, I don’t turn my blinker on because I’ve never met a 105er that would actually slow down to give me the chance needed to get over, I’m on to those conniving jerks, I see through their plans to speed up instead of giving me a shot. I stalk my side view mirror for the perfect gap as the cars zoom by. Like a predator cat I slow to a crawl, waiting…biding my time. I try to stop the larger trucks and trailers, they are slower and less quick to react leaving me ample time to cut in.  I spot a huge long distance bus and a smile curls around my face, I smell the kill. The gap in cars is approaching like an unsuspecting deer, and my hands on the steering wheel tense up ready to strike. Before the metallic taste of victory washes over me, I am rudely reminded of the laws of this concrete jungle. Another car somewhere behind me goes in for the kill and succeeds.

The gap is closed, the prey is lost and I silently mutter to myself the rule I forgot, “There’s always another car ready to merge”.

“What?” says my passenger.

“Never mind, uh, sounds rough”, I tell them hoping that the general feeling of struggle my subconscious picked up from the out of focus conversation was right.

“Yeah”, they say and continue.

Time is running out, if I don’t merge now I’ll be cast into the fiery pits of staying on the 405. I watch the lane I need to get on with renewed focus when I see another chance. I quickly turn on my blinker as a legal formality, never actually expecting that it would give anyone notice. My arms spin the steering wheel until I’m met with the haptic feedback of hitting the maximum turn radius and as I grit my teeth I push down on the accelerator. The leap forward startles me for a second, but I quickly have to negotiate settling into my lane so I don’t cut across the highway like a redirected missile. I let the wheel spin from under my hands as my car corrects it’s own course. Finally I’m reaching the dizzying speeds of the dedicated 105 lane. I watch my odometer climb to new heights…10 mph, 15 mph, and settling on 20 mph, the cars in the 405 lanes are now dashes of color. As I climb up the 105 ramp I look back at the 405ers. Bottom dwellers, the lot of them, tax them I say. Those 405ers think they’re better than us because they have the worst commute at any time of day. Weak. Deplorable. If I ever meet one in person I’ll have some choice words.

The conversation bubbles back up to my consciousnesses “…and that’s why you can’t feed dogs chocolate”, they finish saying.

“Yeah…CLASSIC DOGS”, I sputter.

“Yeah, I guess”, they say.

“So what about cats?” I say trying to incite a tangent. They take the bait just as I notice something.

There’s a truck next to me I thought I had left behind ages ago. How is this possible, I zoomed past it miles back and here it is again, in spite of me. I thought I made the smart choices, zigged when I had to, zagged when it was right. Even in traffic the gap between me and this god damned truck should have been ever widened. Did it take another route I didn’t know about? Has google betrayed me. Imagine having the entirety of Los Angeles ask you for directions, hinging on your every word for guidance. The freeways are the veins of the city and Google maps literally has power over the flow of the blood. Who’s to say they don’t keep the nice and empty routes hidden from the masses. Maybe they set them apart for their VIPs, persons in power, people with money, the government? With a push of a button they can misdirect thousands of vehicles to make a side street empty for Jeff Bezos to get McDonalds coffee. Is this truck evidence of that? Maybe, because if not what am I to believe. The choices I’ve made don’t matter? Every smart decision I thought I made driving on this highway, every driver I’ve cut off, every time I switched lanes only to notice that it got slower and immediately switched back, every motorcyclist I spooked….did it all not matter? All the split second decisions shaving off minutes of my life in stress. I’ve literally given my life to get ahead and here this truck is nonchalantly caught up, taunting me with it’s hideous message of consumption. EAT FRESH. The tortoise to my hare, a sign that in the end everything I’ve done is meaningless, the universe doesn’t care about me or the risks I’ve taken, the decisions I’ve made or even my morality because it will just let this giant, lumbering beast of a truck catch up to me…..this fucking truck…..this MOTHERFUCKING TRUCK! I grunt audibly.

“That truck is the WORST, fuck Subway!”, I interrupt my passenger.

“Damn, I didn’t know you hated them like that?”, they say.

“Yeah man, they have trash sandwiches. Never eating there again.”, I say.

My passenger pauses reflectively, almost as if to question whether Subway is even worth defending then lets it go.

“Are we almost there?”, they ask.

I look up into the sky while the blast beats thump out of my speakers. Still even now, faced by the indifference of the universe, I feel a sense of defiance, my spirit won’t roll over and accept death, It will die a warrior’s death traveling a low speeds on the 105.

“No”, I say, “We’re not. Give me like 10 minutes”. I turn my blinkers on.