HOT COMA

hang on to the good that you got

He was sure he could hear the air seeping from the tires of the antique Dodge Challenger. Through the foam earplugs, beneath the mattress, under the cricket choir, audible even through the intermittent whines and scratches of the dog next door… yes, he was certain he could hear the air hissing from the radials (is that what they were?) like cold white noise filling the car port three floors below.

Especially the front passenger side, that wheel definitely had a slow leak, albeit slightly faster than the rest, the ones merely violated by creeping shards of what he imagined was glass, but slow nonetheless. That’s what the garage guy would call it, anyway—a slow leak.

The garage. The guy. That tire would need to be patched soon or replaced altogether. Not that soon, not tomorrow soon, but soon enough. Next week maybe? He couldn’t risk a blow out, not with all he needed to do, not with M. returning from her assignment on Tuesday, and not with the Hot Coma, as the media had dubbed it, sweeping the streets.

Did anyone really buy that crap? Did he really buy that crap? The “god microbe”? The so-called “epiphanic effect”? The sunshields the street scum were now peddling, claiming the triple lens protected you from the heightened gaze of “the risen”?

The passenger side hissed again, louder still, he thought. His heart raced at the thought of the phone call, the one he’d need to punch in to arrange the drop off, the repair. Not the phone. Not the questions. Not the anticipation of making the call and answering the questions.

Sleep was unlikely now. To calm his mind, he turned his focus to the song he’d been arranging in the background of all this noise, behind the hissing, the chirping, the scratching, the un-switch-off-able-offness of the chatter. There was, after all (all?) some beauty haunting this place.

Hang on, he hum-whispered, hang on to the good that you got…