In Continuum.

Black Skull

Say goodnight and go.

Skipping beats, blushing cheeks I am struggling
Daydreaming, bed scenes in the corner café
And then I'm left in bits recovering tectonic tremblings
You get me every time

In the October skies, the Gods must have been having a blanket party of some sorts. The clouds rolled about in the air, tidal waves moving about in slow motion, crashing down towards the earth - menacing. A long day was over, and I was thankful for the ride that my parents offered, since they were going home from the office at five in the evening as well. I waited for them in the parking lot and watched the skies turn gray, and then the white skies were gone. I imagined how far the layer of black clouds stretched into the atmosphere, and hoped it to be so thick that it would rain forever and ever. A childish hope, a hope that is as harmless as the dead leaf that struck the side of my face then. The silver sedan emerged at the bottom of the slope, a welcoming sight for me as I stood in the middle of the road. It was already drizzling by the time I was in the car, and the soft music my parents were playing over the radio was something familiar, something more than the fact that I burned the CD for them. Something about the song, something that I couldn't put my finger on. A flash of lightning and a clap of thunder, was all it took for me to put aside that thought.

There is something subtly strange about being in the backseat alone, while the person in front takes the wheel of the car. You feel as if you are being separated from their side of the car, their side of the world. Somewhere between the two front seats and the compartment where my mother puts her wet tissues and sunglasses, an invisible veil was raised the moment I stepped into the empty backseat. It made me feel uncomfortable, a little detached somehow. Like the longing of a plug to the socket, or an apple to a tree. I felt like I was being left out somewhere, left behind in the empty backseat to suck up the lingering smell of synthetic leather. The rain came down harder than before, a fitting beginning to the mid-October season, the time of the year last year when everything began with such innocence. The smell of rain made its way through the car doors somehow, as the sceneries went by in a blinding speed. Engulfed in the gray gray world on this October day, I thought about the past and the present - and little to none of the future. What is there to think about, anyway - anymore.

Why d'ya have to be so cute?
It's impossible to ignore you
Must you make me laugh so much
It's bad enough we get along so well
Say goodnight and go.

We came to the junction that turned into my condominium, the 'Death Junction' as we'd like to call it. There is a sign mounted on the side of a lamp post, the picture of a black skull smiling at the commuters day in and day out. It is a morbid sign, to warn the drivers of the dangers of that junction. A lot of accidents have happened on that very junction over the past sixteen years I've been living in the same condominium, and the shattered glass in the middle of the road always reminded me of those loud screeching sounds coming from outside my bedroom window. There was a car that skidded off the road on a rainy day like today a few years ago, and crashed into a nearby tree. The front of the car exploded into a vibrant display of fireball, and I watched as the tree got burned down along with it from the safety of my bedroom. The black skull still smiles today, as if to bring back memories of the past, reminding the commuters of the accidents that happened there and the lives that it claimed. Watching over the lives of us humans, the mandate of death smiled in his eternal glee.

The red traffic light looked like a glowing red star through the windshield, a glowing red dot in the middle of the rain splattered glass. I stared at the artificial sun for the longest time, and the weight before the crossing seemed like hours. Especially in the back of the cab, there was only my corner of the seats as company, and nobody on the other to keep me entertained. My thoughts went wild, picturing the black skull crawling out of the sign for some reason, pulling its body out from the white metal plate and onto the slippery roads below. The deadly smiled remained on its face, with its fangs baring and its eyes burning like the red traffic light. It came closer and closer to our car, its nails scraping against the side of the window. His foul breath could be smelled from the insides of the car, as it leaned in closer towards the window. Its breath condensed on the glass as it whispered to me through his gaping mouth. 'This is a reminder to you,' it said. 'Of dead things.'

Follow you home, you've got your headphones on and you're dancing
Got lucky, beautiful shot you taking everything off watch the curtains wide open
Then you fall in the same routine flicking through the TV relaxed and reclining
And you think you're alone...

