Homeward Bound

I sit, in the almost-black. Head nestled deep into my pillow, positioned carefully between the edge of my seat and the window, periodically turned to transfer the cool window’s freshness to my rosy face. I am, perhaps, six years old, and we are in the car, cruising through the night at a steady seventy. I don’t know where we have been but I know where we are going – home. Back to familiarity and light and solid ground, my inner compass pulling us along the motorway to my waiting bed.

My body is warm under its duvet cocoon, my bed-from-bed. The close, womb-like feeling of the car heavy around my body; its thick air in my hair and permeating my skin. The only light comes from the glow of the dashboard, the comforting silent figures of my parents looming large in their seats. My mother nods sleepily in the passenger seat, her hands lying gently on her lap, my brother’s still form, huddled and soft at my side. If it wasn’t for the appearance of my father’s hand from time to time as it reaches into my field of vision to change gears I would think that I was the only one awake. My limbs are heavy, lulled by the momentum of the travelling car, but my eyes, my eyes are wide, every sense on fire.

Outside my window I watch the laser display of the passing cars. Twin star-flares fly past in the opposite direction, floating in inky black, dazzling and bright. The glare from their lights shoot up and out into the night in thin, sharp pencil lines; the silhouette of their propelling vehicles vague and gray. Motorway signs loom dimly and then are gone, their blue and white flashing in my vision with only seconds to register unfamiliar sounding names and places. The trees alongside, ghostly and dark with only the occasional flicker of a streetlamp on an adjacent road or the sudden view of tiny square lights in distant towering flats to hint at humanity outside of this long, gushing river of light and not-light and heat and sound. The noise of the engine is strong and steady. A hum that fills my ears and my head, punctuated with the sudden rush of the cars approaching, crescendo to sudden diminuendo. Sound with pressure somehow, pushing on my ears with heavy enveloping force.

The fact that we are moving at such high speed, so vulnerable in our fragile shell of metal and glass never occurs to me. I feel so safe, so warm, held safe by the close feel and smell of my duvet, by my unflinching certainty and faith in the man behind the wheel. I know I should sleep and yet I can’t close my eyes, transfixed by the sights and the sound and intoxicating sense of being an invulnerable spectator in this intergalactic light show, although I would never be able to verbalise this feeling as such. And yet I know, I plan in fact, that once our journey has come to a gentle, halting stop on our drive way I will pretend to have been asleep all along. Faking heavy, mouldable limbs and closed eyes to ascertain my transfer from one carrier to another. To my father’s strong and gentle arms, to bed and inevitable sleep, lights still flashing under my eyelids.

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There’s going to be a bit more of this creative stuff coming your way in the future I think. Hope that’s ok with you reader. Let me know your thoughts… Are you happy with my creative spewing in with the main feed? Or should I just hide them on a page somewhere for you to find in the menu bar…

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