In a shocking turn of events, I somehow managed to crank out a SECOND short story over the span of two months. (I'm sure you can tell I'm passionate about writing. And definitely not distracted by anything else like, idk, a job.) But yeah this is supposed to be quite different from the last story I shared and I'd love to hear your feedback! Just please don't curse in the comments, my mom checks my iPad every three minutes and every time she sees a bad word she hits me over the head with a metal pipe.
When I drive down the highway, she’s there. Staring at me through the sunset, blazing in burning scarlet through my rearview mirror. Ahead of me: city lights, conformity, structure, order. Behind me: wilderness, chaos, uncertainty. But also, beauty. The life I left behind when we said goodbye for the last time.
I shake my head. I shouldn’t regret what I did. It was the only way to preserve my future. The only way to avoid what we were becoming. If I wanted to be successful—to be happy—I needed to get away from her.
I turn on my turn signal. Monotonous clicks, over and over again. They blur together in my mind until I don’t hear them at all. As I glide to the right and slip into place in my new lane, I notice the sunset in my mirrors becoming more vibrant. It’s getting late. Her fiery glow tempts me to turn around and face her—face everything. She’s tantalizing. Entrancing.
. . . .
“We could be free. Free from all this madness. You’re too anxious about where we’re going; how about you just imagine with me?”
It always felt magical to be around her. She had a way of pulling me in with her voice. It started with her dreams; she would give me a drop of her imagination, and it was nothing less than beautiful. She would paint a picture of us together on a beach somewhere far away, with the past far behind us and the future too far ahead to worry about. It was the present that mattered—the fact that we were together—and that was it. She never had a plan, just the idea that we would someday escape.
“You’re too young to be chasing conformity. You should be chasing thrills. Chasing sunsets.”
While the image of riding through the desert with her in a convertible was appealing, I always felt uneasy at the thought of leaving my life behind. How would we make money? How would we support our extravagant, thrill-seeking adventures? She said that where we were going, we didn’t need money. I asked her to explain. She got upset and said I was being close-minded. I was always too caught up in the minutiae to see the vision.
“You’re either one with me or one of them. The whole world sees us as immature, but they’re too stuck in their routines to see the beauty in chaos.”
Chaos. My heart pounded as the word left her mouth. A rush of adrenaline—energy and amazement crashing into panic and fear. What if she was right? Maybe conformity really was a curse. Maybe that panic and fear—the uncertainty of stepping into something totally unfamiliar—was real happiness. But if it was, why did it make me feel so horrible? So sick? Those drops of imagination hypnotized me, her dreams painted like hallucinations across the canvas of my mind. And I was addicted to them. I kept coming back for more of what she wanted, more of her visions. But whenever I wasn’t high on her energy, it all came crashing down. Pillars of sand built on shifting ground—without her magic, they couldn’t stand. It was all totally unsustainable. Wholly unrealistic and utterly unachievable.
“I knew you couldn’t handle the truth. I wanted to believe it wasn’t true, but I knew it all along. You weren’t supposed to be different. You were just like them from the moment we met.”
Her words—the very ones that lifted me so high—dragged me down lower than I’d ever been before. And all at once, everything broke. The visions of paradise, peace, and love shattered into a thousand pieces—their shards tearing through the intricate art she’d tried to paint in my mind. Her dreams were nothing but smoke and mirrors. But now the smoke had cleared and the mirrors were broken, and all that remained was the ugly truth.
“You’re living a lie. You wanna escape this? You wanna get away from everything? You can’t do it by chasing sunsets, by ignoring reality. Your visions are built on this lofty idea that things will magically get better. They won’t. You need to fix them yourself.”
“…”
She didn’t say a word. She just looked at me in disbelief. Didn’t she know I was one of them? Why was she surprised when I finally broke?
And then, suddenly, she began to cry. Her head dropped. She cupped her face in her palms and her shoulders heaved. She wanted me to stay and comfort her, but with all the visions shattered and all the dreams broken, I didn’t even know how to speak to her. So I left, without saying another word.
I don’t remember anything else about that night, just the deafening silence that came with knowing it was all over. The stinging pain left behind by her broken dreams.
. . . .
My exit is coming up. I can see the skyscrapers towering above me, the road ahead of me turning to guide me into the city. The roads are predictable and solid. The buildings tower high into the sky, capturing the sunset’s golden gleam in their glassy façade. Beautiful. Fragile. Fleeting. For a moment, I see her shining. But then the light shifts again, and I don’t.
As I drive up to my destination, I stare up at the world I’ve embraced, the skyscrapers, the patterns, and the monotony. A golden beam of sun slowly drifts up the side, the last embers of light disappearing as it slips below the horizon. And as quickly as she came to me, she’s gone.
