Stolen
David Antrobus Posted on Friday, September 26, 2014 at 6:03PM 
What first made her run is long forgot, but run she did. Giving careful head in the backseat of limousines was only the beginning. She dreamed of the stars, of stardom and of actual stars, of an impossible silver life onscreen and off—red carpets, green rooms, the blue flashing lights of overdose—and when the cracks begin to show and you run out of inner space there's always the oblivion of actual space.
Yet first she ran. Or drove. Or was driven. Endless bloodred nights, long midwestern trains keeping pace alongside her constant flight. Hitchhiking, joyriding, from turning low-track tricks to hunkering down in hayricks.
Sometimes an easy charm, apposite words, and timely fingers down the throat won't save you. In the end, the teeming randomness of the world swoops in, all smirks and honed surfaces, and snatches you up.
You wanted outer space? Here's space. The shattered windshield glass sprayed like the Milky Way over dark asphalt, each tiny star part of something vast, lovely, and immutably unhinged. Howling through the night, blunt force impact, then the pure silence, the longest gap between breaths, after the broken parts settle and before the dawn cleanup arrives, when even the dry wingsongs of cicadas cease.
Her eyes. Always so pretty. Seeing pretty things. Each piece of glass a makeshift jewel, a life inchoate, hanging amid the vast black fugue of eternal night. Watching them all swirl like bitter snowflakes and cruelty and, one by one, dissolve into nothing: hay bales, pocketbooks, purloined kisses, shining things.
Reader Comments (7)
The imagery seems to speed up and overwhelm the reader and this is exactly right. It becomes a taunt to understanding the terrible ending to her life. David, you always make me think and ponder and re-read sentences so I can hear them in my noggin' again. Another wonderful flash piece, sir.
Yes, and to think this all began with a single image I scrawled half-asleep in a notebook one night, recently. The image of how a shattered windshield on dark blacktop could look like the Milky Way as seen from earth, from some place far away from the city lights.
Oh. This is...amazing. All this imagery. It's so beautiful, and heartbreaking, and...
So beautiful David! Loved the imagery and the message, you are so talented!
Thanks, Laurie and Gabby. Kind of you to read, even kinder to make a comment.
I liked the wee internal rhyme and the train- rhythm of the second paragraph, like playing a harmonica. "shattered windshield glass sprayed like the Milky Way over dark asphalt, each tiny star part of something vast..." That is sheer perfection, Daw. Then comes the futility, the sadness.
I actually had a wee existential disconnect and was trapped in the nausea for a moment. I think this is the best, so far.
It's always a little scary when you nail it, Gordon, or even come fairly close, as you start to worry you'll never approach it again! I suppose the ideal would be to fail nobly for decades then hit paydirt moments before your death. lol
But yes, when you isolate that sentence it does have a visceral poetry, doesn't it? I honestly didn't notice that when I first let the words fall on the page.