Lighter Than Air

A rock sliced through the humid Minneapolis air only to belly flop on the placid water of Lake Calhoun and disappear into its maw, leaving tiny ripples in every direction not even flies could surf. Brett Aldridge ran his tattered hands through his brown hair, swooping it to the right, as was his wont since high school. He tensed his forearms but quickly stopped because of the strain on his dress shirt that didn’t fit the way it once did five years ago. He dropped the other rocks in his left hand in a fit of resigned frustration. He was too tired from a long day hauling cereal from point A to point B for General Mills to concentrate on the snap of his wrist that would send the rock bouncing across the water like Jesus playing hopscotch. His tibia creaked like that of a man twice his age under the strain of his foot melting into the porous sand. The long hours of his manual labor job were taking its toll on his 26-year-old body. It seemed like eons ago that he was a college freshman out of the nest brandishing his shiny new wings only to have them clipped a short two years later. He subconsciously scratched at the track marks adorning his left arm as he felt the burning itch and decided to head home located just a couple miles away. Lake Calhoun used to be the place he would visit to quell the hurricane in his brain, but these days it only seemed to exacerbate the issue.

Walking home in summer was less an issue of physical fitness and more of a test of hydration. The air was so thick with moisture and mosquitos it felt like wading through quicksand. His foot hit the splintered wood of his porch right as the daylight started to die. Val was home to greet him like she always was, with a smile and a syringe: the only two things that could ease the wildfire burning across his nerves, although neither were as effective as they once were.

“Hey sweetie!” exclaimed Val as she kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“Hey babe, how was your day?” said Brett.

“Ugh I had the worst day. First my manager grabbed my ass again and then that creepy coworker…”

Her words melted into white noise, something that always existed in the background. He moved to his dusty, floral sectional couch and grabbed a length of fabric to tourniquet his arm. This process was so familiar and encoded into his memory it was almost like breathing; sometimes he didn’t even notice it was happening. He thought about habits: a long time girlfriend or a drug addiction and how hard it would be to break from the known quantities in his life. How much it would feel like a self-inflicted amputation without anesthesia. How a toxic relationship was much like an unwanted pregnancy. Would the impending abortion leave irreparable emotional scars? The hurricane in his head had reached category 5, but once the needle tore through the flesh of his left forearm and regurgitated its contents into his circulatory system he was in the eye of the storm. The last thought he had before everything became quiet for a while was “this must be what air feels like”.

The ding of a microwave brought Brett back to his living room where a nutritionally deprived frozen meal of what resembled chicken and mashed potatoes waited to be eaten.

“I gave you the rest because you looked like you had a rough day hun”, purred Val.

“You mean we are out of dope?”

“Yeah I’m gonna go pick some up tomorrow. I don’t really feel like picking up my shift so I’ll call in sick” explained Val.

“Babe, do you really think we have the money to keep doing this? Look around us.” Brett said with a hint of disdain.

“What are you saying?”

“We. Don’t. Have. The. Money.” Growled Brett.

“It’s fine we can just get a loan or whatever. Don’t you have that savings account?”

“Jesus Val, I’ve had to pull overtime shifts every night this week just to barely break even on our expenses and I still have to dip into that.”

“I deserve to have a little fun don’t I?”

“This isn’t a game. This is an addiction.”

“No this is fun. And I don’t need a hypocrite like you talking down to me about it either, I’m not your fucking project.” She snapped.

Brett stormed off to his room like a sullen teenager after an argument with his dad. He slammed and bolted the door not even bothering to quench his screams in the feathers of a pillow. He looked at the painting that had followed him through the different places he had lived since he was a child. A small cottage with maybe three rooms made entirely of oak sat betwixt rolling green hills that extend until the cerulean horizon kisses its surface. Clouds smear the surface of the sky, breaking the blue monotony for a moment. Gentle smoke wafts from the chimney of the cottage, and a homely glow gently nudges its way through the panes of the window. It was the picture he could always look to when things got bad. It was the “happy place” clinical psychologists love to refer their therapy patients to. He recalled the countless times he would mute reality with his eyelids and daydream about leaving the Midwest for Europe. To just drop everything, pack a few bags, and leave without saying goodbyes or long drawn out farewells. Days like today he could feel the wanderlust sinking its hook through the flesh of his cheek and reeling him towards that cottage. Days like today he was slowly losing the strength to dig his heels into the unstable ground of his life and resist. As he closed his eyes to sleep he thought about air one more time, how free it was just blowing anywhere it desired without attachments or addictions. How lovely it must be to be so unshackled.

