Unstuck

Recovery

This piece is purposely published without an image. It was inspired by an image and when I went to take a photo, the particular object was no longer there. I hope you come up with some vivid imagery in your own mind. -Jimmy

A shadow was in the intersection, and a squeal, a squeal of brakes that had mass.

Lewis saw the woman flip him off, then saw her car cross his shadow.

He looked back.

Four way stop.

His brain told him he wasn’t wrong, then he shivered, then his brain told him to hurry across the intersection to the warmth of the waiting curb.

Cars can hop curbs, he had seen it, but this intersection looked like it liked him.

Maybe they could be friends, him, his shadow, this intersection.

The people who live in the corner house probably wouldn’t want Lewis to just stand there on his friend the curb.

Lewis shivered again.

He felt the tremor subside, thrilled it wasn’t the detox convulsion that would kill him.

The shakes had walked out a few days ago, felt like they tipped their hat and moved on.

The voice that told him to quit drinking was a stranger’s voice.

It might have been him, or God, or his dead ex wife, but he didn’t recognize the sound of the voice, only the urgency.

Death or no booze.

Death was the only thing he feared worse than life without booze.

This detox wasn’t a commitment, it was a beginner science kit that comes in a cardboard box in the shittiest discount toy store in town.

A car came at him, bright lights asking his eyes questions his brain didn’t understand.

No, he decided, the car was just driving, the car was minding its own business but the lights were being a dick.

There was a flash, like a metallic prism.

Lewis wobbled.

He steadied himself by staring at the window frame of the house.

When the frame was horizontal, he was vertical.

At least he thought that was how it worked.

He turned his head back toward the metallic prism that the headlights had awoken.

It was a sticker.

A sticker on a car.

Did it have a face?

Lewis walked over, begging his equilibrium not to abandon him now that he didn’t have the window frame for reference.

The sticker had a face.

It had a hat.

It was a boy.

Lewis’s brain sizzled.

There was a word for when creatures were drawn more like humans.

This was a human creature, but only by imagination.

Eyes.

A half circle smile.

A hat.

The eyes looked youthful.

How does my brain know that? What makes that determination?

Another car.

Lewis was closer to this car, this car moving near the parked car with his sticker.

Yes, Lewis had adopted the sticker on this car, this youthful clown boy on this metallic sticker on this rusty car that might have been blue or gray or Lewis might have drank himself colorblind, except he had seen that prism, that metallic rainbow, that led him to this little boy in the clown hat forever affixed to this car.

Lewis bent, with effort and said hi to the little clown boy in his head.

Where did all the colors come from?

Another car drove past, and Lewis shivered.This was part of it now, this life without booze, shivering and confusion and the need for anything he saw to be his friend.

The colors blossomed from behind the clown boy’s head. 

The little clown boy was on fire.

Put yourself out, little clown boy, put yourself out.

It was the same voice that told Lewis his drinking days were over or he was going to die.

The little clown boy smiled under the flames.

The flames didn’t seem to hurt him.

Lewis knew what that was like.

That knowledge had mass. 

Lewis, out loud, with conviction, said “Goodbye.”

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