Within/Without

chapter forty-two.

Simon

I'm not myself, but that isn't the unusual part. The unusual part is I seem to have lost the cognizance to know who I am at all. My mind is mush, my body achey and strange, like it no longer belongs to me. As I leave the airport, walking into a rush of icy air that knocks the breath from my chest, I am vaguely aware that my body isn't my own. My skin feels different, heavy, my eyes burn, my legs seem to move through water rather than air. I'm home, I think, but am I really?

The last few hours all feel like a fever dream. I have no proof that they are not.

The one thing I do notice is that my phone has stopped ringing. Has Noah given up? Does he care anymore? If I called him now, would he pick up?

I walk to the edge of the parking lot where I left my sedan and I climb in the car and sit in the driver's seat but I don't start the engine. Night presses against the windows. Black, dripping, barely brushed with stars. Or it could be morning. Who even knows? I don't.

I stare at my phone screen for a while, and though the light is harsh, a knife through the dark, I don't really see it at all. My finger hovers over Noah's name, lowers, hovers over Val's.

I call neither. What would I even say?

I'm scared.

Something isn't right.

I'm sorry.

I love you.

I've read so many books and poems about death. Sometimes the characters know it's coming. Often, they do. It's a hunch. A sudden breath of acceptance, a revelation. Oh, this is it. Oh. I see. Okay. I used to wonder how anyone could possibly know, what that sort of revelation even felt like.

But I'm starting to get it, now. I am beginning to understand.

I turn the key, and the engine roars to life beneath me. I barely hear it. The radio switches on. David Bowie. I barely hear it. I drive and drive and drive, the road endless, winding, until there are sirens wailing inexplicably behind me. I barely hear it.

I pull over, gravel popping underneath the wheels. When I roll the window down, there it is again. The cold, cold air. Biting and hissing like a snake. There's a light in my face, the officer saying, gruffly, License and registration.

License? Registration? I have so many. Which one is right?

I fumble around in the glove compartment, mindlessly. The officer's watching. He's watching. Though the rest of me is sober my fingers are still drunk; they trail aimlessly over the several IDs shoved in the glove compartment until the drawer falls open too far and at least five of them spill out onto the floor. I get the strange feeling this has happened before.

The officer looks at the IDs, then looks at me.

Get out of the car.

I get out of the car.