Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

Breathe.

Just breathe.

There is nothing to breathe.

No air, not a single molecule of it. Nothing but darkness. Heavy, stinking darkness.

I can’t move – not so much as a fingertip. I’m encased in concrete. My burning chest screams at me to dig, to get myself back into open air, but I can’t.

Dirt presses in on all sides. It’s warm here. Not hot. Warm. Like infected flesh, like room-temperature soup. It’s on my ankles, arms, face, neck. My eyelids, the inside of my nostrils.

I have to scream, or I’m going to go crazy. My mouth opens, just a little. For a second, there’s hope – movement . Then grimy, grainy soil floods over my teeth and tongue, choking me, forcing its way into my mouth. There’s no scream. Just a thin, hissing whimper. I squeeze my lips shut, knowing it’ll make it worse, unable to stop it happening.

My PK . I couldn’t get Paul out in time, but there’s a car directly above me, isn’t there? I can just reach up, rip the goddamn doors off, dig myself out. The thought is so intoxicating that it’s a good few seconds before I actually do something about it, sending my PK up through the dirt like questing roots…

And I can feel something. The car, I think – or parts of it, anyway. But I can’t do anything. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get a grip on the car. I swing my PK around in desperation, feeling out other objects in the world above… but I can’t even figure out what they are, much less manipulate them. The darkness and the warmth and the suffocation have turned my thoughts to mush.

My heart is going to explode. It’s pounding so hard that it’ll just pop like a balloon. I want it to. I’m desperate for it to happen. I can’t be here, I shouldn’t be here, just let me go let me go let me go —

Buried alive . The thought gets louder and louder and louder, until it’s like someone screaming in my ear. Buried alive! Buried alive, Teagan! Just like Paul! Not burned or shot but buried! Buried alive!

I throw out my PK again. This time, I get even less back. My chest is on fire now, glowing red hot. For some reason, that makes me think of Sandra-May Cruz, the bottle of wine Paul brought her. A random memory, my brain scrambling for something familiar to hold onto.

Watts. The towers. The kids playing basketball. Rocko, Sandra-May’s dog. The trees next to the towers, blowing in the wind.

There are tears on my face. Nowhere for them to go, so they mix with the soil. No sound now. Dead, leaden silence.

… Breathe…

The earth, crowding my nose and mouth, whispering at me to let it in…

Reggie, on the way to Dodger Stadium: Sometimes, I forget how young you are . We were on the ATV… No, we weren’t on the ATV, we were in the truck. The ATV was after. We pulled into the parking lot. My ears were ringing, for some reason – no, that’s wrong too. My mind was ringing. I don’t know what means.

Nic. All I have to do is picture Nic, and everything will be OK. But his face becomes Jonas Schmidt, smiling, telling me he’d like to know my story. But he’s not coming, nobody is coming. I’m going to die, just like Paul did, buried alive Teagan, not burned or shot but buried! Nobody can get to me in time.

Nic becomes Carlos, impaled on that steel bar. My chest, burning, burning, on fire, white hot…

I don’t want to think about Carlos. I don’t have a choice. The thoughts are coming faster now, rushing on top of one another. I try to make myself think of my favourite things to cook – pho, steak, grilled cheese sandwiches – trying to picture the ingredients, the knife I use, my little kitchen. But I can’t hold onto them. The thoughts turn to ash, just like Carlos did. No matter how hard I try, all I can see are the trees in Watts, blowing in the wind.

It’s almost over .

Calm now.

There’s nothing I can do. Even the burning in my chest is starting to fade. I’m disappearing, melting into the darkness…

There’s a very small version of me still screaming and raging. Pissed off at all the things she never got to do. All the sex she’ll never have, the food she’ll never eat, the air she’ll never breathe. But she’s buried buried buried, deep inside. Soon she’ll be gone completely.

More images. Blurring together now. My dad’s chilli. My sister’s freckles. Tanner’s scowl. Running through the forest in Wyoming. Driving through LA on a summer afternoon. Annie’s mom in Watts. The trees moving in the wind. The strange tinnitus in my head. The parking lot of Dodger Stadium.

There’s something off about those last thoughts. Not that it matters. It’s quiet down here. Quiet, and warm.

The trees, moving in the wind …

I try to let go of the thought, but it stays. Like a splinter that won’t budge, no matter how much you pick at it.

The wind …

Except: there was no wind.

The air in Watts was still and quiet. I remember… I remember how hot it was. How calm. Why would the trees be moving, if there was no wind? And in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, when I got that same tinnitus in my head, wasn’t I close to the trees there too? At the edge of the lot?

I know I’m seeing something important. But it’s like trying to catch smoke.

Let it go. It doesn’t matter .

Trees. Moving. No wind. Moving. No wind. Mov—

Fuck that. It isn’t possible.

It’s just the last active part of my brain, spitting up random thoughts and connections, not willing to check out yet. It’s lying to me. I wasn’t the one moving the trees – even thinking it feels stupid. I can’t. They’re organic molecules. They don’t listen to me – they never have.

But they were. You’ve been getting stronger. And maybe, just maybe…

The tinnitus. The ringing sensation in my mind. I felt it in Watts, and again in the Dodger Stadium parking lot. It was gone so quick I couldn’t get a fix on it. What if… what if I just didn’t know what I was looking for?

It takes all the strength I have not to close my eyes and drift away, which is what every cell in my body wants to do.

Soil is organic matter , says the tiny part of me that refuses to die. The stuff you’re buried in? You can move it, dipshit .

But how?

OK. Stay awake. Just fucking stay awake. Ignore the panic and the lack of air and the darkness and the heat and – No! Fucking stay on course, you heinous bitch.

Forget everything on the ground above. It can’t help you. Just focus on what’s in front of your face. It doesn’t have to be big. You don’t need to move the whole planet. You just need to move one tiny little piece of it…

I bring my PK back. I make it do what it’s told. I make it sit in front of my face, like a dog. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. There’s nothing to grab onto, no point of reference. Nothing to hold nothing to think about just Nic and Carlos and Annie and—

FUCK YOU. Focus .

Imagine a tangle of fine hair. A huge, loose, puffy mess. That’s what it feels like. Imagine squashing it in your hand. Hardly anything there: almost no resistance.

Almost.

Because as I make my PK energy occupy the space in front of my mouth, I feel something. The barest glimmer of feedback. So brief and fleeting that I’m not even sure it’s really there. It might just be my mind playing tricks.

Snatches of old songs keep floating to the top of my mind. Kendrick Lamar and NWA. Nas. De La Soul. Vince Staples and MC Eiht and Yugen Blakrok. Earth Wind & Fire tracks that my dad used to play while he cooked, the classical music my mom liked, Bach and Brahms and Beethoven. Blending into each other. Seconds left, every bit of oxygen almost gone…