Super Substance

Late October. Late apex.

The ghost in Gabriella’s personal life possessed her fingers and flew out onto her monitor. Her HR email was overly stern, and a foreordained insinuation fired off to a man purported to be indulging in drug use by parties three times removed from the act. The “SEND” keystroke came with the crack of a gavel. A professional overreach that bled over from her own reality at home. This caused her department head to immediately darken her doorway.

“Hey… you doing okay?”

Gabby didn’t look up, but replied coldly, “Yeah… it’s just… you know.” while finishing off her bitter coffee.

Gabby clopped heels through the parking garage and unlocked the black Cobalt. The halide lighting casting a lens flare on a bad dream. She remarked at how dark it was at 6PM. As is established in the Midwest on the day after Halloween, each night was growing darker than the previous… or swallowing the amount of light left, depending on your perspective. The bruised sky that swirled tonight brought out it’s own brand of gloom.

Her office attire was dark. Sitting in the dark interior, dark post-hardcore on the stereo… everything seemed to be black as death. It came with Gabby’s own metamorphosis. For something to change, the prerequisite is that other things become no-more. Her unrestrained smile was gone. She was standing up for herself at work, demanding respect. Her world now felt sharper, but lonelier. She did miss her old self sometimes, the version willfully-ignorant to the lies in a sacrifice to be enough for some.

Gabby turned on the Chevy’s heater, and set course for her crumbling century-old bungalow. A Spirit Halloween store went by with regret. She had skipped the festivities this year. Usually, Halloween was her sanctuary. It was the one night a year where wearing a mask felt real. But she was tired of masks. She was tired of the bad boy allure of Raul’s exaggerated character. He had that reckless, ladies-man charisma that used to make her heart race. Now it just made her skin crawl. Still, as she reached for the attitude-adjustment lever of third gear, a traitorous part of her longed for the chaos. At least it was a something.

The Cobalt’s Roots-blower made it’s own with a melancholy “rrrrREEEEEEEEEEE”, which always produced confused stares from pedestrians, and a grin for the 27 year old. She had only owned the car just four months, but it seemed like years with the concurrence of so many events in her crumbling relationship. She made the turn for 5th Street and anticipated the polished surface of the asphalt.

She recalled the day she picked out the modded Chevy on a whim with Raul. “It sounds like it’s meowing!”, he remarked about the supercharger on the test drive. The bright daylight filtered through the trees, and scrolled across his beaming face in the passenger seat. “Mi novia es una chida.” Gabby laughed, and entertained her boyfriend with more brisk manual shifting.

He led her hand through the park that day, and advanced past the sign labled “THIS IS NOT A PATH” to enjoy some celebratory bottom-shelf brandy and OJ next to the Fox river. In this time, Gabby marveled at how her high school crush continued to surprise. They were too into each other’s faces to notice the scowling homeowner’s approach until he abbreviated their picnic with “This is private property.”

Now, she was spending another day off alone. The car felt... misguided. The neighborhood mechanics were shady friends of Raul’s who worked for beer. They had bolted on her new BC coilovers, and while they had the know-how to only burn down just one garage, the steering was twitchy. The wheel darted around like her own frayed nerves.

She pulled into the Farm and Fleet service bay. The bright fluorescent lights hummed with a clinical indifference that matched Raul’s texting behavior while the two of them hashed out plans for the evening. The technician looked at the slammed ride height and complained. “I can’t set it completely to the manufacturer’s specs. That’s our policy.”

“Just align it,” Gabby said, her voice firmer than it would have been a month ago, or even ten minutes ago.

“Your front right tire is also cut pretty bad-”

“Put on another one.”

While she waited in the aisle between motor oil and flannel shirts, she stared at a discounted bin of plastic pumpkins. Gabby recalled staring at the wall, refusing to put on a costume for a party Raul would never show up to. She realized then that her life with him was the ultimate costume. She was a “good girl” playing at being a “ride or die”, and wanting neither. The coilover suspension was like her new self. It was lower, more responsive, and far less forgiving of the bumps in the road.

Gabby sat on her couch, dressed to the nines, and placed yet another call that would go to voice mail. She could practically see him in her heated projected vision, crushing up “blues”. The Oxy, firmly in control of their relationship, gave her a gouging vision of her living room wall being tagged up: “THIS IS NOT A PATH”.

The phone finally announced a call from Raul by glowing a picture of his goofy face, an expression now alien to her. It would be more appropriate attached to a new picture frame, rather than her own boyfriend.

