She wasn’t sure what time it was.
She was wearing a yellow dress. It must have been early in the day because her makeup was fresh; her skin powdered till it was almost white, the black lashes a stark contrast to her paleness. Her hair was done up — stiff and hairsprayed and hard.
Not thinking of anything in particular, she drove. Looking but not seeing, she was driving to a place that was familiar to her — it was almost a reflex to get there. A signal, a slight right turn. All to travel up the road to the highway, near where she remembered he had lived.
All of the windows had been rolled up. Nothing could be heard but the quiet whine of the car’s engine beneath her. Maybe the radio was on in the background, because she usually liked to listen and hum along to the pop stations when she drove, but if it was, she wasn’t listening. Not even unremarkable thoughts filled her mind. She heard nothing, she thought nothing, she felt nothing. Her face was pallid and her expression blank.
The road that led across the top of the dam had been closed since 9/11. The government had been cautious and closed off any major monuments, like this one, that could cause the colossal wreckage of the towns in the surrounding area. But no one of importance lived there, anyway. No one famous. No one powerful. No one that mattered.
For some reason her passionless driving took her up the winding road of the dam. Pushing through the traffic cones and the fence, the car screeched in protest. Still, she did not waver. She sped up even, the car’s engine straining under her foot on the gas.
She was approaching the dam itself and hurtling toward the side that faced the park. Everything went completely, disconcertingly silent. The engine couldn’t be heard at all. The car crashed through the stone barrier and sailed off the dam. As she flew threw the air she became alive, writhing in a sickening way, holding on to the last threads of her life. Her body went headfirst into the windshield, glass protruding through her torso. The red against the yellow against the white.
Then black.
Eerily beautiful, she represented death in all its horrific glory. She was the Hedda of our time, unfeeling and cold, dressing herself up to make her fall beautiful amidst all the ugliness and pain, and for some reason she had ended up in my head.
That’s when I woke up. I’m assuming it was somewhere around four in the morning, and I was sweating. Breathing hard, I lay awake in the dark, terrified at my own dream.
The setting was familiar to me. But she wasn’t — her coldness, her robotic actions and distaste for life. One of my greatest fears is oblivion; the unknown. What comes after death. It’s something I don’t want to find out, but she didn’t even seem to care. Her only understanding was where she was heading, on the hill where she remembered he had lived. Where I remembered he lived, and that I hadn’t driven up for a long time.
More so, I was scared of the silence.