Am I sorry your sky went black?

I led a death caravan today. Sounds out-of-the-ordinary, but if you were a spectator, it wouldn't be. I think that's how the world works sometimes. It's good at disgusing itself and as much as I'd like to blame humankind for being oblivious, I think some things are meant to be masqueraded. It's definitely not a good thing, but it's just how it happens.





Back to my story, I woke up to a gray sky, and lo and behold, it's still gray. It felt like something out of a horror movie that takes place in some misty woods with the "heroes" left to find a mansion looking very out of place or some rustic sort of groud that ultimately harbors what used to be their safety, but now has become nightmare. It was a goth metal music video and a delicious slasher brought to life. I noticed just after the light on Lomita as I was trekking down Western. I didn't notice completely, but I did confirm I was leading something by the time I passed Narbonne High. They being the enemy school back in my high school days, I found it ironic I discovered my cabaret just after passing their quarters. The misty sky was still streaching the bruises it sustained over night, with clouds colliding so softly as if falling apart over each other rather than partaking in combat. So there it was in the rearview: a giant metal snake, perhaps a metal dragon, curving along the road behind me--it slithered in a rhythmic way, with each section of its body curving at just the right time. It was silver looking like it had a tongue ready to flicker to get a taste of me. I was a few feet ahead with the asphalt a decent restricting gap behind me and it front of it. It wasn't entirely silver, it just had a silver head (which was something in a Honda or BMW) with a bit of red, black, and I believe blue connected by a single spinal column. Surprisingly, it was completely even--just the same size fragments of its body with no distortion except in color. It stayed perfectly behind me and eerily, no one stepped in my way for miles. Up until Torrance Boulevard, it twisted and slithered, getting longer with each attracted piece clinging and following. Some little parts crawled away like disoriented black beetles. Was I being attacked? Where was this giant confounding snake headed?

Perhaps the strange occurences in life of a significance in some way, but it's meant as a secret, like an ancient language or transcriptions to the dead sea scrolls. There had to be a reason I chose the scenic route. There had to be a reason no one ever passed me. There had to be a reason for the way it moved besides proper physics. There had to be a reason for all the silence. And what of the dull and morbid cabaret that allowed me to lead it so far? I turned onto Artesia, and one car kept swining back and forth in front of my little drones as if it were willing to slay me if given the chance. I stopped and its breaks stuttered, flashing on, fluttering, flashing off, fluttering then flashing on again. It was a nervous little thing that finally stopped a bit too far away from me and lost its nerve completely. One more turn onto Crenshaw with the dimness of the morning staying relentlessly painted to the sky. It could've been raining ashes and snowing all at once, but the sky was completely still. When I arrived at EC, I stepped out and actually looked up like the cliche victim of the perils of a dark sky. I could feel the air swell thick in my lungs and on my skin. Perhaps I could've held it in my hands and brought it close, but instead I trembled. I, the leader of the most deathly looking display I'd ever seen besides the obvious scenes of death and the like, trembled at the silence. Of all things, I felt a slight fear and submission toward the silence of the gray and empty parking lot. After all, all around me was a sea of cars all potential pieces of a caravan the next morning or right after class. Who were all these people, anyway? And what of those in the caravan? Why did they come together in such a way? I know it wasn't on purpose, but the sheer obscurity of it must've had a reason--or been a reason--of some sort.

The only company I had in the midst of the lot was the low and foreboading buzzing of the electric wires along the telephone poles, strung in black like the knitters at the beginning of Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad), who sat there knitting mindlessly, leaving a heap of black fabric to grow larger and without shape. There was this strange power as the silence was cut with the buzzing like I was about to be plucked by some force coming from above--as if I were about to be brutally slain and practically massacred until I was nothing but an accomplished red target on the asphalt. I always feared that parking lot. It's not that it was unsafe, but the scale of it and the fact that there is so many strangers...a woman can never be too sure, especially when what has been sure has not always been pleasant (and I'm speaking specifically, although I do not wish to be specific about this). Being as worn as I, I don't think I could necessarily fight off whatever any stranger threw at me. And don't mean just any stranger, but a stranger--the shadow type of stranger who comes so quickly, he is faceless and without breath and only human desire and form to be recognized, only to dissipate in the confusion. Once I was out and close to class, the silence changed and therein lied the end of it. For some reason, I doubt anything this strange will happen again in the same manner, and if it should, it shall be far away.