Down To Earth

Down To Earth; Story written to Billie Eilish songs Six Feet Under & Party Favor

For awhile the cliff ahead looks just like the horizon. It's not until it's too late that you can actually tell the difference.

Most people think they know what it would feel like to drive of the edge of a cliff—but the sensation of actually doing is quite different.

The moment the tires leave the ground is something Lydia has secretly wanted for most of her life.

When Mother would pick her up from school she'd always wait for Lydia to fasten her seatbelt before pulling away. On the ride home, while Mother was busy rattling on about her day, Lydia would quietly unbuckle her seatbelt—not enough that it would come all the way undone, just enough that it wasn't latched. There always was a chance they might get sideswiped on the ride home and sent careening into oncoming traffic.

Lydia wanted to be ready.

Whenever she'd find herself on a balcony of any real height—I mean anything above the tenth floor—she couldn't resist leaning against the rail in the hopes that maybe one of the bolts had rusted loose and would finally give her the closure she was looking for. But it never happened.

Sometimes fate simply refuses to meet you halfway.

Years passed, and for Lydia, time slowed into a thick grey paste. Birthdays, graduations, and funerals passed like deja vu. And while the rest of the world moved around her like time-lapsed photography Lydia was somewhere else.

It wasn't fear that kept her from taking more proactive measures. It was that nothing ever felt quite right. The thought of swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills was too predictable, too easy. Hanging was out of the question. The idea of some crime-scene photo making its way around the internet—with her neck stretched out like a sprung jack-in-the-box, and her tongue hanging from her mouth all purple and swollen—was simply unacceptable. Drowning didn't seem so bad, but every time she'd muster up the nerve to swallow a handful of Xanax and sit motionless at the bottom of the pool, her petulant little legs would shoot her towards the surface like an inflatable pool toy.

For what it's worth, most of the kids from her generation would've lost interest at some point. But not Lydia. Lydia spent every day of her of her twenty-first year on this planet planning the perfect curtain call, down to the t-shirt shirt she'd wear. The hardest part was finding a place that rents classic cars. It was a four hour bus ride to pick up her 1972 cherry-red Cadillac convertible. It took another twelve hours to reach the perfect location.

Lydia could hardly sleep the night before. She boarded the bus before sunrise. By the time she arrived the sun had slipped below the horizon.

That's not how she pictured it.

She drove her dream car through the desert until she came upon a little roadside motel with hourly rates. It was perfect.

A horrendous painting of a cactus and a setting sun hung above the headboard of the bed. Every horizontal surface in the tiny room was littered with little tin ashtrays that seemed to be more of a suggestion than a rule. Even the top of the TV was covered in thin strips of melted plastic, scars from misplaced cigarettes smoked by people who no longer existed.

The details were welcomed additions to her vision.

Lydia ended up breaking into the bottle of special-edition Jim Beam she was saving for the big day.

Visions can change.

She spent most of the night drinking and listening to The Cure. That unbearable gravity stirred in her chest. Her only companion. Halfway through the night a teeny-tiny part of her almost considered calling the whole thing off. She falls asleep at the table, with a bottle of booze between her legs, in a vinyl chair that's older than she is.

No more than two hours pass before she's startled awake by a voice. Shafts of blinding sunlight break into the room through the partially opened door. For a moment Lydia forgets where she's is, what she's there to do. A housekeeper-shaped silhouette pauses just outside the room. Shielding her face from the sun, Lydia tells her it's alright, that she's on her way out. With this the door closes and darkness returns.

It feels pointless, washing her face and brushing her teeth, considering what she's about to do. Then again everything Lydia's ever done has felt slightly pointless. Except this. She closes the door on her way out. As she passes a cart of cleaning supplies a conviction rises from the fractured concrete to meet the soles of her red Chuck Taylors.

She keeps the bottle in her lap as she drives the 23 miles to let it all go.

She does her best to take in the scenery, to smell the dry desert air layered with Cadillac exhaust and cactus bloom. She holds her hand out as she drives letting the wind lift her palm like a paper airplane over the speeding asphalt below. She closes her eyes and feels the tires grip the road beneath her. When she opens her eyes she's there.

The last drops of whiskey go down like fire. She tosses the bottle on the seat next to her. At least she's not alone. Her heart seems to have just now accepted the reality of this moment. It's more anticipation than fear. Lydia takes off her grandmother's rosary and hangs it from the rearview mirror. She adjusts her earbuds before scrolling through her phone for her favorite song, by an artist she'd never admit to listening to. The desert could care less. The sun is indifferent. For once, Lydia is not. She presses play and steps on the gas. The wheels of the Cadillac kick up a cloud of dust before catching the desert floor and speeding away.

The wind pulls everything Lydia's wearing a few inches behind her; her raven black hair with Manic-Green highlights, a hundred different bracelets, all of them black, the silver necklace her brother gave her for her 18th birthday, the collar of her New York Dolls t-shirt, and any remaining doubt, all flutter in the Cadillac's rearview mirror.

There's no big thump, no discernible crash, when the tires leave the earth. She only knows she's crossed the horizon because her stomach tumbles like she's on a plummeting rollercoaster, and everything not bolted down floats up around her. She's reminded of that David Bowie song, the one about the guy in the tin can. Tethered by her earbuds her phone slowly rises in front of her. For the life of her she can't remember the name of that song.

Floating through space it suddenly dawns on Lydia that these last few months, plotting and planning this whole thing, have been some of the best times of her life.

The hood of the Cadillac gently pitches forward.

Her seatbelt is the only thing keeping her in the car. The irony is not lost on her. As she stares out over the magnificent canyon she catches her reflection in the rearview mirror. She hardly recognizes the woman looking back. She's smiling.

The bottle of Jim Beam floats past her out of the car. She wonders if anyone will ever find it.

Time likes to stretch its legs in these type of moments. A lifetime unfolds before her phone makes full rotation.

This—this is what she's been waiting for: a single moment of clarity.

Staring into that dusty oblivion Lydia suddenly remembers everything; she remembers when there was nothing—not even time; she remembers when the gas left over from the Big Bang coalesced into the Sun; she remembers when the planet cooled, and water washed over its surface; she remembers being there in those little single-celled organisms as they drifted through the ocean; she remembers crawling from the sea, and climbing down from the trees into the African grasslands; she remembers being a thousand different people, living a million other lives all at once; she remembers it all: her birth, the rides home from school in her Mother's Mercedes, the warmth of her grandma's lap, her first job at Home Depot, all the railings, the planning, the bus ride, the cheap motel, every single thing up to this very moment. She wonders if finding this type of meaning requires a sacrifice this monumental. She also wonders if what she's experiencing is meaningful at all; or if it's just her Pineal gland flooding her brain with Dimethyltryptamine in the face of immanent death. Either way, she'll take it.

The sky gives way to the canyon below.

Her grandmother's rosary brushes her cheek before tangling with her brother's necklace.

The rocks below grow large in the Cadillac's windshield.

As her back presses into the seat Lydia experiences something she can't quite put her finger on.

It's gratitude.

Lydia's smile is time-lapsed photography. And, for the first time in her life, there is nowhere else to be.

Just before the Cadillac kisses the canyon floor the name of the Bowie song comes to her.

"A Space Oddit--"