"Disconnected," that's the word I was looking for. "Detached," that's the other word I was trying to remember and those two words are me all over. Until recently, I can't remember the last time that I felt like I was lucid. Though I get plenty of sleep and insomnia has never bothered me, I never feel like my mind is completely connected to my body.
For most of my life, I have been living someone else's…that is, I've never felt like this life was my own, and really, it seemed like I was merely inhabiting the body of a stranger. I believed that nothing could change this situation until yesterday, in my normal state of detachment, I ran a stop sign on Lincoln Way in San Francisco. As a matter of fact, I hadn't even noticed what I had done until I heard a blip of a siren and a voice telling me to pull over.
I looked in the mirror and one of the cops pointed to the sidewalk. I pulled over, and then I remembered that my car was at the shop and I was driving my cousin's car. Unlike me, he was far from law-abiding and he was always selling things of questionable ownership out of the back of this very trunk.
This triggered not a panic switch, but a "flee calmly and quickly switch." I turned on the engine and put the car into drive. I didn't hear the screech of the tires as I pulled away, nor did I hear the police siren, but I couldn't miss the tire smoke or the red and blue lights, on this twilight-shaded fall evening. I did a U-turn on Lincoln and sped eastward; the patrol car gained on me because the traffic was slowing me down.
I didn't know what was in the trunk, nor did I know how many laws I had broken. I doubted that they were going to let me off with a warning, and I didn't know what my next move was going to be. But the one thing that I did know was that I was alive. For the first time in ages, I was actually alive.
My heart was going so fast, it was like someone had hooked up some defibrillator paddles to a power plant dynamo and slammed them down on my chest. I had enough adrenaline running through me to supply two emergency rooms for a week.
Then all that adrenaline nearly doubled as the patrol car was on my bumper. I stomped the pedal down and my cousin's rusted heap surged forward. Rather than using a stock car racer as a role model, I envisioned myself to be a downhill skier, slaloming through the plastic gates…only those plastic gates were other people in cars and I clipped one.
The clipped car went perpendicular and the police slammed into it. My brain wanted me to go back and check to see if everyone was all right, though my body overruled that by turning my cousin's rust bucket right at the very next corner. My heart had no say in the matter, as it was preoccupied by fighting off an impending coronary.
I looked for the first house with its lights out and I pulled up to its driveway, a rarity for this city. It was actually a cottage, and I had to get out of the car to open the front gate of the little picket fence that kept solicitors out.
I pulled in, sat down and killed the engine. A police car speeding down the street behind me nearly gave me a heart attack. I sat down in the car and took huge, deep breaths; my heart was threatening to leap out of my throat. My eyes fluttered and everything went black.
"Da fuck you doin' in my driveway?!" said an old Hawaiian man who apparently owned this property. I started up the car and backed out, as he picked up a rock and threw it my cousin's car. My cousin's car, that's who they'd be looking for and I was home free!
***
I ditched his car, and decided to look for a Starbucks to jumpstart my mind with a cup of coffee. As I replayed everything, I thought about how much I loved the adrenaline, though I couldn't figure out the exact term for what I felt. I also wondered how I could duplicate that high, without using my own car, and what the hell would I do if they caught me.
Just as I got to the door, some prick in a new BMW answered my prayers. He left his engine running as I opened the door and he ran past me. I had to seriously contort myself to keep him from running me over. I checked…he hadn't locked it and suddenly there was a big, honking, huge "steal me" sign that only I could see.
Like a junkie chasing the dragon, I ran the same stop sign and SF's finest obliged me with a chase. In no time, we were on the Great Highway, and wouldn't you know it? A dog ran out in front of me and I instinctively swerved to avoid it. This threw the car into a screaming swerve.
I countersteered and the right rear wheel left the ground. I tried to steer it back down and the wheel did just that; it came back down and that tire exploded. The car shimmied left and right and hit a concrete light post. I went flying through the window and lost consciousness.
I stood up…that is, I did, but somehow my body didn't. I was leaning over my own bloody and disfigured body, and the way my neck was twisted at an unnatural angle…told me that I was very much dead. I didn't feel any pain or sadness. Actually, I felt happy and for the first time in my existence, what's the word I'm looking for? I felt "vibrant."
BIO: "Cormac Brown" is my pen name. I'm an up-and-slumming writer in the city of Saint Francis and I'm following in the footsteps of Hammett...minus the TB and working for the Pinkerton Agency. Some of my stories have appeared here at Powderburnflash.com, Six Sentences, Astonishing Adventures Magazine, and Crooked Magazine. You can find me at Cormac Writes.