'So,' my father suddenly said from the front of the car, their side of the world. 'Have you done that before?' I followed the general direction in which my father's index finger was pointing. Outside the car was the rest of the world, drenched in the first major October storm, and beyond the hood of the car was the crossing. Two students, a boy and a girl, were walking in front of the car and in the rain. Drenched from head to toe like the rest of the world, they made it a point to act as if it was a bright sunny day, smiling like children pissing in the wind - smiling like lovers in love. I couldn't see what schools they were from, or what they looked like at all. Just their hands held in the rain, with their hair covering half their faces, smiling. I followed the both of them as they made their way across the road, with their bags drenched and their uniforms soaked. So careless about the rest of the world, so careless about themselves. That is what love should be like, that is what love was like. At least, for me.

My father repeated his question again, it was his way of killing time at the red light. I ignored his question, distracted by the imagery of the black skull by the car window just now. 'A reminder of dead things', he said. I thought he was referring to the dead bodies in the road, the broken body parties in the car wrecks. But it was referring to something else, something more abstract. Dead things, more like dead memories. Dug up from the crave, pulled out from the coffins. The rain and the sound, the smell and the question, something about the familiarity of it all disturbed me immensely. My father repeated his question yet again, and this time I saw my mother's arm reaching over to his thighs and squeezed it gently. As if to stop him from asking the question again, as if she was reading my mind like a mother could. My father stopped asking, and I never answered his question. There was an answer in my head, but I never got the chance to say it. I watched as the couple disappeared around the corner, and the red sun gave way to the green moon that hung in the sky that was the windshield. The water droplets were like stars, a dozen of them, sparkling in the dwindling light of the day, struggling to survive. Struggling - to keep up.

Why d'ya have to be so cute?
It's impossible to ignore you
Must you make me laugh so much
It's bad enough we get along so well
Say goodnight and go

A friend of mine asked if the Russian Doll post was about me, and I told her that it wasn't. I've known this friend for a little more than four years now, and even she has yet to see through my layers of abstract writing. I told her not to worry about me then, and told her that I won't blog about 'it' anymore, not anytime soon. I guess it only took an entry about a song, and an entry about some silly pictures for me to break that claim. Here I am, after a wet day out, blogging about 'it' again. I guess, the black skull, the shattered glass, the rain, the couple, the red sun, everything was hinting towards something, something I shouldn't have waited to find out. I shouldn't have waited for the lights to change, or the sign to remind me of things. I remember the countdown before the dash, the warmth of a pair of hands in mine as we screamed our heads off. The rain was as harmless as the ones that fell today, but the ones today felt more piercing than before. Probably the sensation of nostalgia, melancholia, all amounting into a million droplets of water.

Strange, to have such a random thought come to me out of the blues. My mother ushered me out of the car, and the three of us ran through the rain like mad monkeys. For a moment, I forgot about my thoughts, forgot about my memories. Just ran like a child, ran like a coward who runs away from his crimes. For a minute there, I lost myself. I lost myself. Like the cars that sped down the road to that Death Junction at full speed. I pictured myself in the driver's seat, trying desperately to control the car with the sight of the black skull. He is still smiling, smiling at me with those fangs of his. My car overturns, I am being tossed about inside the car. Windows were shattered, arms were broken. Blood splattered everywhere, intestines flowed out from my opened guts.

One of these days, you'll miss your train and come stay with me
We'll have drinks and talk about things, any excuse to stay awake with you
You'll sleep here, I'll sleep there, but then the heating may be down again at my convenience
We'd be good, we'd be great together.

I laid there on the road, with cars speeding by mercilessly without stopping. Some people stopped by to check out on me, but they were more curious than helpful. I laid broken and on the brink of death, with the black skull smiling down upon me. The words came to my mind again, those words that he sneered through the window. 'This is a reminder to you,' it said. 'Of dead things.'

Say goodnight and go,
Why's it always always
goodnight and go
Darling not again
Goodnight and go