Have you ever stopped at the first traffic light off the highway and realized that you actually have no recollection of how you got there?
I’ve looked it up. It’s a normal phenomenon, an altered state of mind called highway hypnosis.
It makes sense that we forget sometimes. After a while, driving is so routine that none of it sticks. The commute today was likely the same as yesterday’s, and probably not much different from last week’s. Nobody thinks to remember, and nobody minds that they can’t.
I must have some kind of late-stage highway hypnosis then. I don’t know. I suppose ‘stage’ implies that it’s a grave matter, like some disease that can progress until it’s terminal. And maybe that’s appropriate, because I know if this keeps up, I’m bound to end up smashed through my windshield with my brains spread all over the asphalt.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to make that sound so bleak. I’ve just been having trouble with the glass half full thing of late. With all that’s happened, I keep dreaming of myself dying in car accidents and such. I’ve also started drinking before bed, which I think makes it worse.
But my problem isn’t a morbid one. It’s more of an issue of… sanity.
Let me explain from the beginning:
If I had to describe my commute, I would say it was tolerably bad. It usually took me an hour or two each way, depending on luck mostly. That was just long enough to be considered bad, but not long enough to be anything special. At least, not in the hellscape known as the American suburban lifestyle.
I had a fairly good relationship with driving, back when I could still remember doing it. I’d almost always have the radio on or an audiobook playing. Even bad drivers didn’t really get under my skin. I liked driving in the rain the most, even if it meant having to slow down. I found the monotony of it relaxing, meditative even. And I was pretty good at it. Never got any speeding tickets, never got into any accidents.
It all went wrong when I pulled into my company parking lot one day and noticed that the shadows on the ground were off. My favorite shaded spots were sitting in direct sunlight. I parked and squinted up to see the sun sitting high above me, its rays already too warm for morning. I glanced at the clock on my dash and felt my mouth go dry.
It was ten minutes until noon. I had pulled out of my driveway at eight o’clock sharp. And worst of all, I couldn’t remember a single minute of the last four hours. I stood in the parking lot and sweated under that searing sun for some time, just trying to remember even one detail. Had there been a car accident? Construction work? Something must have happened on the way. But when I squeezed my eyes shut and reached back in my mind, it felt like I was turning around just to see a yawning void opening up behind me.
“Bad commute,” I repeated in greeting several times on the way to my cubicle. My coworkers expressed their surprise and sympathies. None of them seemed too concerned. Only Gary gave me a weird look, and I remembered that he lived only a few streets away from me. I supposed I could have asked him about his commute, just to fill in some of those missing hours, but I didn’t. I was afraid he’d tell me that it had just been “the usual”.
I stayed late to make up for the lost time, so it was dark by the time I left. I made it home no problem. As I sat parked in my garage, I thought back and immediately recalled the crusty minivan that had nearly smashed me into the road barrier and sighed in relief. The morning had just been a fluke, a product of my sleep-addled driving.
Wishful thinking, obviously. It happened again the next day. And again, and again, for the entire rest of the work week. My morning commute was a complete and total black hole every time. I felt like I was losing my grip on reality. My thoughts raced, and I began to imagine myself in absurd scenarios. I could have parked on the side of the highway, stripped naked and danced for an hour and I would have been none the wiser. Well, hopefully someone would have stopped me out of concern. Or is that a weird thing to hope for? At the very least, the police would have arrested me for public indecency. So I deduced that I probably wasn’t making a fool out of myself or breaking the law. At the very least. Glass half full, remember?
On the way back home on Friday, I noticed my tank was low, which was weird, because there’s a certain cadence in going to the gas station, and it just felt too early. Like, days too early. It occurred to me then that during my missing hours, I might not have just been stuck in traffic, or stopped somewhere doing something. I might have just been driving the whole time.
That weekend, in a rather productive bout of paranoia, I downloaded an app to track myself. It was one of those apps that parents use to stalk their children, so it was very thorough and capable of giving minute-to-minute updates on my location. On Monday morning, I put it to the test.
I left earlier than usual, at around 6AM, and got to work five hours later at 11AM. I logged myself in, said my hellos and then hurried off to the toilet. My hands were shaking badly in anticipation. When I finally got the app open, a bright cheerful font appeared on the screen.
Your Latest Trip: 169 miles.
