PANIC

Streaks of rain slid across the window. I selected a drop and watched it compete against the others. The first one to reach the opposite side of the window wins, I told myself. The drop of rain water captured a ray of light from one of the traffic lights and was rather still, for a moment, buffering to the rhythm of the growling car engine. With one abrupt swoosh, the windshield wiper swiped the miscellaneous drops and carried with it the suspense that I had forged.

“I can’t see a damn thing” said my mother, while trying to blow a strand of hair from off her forehead. She was cold. I could tell by the rate at which she was dispersing her words. I turned the heating up and felt a shiver run up my spine which triggered a droplet of pee to trickle down my leg. I sat back, with my shoulders pinned to the seat and reminded myself to exhale.

Someone had been murdered two hours ago, said the voice on the radio. The victim lived alone in a mansion near Weston, he was killed inside his garage while still wearing his pyjamas. The reporter’s voice was coarse and clearly fatigued. His lack of enthusiasm towards the act surprised me and made me wonder what kind of scenes he could conjure up in his dreams. A man so deflated of tonal excitement must make up for boredom in his sleep I imagined. Maybe he dreams of becoming a killer so that one day someone will report on something he has done himself for a change. Or possibly his dreams are filled with static, of a world deserted by desire, where no image is retained and no event can be reported. Where his visions are dominated by the silence that spans in between thoughts and his waking memory slowly fades like the condensed breath on a wintery window. But then again I rarely remember any of my own dreams. My therapist tells me that my forgetfulness is strongly linked to stress.

I drew a stick figure on the steamy window, it’s hands disproportionately large in

comparison to the rest of its jaunty body. The voice on the radio was talking about the weather now. Apparently, it’s supposed to rain on Thursday. I remembered that my old school teacher had told me once that the latin word for Thursday is Joves, meaning the day of Jupiter. I struggled to make sense of that fact.

The sky was grey, the kind of grey that makes you sleepy at all times. The clouds were

like a sheet of silvery cloth that stretched across the vastness of what could only be consumed by sight, the brightness was too much and it forced me to squint my eyes. My nose started running, I grabbed the already used tissue from my coat pocket and cleared my nostrils.

“Can I change the channel?” I asked. My mother lifted her palms to the sky, enacting a gesture similar to a shrug but not quite. I put the classical music station on. Not because I particularly like the genre, but because I find there to be a comicality in its appreciation. I find that the emotional narratives in most classical symphonies blatantly contradict the mundane pace that underlines the common spectacle of modern life.

“You know, Schubert composed this piece at the age of seventeen?” my mother said. I was trying to synchronize the windshield wiper with the pulls of the violin, but something was off.

“Really?” I replied. “Yes, he was a true genius”. My mother coughed twice and then apologised. “You’re sorry?” I asked.

“What? Oh, I didn’t mean that” my mother said. We passed a bright yellow poster that indicated that In 2 miles there was a McDonalds to be found on the first exit. I looked out the window and let Schubert take me away. The landscape unfolded in front of me. Different shades of remnant colors from the windling branches merged to form a textural

configuration akin to a painting that I have never seen, only imagined. Schubert increased the tempo and out of the forest, I imagined an avatar of myself running parallel to me, at the same speed of the car. My avatar looked like a shadow dislocated from my body. It was

swinging from branch to branch, skidding over lakes, slaloming through the tall oak trees, and running on top of brittle telephone wire connected by posts that weren’t visible to the eye. The song came to an end and my avatar scurried beneath a tree. I wondered if that’s where all shadows go to hide on grey rainy days.

I took my tissue out to blow my nose again. “I think we are going to be slightly late for the appointment,” my mom said. “Do you mind calling Doctor Zeiss?”. The red paint on her fingernails was chipped on three fingers, the other two tapping on the dashboard. I blew my nose heavily and frightened my mother. I put the tissue down and from a distance, saw an unfamiliar object approach my periphery. It was large and occupied at least half of the fast lane.

As our linear trajectory met it’s static position, I recognised it was a run over deer. Barely alive, using its front legs to scrape the rest of its blood stained body off the road. I turned my head as the car passed by it, my eyes fixed on its hind legs. Out of a bush another deer poked its face out and looked for an answer in its glazed eyes. I told myself that they were cousins, it made sense for them to be cousins.

I knew that my mother had just witnessed the same thing as I, but I refrained from

verbalizing my concerns about it. She’s the kind of person to dismiss things that make you feel a certain way. I guess it’s because roadkill isn’t reported on the news. At least not with the same gravity as human death. If it was treated the same, then maybe we’d see a camera crew surround the act, and see reporters asking the deers cousin for an interview.

We passed the exit for the McDonalds. As the car hugged the white line drawn on the

road, we turned left and a gust of wind transported a new batch of raindrops and dispersed

them evenly across the windshield. The radio started to crackle. The music was distorted and suddenly I realised that I was shivering heavily. The static was eerily loud and was clearly disturbing my mother. My heart was beating abnormally fast. My mother began to cry. I lifted my wrist and with my shaking finger changed the channel, this time without asking.

A short story by Christian Schifano, about a Mother and Son. "This piece was inspired by a grey cloud, the kind to make one squint their eyes."