“Oh… shit. It’s 9:30 already? Ummmm. O… K…, I guess I’ll meet you at the place. Where is it again?”, Raul asked, barely with enough energy to form words.

Gabby didn’t argue. She just drove. Speeding through tight Aurora streets, the whipple was no longer meowing, it was screaming. It’s close-meshing gears grinding up acrimonious atmosphere, and ramming spite into the Ecotech. She questioned even going to the dancehall in the first place. Raul’s vices had already undone the fabric of their lives, and he seemed gleefully unaware…or uncaring.

She ripped the vape to calm down, but it felt useless, the thick clouds of synthetic mint doing nothing to cool the fire in her throat. She hated him, yet she was still driving toward him. The bad boy vibe was a drug she herself hadn't quite kicked. Part of her wanted to just give him another chance, but for what? It didn’t matter anymore. Something collapsed inside her.

When Raul appeared to meet her in the parking lot, it was clear they weren’t going to make it into the venue. He was wearing a stained Jordan sweatshirt. His gold-toothed grill resembled a smashed 46’ Oldsmobile. He craned his forehead to the roof of the Cobalt, and dangled lifeless arms. His mouth formed vague words through the open passenger window. She wouldn’t even get the bad boy tonight.

Gabriela directed him into the passenger seat, and out of the rain. “Heyyy. Not so fast. Geez.”, he moaned, while Gabby pushed her size 5 Puma to the firewall as soon as he shut the door. If the gas pedal was forced any further, it would be in the transmission. “You’re using again. You’re a fucking zombie.”, she scolded, reminding him of her ultimatum. He denied wholeheartedly, then followed with a bevy of incoherent blames, and projection. “You’re being too judgemental. It’s cause of your new job. Little miss bigshot’s too good for me now.” The radio then blew another fuse, adding a tense, violent silence inside the Chevy.

To Gabby, the gaslighting wasn’t as bad as all of the knowing on his behalf. She felt heat run up her spine, forming spikes. The SS transited the intersection, and bottomed out the exhaust system hard. Patrons in line at a Burger King were treated with the sight of a shower of sparks from the black bootleg firework. The rage ebbed and flowed, alternating with a visceral sadness. Raul managed to crack an eye to see her wetting the steering wheel, and made a grasp at empathy.

“I have flaws.”, he whined. “Soy un alma imperfecta.” It came out like the price of admission.

The driver responded with “Your flaws don’t stay confined to yourself.”

His eyes drifted down to the footwell on a small, empty glass skull bottle that kept rolling around. It was a souvenir from a tequila-fueled date night months ago. Back then, his energy felt like a bonfire instead of a dumpster fire. The eye sockets stared back in thick, hazy glass. He suddenly thought of himself as that bottle. Drained of spirit, hollow, and kept around for cool factor until the point someone realized it was just trash.

Gabby caught him looking at it and felt a fresh wave of nausea. Raul shifted in the seat, a flicker of his old arrogance returning.

"Whatever, Gab. We’ve been through worse. You’re just venting. You’ll be fine in the morning."

"You're not that man I fell in love with anymore." she whispered.

“rrrrrRRRREEEEE”

Gabby swiftly made the turn onto 5th Street. The section of smooth, wet asphalt waited with a capricious malice. Both occupants felt the front end depart, and suddenly paused their screaming altercation. Gabby braced her hand on the gauge pod while the Cobalt careened through a manicured yard, it’s windshield quickly filling with a most unique perspective of ash tree. “Are we going to stop?”, thought the couple, over what seemed like minutes sliding on wet grass. The answer came with the sight of headlamps being ejected skyward while still lit, just before airbags exploded in their faces.

The two sat in a moment of austere silence, broken by the occasional wipers skittering across broken glass. They marveled at the unbelievable as hot gas vented from their pillows. A passerby appeared next to the car, and stood, waiting for signs of life. Once the occupants began moving, he gestured something incomprehensible. Then he returned to his vehicle after giving his rude version of a blessing.

The homeowner waddled through the rain with a cane, and looked the tree over for injury.

“Why drive so fast?”, she crooned. Gabby was done talking for the evening. Then the old woman also vanished as quickly as she appeared.

When the emergency vehicles arrived, she was alone. Raul, sodden, and barely operable as a person, was now three blocks away. No “Are you okay?”, no “Goodbye”. He stumbled with a gait that was now more creature than man. She stood under the rain falling in the streetlights, and her seatbelt-bruised chest released him in real-time. Gabby watched him disappear into the void.

“It’s okay. This is not a path.”