Wrong! That was so wrong. My knees suddenly felt like they were going to give out. There was a strange buzzing sensation in my arms and legs. I mashed the Location History button with my thumb. The app loaded for a long three seconds and then displayed a zoomed-out map of the area. The path I had driven was marked in a bright purple line. I took a shuddering breath as I stared at the shape of it.
It reminded me of those old funnel games they used to have at shopping malls. People would drop their quarters in and watch them spin down into the center. It took a long time to get to the middle. As a kid I would always lose interest before the end of it and leave without making a wish.
According to the app, I left the highway when I was about halfway to work. Then I drove in a crude spiral, making nonsensical right-turns until I arrived at the center point. The curves of the spiral were jagged up close, since all the roads were built straight and only had ninety degree turns. I zoomed in and highlighted the little dot in the middle. It told me I had stayed there for an hour. Then I had left, again driving in the absurd circular motions of a spiral, until finally I merged back on the highway. The rest of the way to work was normal.
I couldn’t focus for the rest of the day. I sat in my cubicle and sweated and worried for an hour or two, before I finally gave in and messaged my boss. Joe’s a nice guy. I told him I felt sick, and he let me go home.
When I turned out of the parking lot, I could hardly stomach the dread that I felt just holding the steering wheel. Calm down, I thought. It doesn’t happen on the way back. I’ll feel better once I’m home. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for all of this.
The next thing I knew, I was somewhere else. The car was parked, and there was a rapping on my window. I looked up to see a police officer impatiently gesturing for me to roll it down.
“What’s the matter, sir?” I asked, voice hoarse. I gave him a queasy smile, trying not to seem like I was on the verge of a full-blown panic attack.
“You can’t stay here,” he said, gesturing at the “No Parking” sign with the notepad he used for writing tickets. “The other side of the road is OK though.”
I looked up at the mangled parking sign and back at the officer. I swallowed thickly and cleared my throat. “Right. I’ll move, sorry for the trouble.”
He nodded, patted my roof in assurance and went back to his patrol car. After I re-parked to the other side, I could see clearly the line of four or so cars that all had little papers fluttering under their windshield wipers. I waved to the officer as he passed by, no doubt moving on to his next set of victims.
It was a narrow little residential street, with a row of townhomes on one side and a chain-link fence on the other, separating them from the backlot of a shopping plaza. The “No Parking” sign was on the houses’ side. I had been parked right in front of one, a handsome redbrick place. A set of stairs led up to a quaint green door that was adorned with a brass knocker. It seemed familiar, homey. Hanging on top of it was an impressive autumn wreath, its smartly braided branches adorned with brilliant orange-red foliage. The branches fanned out from the center in a spiral pattern.
Bile suddenly rose in my throat. I shrank away from the house and grabbed my phone. Sure enough, the little dot was sitting on exactly the same spot that my tracking app had recorded me waiting for an hour this morning. No. Nope! I did not want to be there. I turned the key in the ignition and started easing the car out of my parking spot. As I neared the house again, I hesitated for the briefest second, imagining myself banging on the door and demanding to know what was going on. Then, a shift in one of the windows caught my attention, and my eyes darted up to see the curtains waving softly where something had just been watching.
I stepped on the gas and drove away, wheels screeching.
I got home only a half hour later. The first thing I did was stumble into the kitchen and pour myself a drink. It was still pretty early in the day but it was the only thing that could stop my hands from shaking so much. As soon as my pulse stopped racing, I opened my laptop and brought up the house on street view.
I stared at it a while, swiveling the camera to examine it from all different angles, hoping that it would stir some sort of memory. I knew I had been there before, during my “lost commutes”, but there was nothing solid to grasp onto. I couldn’t tell if anything I felt was real or just wishful thinking.
God, I really was losing my mind.
I thought about having to drive to work and just felt sick with dread. It took five hours today. How much longer could it go on for? I was afraid of waking up in front of that house again, or opening that app and seeing that inscrutable pattern again.
Since my boss thought I actually was sick, I reckoned I could probably stay home for a few days, but I’d have to go in eventually. There was free lunch at the end of the week for Priya’s promotion. I didn’t want to miss that. Thinking about work obligations felt silly, but it was easier than thinking about everything else.
It was considering the mundane that helped me figure out a temporary solution anyway. I never really liked Gary, but beggars can’t be choosers. He lived only two minutes away. I messaged him, citing car troubles, and asked if he would be open to carpooling.
It was the best I could do, for now.