The alarm clock blared to life with an energy Brett could not match for 6:30 in the morning. His eyelids felt more like lead shields than tiny flaps of skin. He released an audible groan and prepared for another long day moving cereal. He dressed in the same white cotton shirt and grey slacks that the uniform company had given him when he started almost five years ago to the day. He wearily unlocked the door to his 1993 Ford Ranger, and as always he spent three minutes trying to finagle the key to persuade the lock to open. Once maneuvered inside the car he was on his way.

Work was monotonous as always. Brett drove his forklift from one end of the warehouse to the loading dock after loading up giant boxes of cereal. His boss, Tony, was a mountain of a man with biceps so large he could barely bend his elbow to scratch his forehead. and a mouth that would make lesser men cry.

“Aldridge what the fuck you think you’re doing?” boomed Tony.

“Moving these boxes of Coco Puffs like you told me to this morning” replied an exasperated Brett.

“Please not today” he thought silently to himself. He just needed one break.

“Good. Carry on. I also need you to stay late again today, better not be a problem” snarled Tony.

“Again? I’ve stayed late the past three days.” Replied Brett

“You don’t get to dictate your hours you piece of shit, that’s my job. And today I need you to stay late.”

“No. My hours are clear and I can’t do this another day. I need a break.” Quipped Brett.

“If you leave before I say you can leave I’m accepting that as your resignation so I’d think carefully” replied Tony as he strutted away.

“I won’t even make you wait.”

The words slithered through their enamel prison and snuck past his lips before his tongue could sound the alarm. They hung in the air and sank slowly like a balloon lacking sufficient helium. Brett didn’t even wait for his manager to turn around and address him as he ripped his white cotton shirt from his torso, hurled it at the floor, and stormed away to his car.

Wind whipped through his thick brown hair as “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind blared on the radio. Dopamine flooded his circulatory system in nuclear bursts of good vibrations that helped keep the fire racing up his left arm at bay. This is what it felt like to take control of his life. To enact a change. To BASE jump from the ledge of security with nothing but a flimsy parachute praying to god that when the time came to wrench that ripcord, it would deploy. How easy was that to break out of his rut? All it took was six little words to change his direction in a positive way. If he could write the breath out of his lungs it would be a novel of six word sentences that he should have said years ago to change his life. But, like a depraved Jack Torrance in the Shining, his brain was the typewriter fixating on one phrase.

“I’m breaking up with you, Val.” Six more words, twenty-two letters, one calorie burned, and a five-year relationship destroyed with a single post-it note carelessly slapped on the particleboard counter top. He didn’t even stop to dwell on the gravity of what he was doing; there was no room for doubt to creep in. He hurried upstairs and threw most of his closet in the giant red suitcase he kept under his bed. He scrambled to throw anything of meaning in a backpack along with his nearly expired passport, of which he maybe filled half. In the frenzy, the only time he took to do something gently was when he took his beloved painting of that cottage in the south of France off the wall. He gingerly tucked it under his arm, grabbed his bags, and fled from that prison like an escaped convict not even bothering to lock the door on his way out.

His raucous laughter filled the car and it seemed to make the air inside physically lighter. He laughed about his tendency towards addiction: his vapid twitter addiction that started the second he registered, the heroin addiction that had taken over his beleaguered body, and his new found addiction to uprooting everything implanted in his life and the lift it gave his spirits.

He tore through the streets of uptown nearly making every yellow light and once he touched the freeway he was gone. His car squealed into the parking ramp and skidded to a harsh stop that threw his bags about like a leaf in a wind storm, but he was careful to protect his beloved painting in the front seat. If even a single swirl of oil based paint was altered in any way he would know. As he hurried into the steel building with impossibly high glass windows, he turned around one last time to view the sign that said “Long Term Parking Ramp”. Did forever count as long term? He wasn’t sure when he would be back and that car was a piece of shit anyways. His jog slowed to a barely contained gait. No TSA agent turns a blind eye to a lunatic sprinting through an airport with an oil painting.

The transaction at the self-help kiosk for Air France took minutes. Everything in today’s world is automated to necessitate the least amount of human interaction possible. Two grand was the price of his total upheaval, two grand out of a total of $2,600 in his severely diminished savings account. But that didn’t matter because for once in his life he was doing something different. He was jumping from his nest and hurtling towards the ground, flapping his wings frantically in hopes that he would fly. And as he raced through the terminal as slowly as he could he gazed at the oil painting, watching the vibrant swirls melt into each other to form a decadent landscape.

Brett had no idea if he would ever see that cottage, or if it even existed, but he was going to try and fulfill that childhood fantasy. And as he took out his ticket for the gate attendant he extended left hand and realized that the burning, reminiscent of a constant branding, that marked his arm for the past few years had not been present since he left the factory. Maybe it would come back and maybe it wouldn’t. That didn’t matter because as his foot touched the carpet of the plane and the stale smell of recycled oxygen smacked his nostrils, he felt like air.