Emptiness and gasoline

The engine died on the top of the hill. The driver looked at the dashboard and saw that the gas was at zero. He didn’t swear, didn’t sigh, only smiled sadly. It wasn’t characteristic of him to forget about the fuel level, but there are life circumstances which make even the most organized of us scattered. With a sad smile seemingly frozen on his face he rummaged his pants for a wallet and went to search for gas. When he turned off the headlights hanging on the power of an old battery, he got submerged into the thick humid darkness of cloudy subtropical night. His phone was dead, so the was no other source of light, no source of direction either. But there was a memory of a station a couple of miles down the windy mountain road he was driving on.

It was a forest road: completely dark, enveloped in sweet and ashy smell of the invisible in the night vegetation, muffled by the songs of cicadas, crickets, frogs and everyone else who deemed the night to be their time and the forest their kingdom. A lonely man dressed in black jeans and a black jacket was a foreigner there, but he also was quiet and invisible in the surrounding him darkness. He merged with it, walking lightly and gently on the side of the road.

He walked like that for half an hour, in complete darkness, a silent shadow of the night, a ghost. Labor of the walk removed sadness from his face and left only slight smile, only steps made, only miles of sheltering darkness. He accelerated his step, almost run, invisible, invincible. At a low point, slightly panting he raised his head up, looked at the crowns of the pitch-black trees merging over the road on the background of only slightly lighter sky. He breathed out loudly into them and smiled with maybe even firmness.

A sleepy teen at the gas station sold him gas and a canister. She yawned and went back to the peaceful dreamy existence before the man exited the store. The gas station was on the outskirts of a small town, which was completely asleep at 1am — the time the driver was getting his gas. Still alone and only slightly betrayed by the light of dim rural lights he started his way back. But now there was a heaviness of the full canister of gas in his hand and there was heaviness of the upcoming walk uphill. And those two got transferred into the heaviness of his step, heaviness of his face, heaviness of his thoughts, heaviness of the realization that the short magical trip is about to be over, and it was time to go back to where he had been going. Where his was going used to be a good place, used to be “our” place. It was a warm comfortable place; in it there was our couch and our table and our bed and so many other ours. He used to rush to that place from all his trips, used to drive ignoring hunger and sleep, putting mile after mile in the effort to get there. Then something had broken in the language (it must have been the language) and “our” place had become “my” place. That one didn’t worth the effort. He heavily dropped the can of gasoline on the ground and looked around in the hope to catch a ride up the hill. There was big humid dark nothingness around him, then somewhere in the backyards he saw a neon light saying “Crossroads. The travelers’ bar.” There was no way he wouldn’t go in.

The bar was empty and dark, only the wall with numerous alcoholic drinks was lightened by a soft light. He came closer to the counter and saw a call-button on it. He was in a dire need of a drink, he sat on a stool, placed the canister on another and pressed the button. There was a muted sound of a bell chiming somewhere in the belly of the building. A minute or two after that, a woman entered the room through an invisible in the darkness door.

She was beautiful, by all standards beautiful in the man’s opinion. She walked into the light, smiled radiantly to him, leaning on the counter. This movement pushed her hair from behind her ears and they scattered in a mane of curls and waves, and vortices around her face and around her shoulders. Nothing moved in the man’s face in reaction to her appearance or even to all the waves and vortices, nothing moved in his body. Maybe only the heaviness, the weariness slouched his shoulders a little more.

“What are you feeling like?” asked the bartender waving her head slightly towards the drinks. She watched how a jerk of a twisted by pain smile of someone who just have realized that they cannot afford maintaining social games anymore crossed his face. She was an experienced bartender she knew the meaning; she knew the truth will follow. “Something that will make me forget everything,” the man said covering the failure to adjust with a radiant friendly smile. He was handsome when he smiled, he was told. “I’ve got that,” said the bartender and in a habitual move pulled from the stand behind her a bottle with a silver label and letters on a language unknown to the man. She poured it into a glass, and he, reassured by her unphased reaction to his sudden failure of composure, drank it in one go.

The drink burned, like strong drinks do. It burned his lips, his mouth, his throat, propagated its warmth down his belly, but unlike strong drinks it didn’t stop there. The liberating warmth it was making its way all through his body, forming a quaint network of strange sensation in it. He looked quizzically at the woman. She smiled, satisfied with his reaction. “It’s pure emptiness,” she said. The man laughed loudly, threw his head back and then pushed his glass to her: “One more!” “One shot of emptiness is plenty,” she smiled and put away the bottle with the silver label back to the alcohol stand. He didn’t expect such reaction, that’s not what bartenders do after all. He looked into her face searching for an explanation of her behavior. “It is,” she replied to his curiosity. “It is, it just takes time.” He chuckled softly and pull out his wallet. “Too much drinking isn’t good for driving anyway,” he told himself.

When he put his credit card in front of her, she waved her hand in rejection. “Just give some of what you brought,” she said. “This?” he raised the heavy gas canister to the counter. She unscrewed it, put an empty bottle with dark-green label next to it and started carefully pouring gasoline into the bottle through the small metal funnel. “A fuel carried by a heartbroken person who dreads his journey,” is one of the finest and rarest drinks in the Universe she explained after she was done. “Just don’t try to drink it today, emptiness and gasoline don’t mix well: things that want to burn need to burn, you see. Things that aren’t, cannot provide material for that. Bad combo. You probably won’t find your way home. Might end up wandering across all the worlds, never finding your way back, never finding peace either. Not something to be taken lightly.”

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

No one ever does as they are told. After filling the gas tank, the man maybe out of curiosity, maybe out of rebellion touched with his lips the gas canister. The liquid in it didn’t taste or smell like it was supposed to. Instead, it smelled of his now empty apartment, of his couch. “The emptiness didn’t work,” he sighed out into the dark sky. He still remembered how his home looked before the language broke. He couldn’t imagine returning to it in its after state. He kept imagining that somewhere there despite the series of thorough cleanings, he’d find a hidden long blond hair. The nausea crawled upon him from this image. He didn’t know what he’ll have to do. He took a big sip from the canister.

Related posts:

I asked a group of our fellow entrepreneurs what about their business makes them happy, and how they remind themselves of that happiness to keep motivated. This was such a fun list to create and it…

Are you a web developer wondering what next after html css and javascript. Have you tried python, specifically Django, a python framework for your back-end. Let’s say you are working on a blog…

Clara has always loved playing tennis. Her mom remembers the first time she took her to a tennis game; Clara seemed to enjoy watching the game. A few years later, Clara requested her parents to join…