DARK SATIRE
No Solace in the Dark
My caddywompus life
Sometimes when I’m driving at night, I imagine the silhouettes of large dinosaurs and monsters creeping and cavorting in the darkness of the cornfields. Crushing cornstalks or snowdrifts keeping pace with my car only to be overcome by an even larger predator.
My brain jumpy with ideas, I pull over to the loose gravel shoulder and roll down the window. I needed to wake my brain to dislodge yet another idea that should qualify me for therapy —
Dinosaurs hunting each other on frozen midwest tundra with samurai swords and laser cannons.
I forget to put the car in park.
I slam my foot on the brake so hard I nail my head on the steering wheel. Obviously more concerned with a possible concussion, my foot releases the brake and I continue to roll.
By the time I realize I have two tires already in the ditch, I resign myself to being one of the victims of the Iowa winter. Even though I wasn’t going too fast on an icy road, my dilemma was the result of something equally stupid.
Just then, my rear door opens and closes. My caddywhompus car stops, a third tire barely holding on to the grass and gravel beside the road. I jump with a start when I look in my rearview mirror and see a man sitting in my back seat.
“Dinosaurs,” the grizzled man said. “Am I right?”
His voice was a hypnotic mix between Rip Torn and The Dude.
“Depends on what your question is,” I replied. “What are you doing in my car?”
“I was walking — “
“That doesn’t explain why you’re in my car,” I said as I turned in my seat. I stopped when I heard the car’s suspension creak.
I remained still as I stared at my passenger.
“I was walking,” he said, unphased. “and needed a place to sit.”
“As you can see — ” I said.
“I can leave — I’ll leave,” he said as he reached for the door handle. The smell of dried ammonia, stale corn nuts, and — the commanding smell of citrus and spice only found in Old Spice Bear Glove — I wanted him to leave.
But I couldn’t let him.
I could feel the car move a bit.
I put up a hand, the universal sign for ‘stay in the car or we both will die — or at least end up turtled in a hybrid in the ditch — ’ and the man remained still.
I look around me and see nothing. The nothing you see only on desolate roads in the Midwest in between the rumbling of bloated grain trucks and muscle-bound tractors and overzealous pickups on their way to a place that requires their immediate attendance, to which you should be privy and get the fuck out of their way.
The only thing I could hear aside from our breathing in the car was the wind howling to get in. I stared out the windshield at the hills in the distance rushing at me through the tunnel of my vision —
“Hey Vonnegut — ” my passenger said.
Cold air sliced through the back of my head. My window was open and
“Get to the point,” voicing my thought. “There is a fine line between suffering and humor — The point, Junior. What’s the fucking point?”
A sunburned farmer in just overalls and a straw har dancing with the absorbed euphoria of Napoleon Dynamite with glowsticks in a cornfield.
SO Iowa — there’s a cow and a row of monolithic wind turbines looming in the background.
Heartbroken since I found out life was not a movie and that I was never going to be able to use all those cool comebacks and self-discovery montages I had filmed in my head.
Feeling at odds with my surroundings. I feel like I am a walking adversary — or am I just paranoid?
Wishful worrying?
An existentialist amidst internalist closed minds.
Rainbow in the Red, white, and orange-tinged blue.
Hugged by fear-coated-hatred fueled intimidation and passive-aggressive acceptance because that’s just the easiest thing to do is like living in a time bomb.
I try to write about my surroundings and all I get is anger and cynicism.
No solace when the closer I look, the darker it gets.
I also write satire (Mostly on Muddyum) and religious issues (re: atheism). Geet my new articles in your inbox.
