I.. I don't know.

The snow. Snow falls consistently here. Flakes, but they look nothing like so. They look warm. Soft. They don't drift, they float. Sidling, side by side. From the clouds, there resonates the city lights that reflect off the sky, the brownish hue that illuminates the silhouettes of the trees all around me, I can see the snow. It falls limply, lightly, softly.

Yet, so different from the snow flakes that fall softly are those that rush diagonally, appearing suddenly from the brown sky into the orange luster of the street lamps. (Those lamps evenly spaced that stand tall and rectangular and few but prominent.) These lamps show me the snow in a hurried frenzy. I look straight up, but I see floating specks of white dust, landing softly to my nose, my lips, my eyes. Again, I turn to the light. In the light, there resembles a diagonal furor.

What is the snow really doing?



Right then, I realized that I was cold. I wore only jeans, a thin t-shirt underlying a thin sweatshirt, and some shoes, but no socks or other undergarments. My jeans slung over my hip, hung up only by my hip bone's curvature. One step and one slip, I'd be half naked in the back of the grocery store parking lot. Not that it would matter much at four in the morning.

I wondered where Collette had gone. She was just here a moment ago. Did I wander off too far? I whistled to myself softly, or tried to, and heard only rushed air with the occasional sharp note. Holding my pants up with my left hand pinky linked through a belt hoop, and holding a heavy gym bag with my right hand, I attempted to straddle back toward the front of the parking lot.

It was a big parking lot - too big for this weather, this time, the few inches of fresh, moist snow Slushee on the ground, and my two-year old sneakers that lacked traction. I slipped, once or twice. Wasn't too bad, really. I was able to keep my pants up at least.

I slipped again. This time, I landed flat on my ass - cold and bare enough to freeze my lower half on impact. After a split reflexive burst of laughter, I felt a searing sharp pain stun me up the spine. I didn't try to stand up. I just fell back to lie down on the snow-laden concrete.

"Make the world do your bidding," read one flyer buried under the snow. "Control your world, and you control the world around you. Impress others, win them over, and influence them!" I made a paper airplane out of the flyer, which didn't fare well in the unfavorable weather conditions. Hmm. At least I tried.

I lied there for another minute or two. My left hand was stuffed down my pants, trying to soak up as much warmth as there was for me to recycle. My right hand remained firmly attached to the handle of the gym bag. Lying still, I leaned my head up to see a silhouette in the distance.

"Collette?"

After a struggle, I managed to sit upright, and peering through my squinted eyes, shut tightly in the pain of the prior impact, I saw the silhouette take form.

The silhouette grew slowly over the trees, slowly over the sky. It formed, large and shapeless. It took on no color, but after a moment, it soon covered half the sky. There, the moon lay, slung over the shoulders of the alignment of the planets. Venus, Mars, Saturn - their lights synchronized in a form oddly akin to a parallelogram with the moon. The flurry soon ceased. The sky revealed itself. The world darkened, but the moon shone a full circle above me.

The brown light subsided, but the cold intensified. My breath formed before me, as rigid and unmoving as could possibly be. When the condensation dissipated, I came to see that there was not a cloud in the sky.

I stood there, alone, staring at the sky. As tears formed, they didn't fall, freezing before they could leave their tails.

Fifteeen steps to my right, seventeen diagonally toward the cart corral, three steps backward, and my back now arched against the hood of a car, one that felt cracked and bent up. "There you are, Collette. Let's go for a ride."



The smoke dances as it flows from the exhaust pipes, cough after cough. Each puff taking form of some ethereal figure, every last one clad with a pair of eyes, longing and staring, before tearing apart and fading into the night. There's ice, rain.. There's the eyes of the street light - those of a four-eyed symmetrical dragon - which stare from behind the curtain of descended, overbearing fog. Red and angry, unwilling and desiring. Oh, green now.



Collette chugged on the overpass, made her way to the on-ramp, her heart beating throughout the metal encasement that made her corporeal presence, her soul and essence transfusing with me, in and out, over and again. Our shared shivers transpired to one another with a respect and understanding that could only be shared by elder lovers. Actually, her engine fired irregularly and heavily, which probably had something to do with my sisters fucking up the alignment of my car by purposefully speeding up to speed bumps and curbs, but I couldn't know for sure. Either way, Collette chugged gracefully for one in her state and time. What could I do without you, Collette?

"It's time to board, sir."

Jolted, I looked up, saw no one. I looked around me, saw nothing. I looked in front of me, squinted off into the dark. A lake. An ancient lake. A sordid, forlorn, ancient lake.

I'd been parked here for a while. I forced myself to recall my position, my steps, my course of action... I must have gotten off one of the last exits on this highway. I didn't know the lake could be seen from here, though. Where was I exactly?

I looked at the clock - 5:38 AM. Looking out into the sky, I found the Moon still hung, but lower than when it first revealed itself over an hour earlier. I reached into the back seat and snatched a beach blanket, draping it over myself, tucking it under my thighs. The lights of the planets were less impressive now - some sparse, stringy clouds made their way in front of their glows. I didn't see the sun, though. I didn't see any light. Maybe the sun will rise late today. I don't know...


Almost two hours later, I awoke to the sound of a truck's bullhorn. Startled, I gasped. Angered by my gasp, I threw the blanket off of me, onto the passenger's seat. Quickly, I looked for the source of the sound - just a truck passing by on the freeway behind me. I closed my eyes, counted down from 10, and glanced at the clock. Honest, though, I knew that I didn't need to see the clock to know what time it actually was. My lucky number - the same time I woke up every morning - by some serendipity or curse.

Several minutes later, at 7:27, I started Collette up again, put her in reverse, and backed out of the park and ride lot. I didn't know where I was. Much less did I have a clue as to where I wanted to go.

The sun peered through the trees, somehow granting them the appearance of evergreens. I didn't think they were, though. Perhaps pine trees. Regardless of the coniferous greenery, the sun had indeed risen. I was indeed still alive for another day.

I opened an unlabeled white bottle. Inside were little green capsules. I took one, swallowed the pill after suppressing a gag reflex, and placed the bottle back in the glove compartment.


"Where do we go from here now, Collette?"