Cracking Spines

Oct 2, 2009 9:41am

Alex had hit something, or someone, with his car, but he didn’t know what. There wasn’t any blood.

“Vampires,” Jonah said. “Zombies. What else? Anemics maybe? People who’ve just donated a lot of blood. A very large fish – do fish bleed?”

“I hope I didn’t hit anyone,” Alex said. “I’d feel really awful. I mean, I feel awful anyway, preemptively awful, but I imagine I could feel worse.”

“Story of your life,” Jonah said.

“For real.”

“There was once a sous-chef named Alex who always felt awful – guilty might be a better word” – Alex nodded – “but who always knew things could be worse. He wasn’t hungry or poor or of any sort of ethnic minority, just existentially discontent in a time after existentialism had ceased to matter anymore, thank you Zoloft. And this knowing that his problems were, um, subjective rather than objective made him even sadder. His sadness was mediocre. And so actually he wanted to be sadder. Sad to a point of significance.”

“Whatever,” Alex said.

“So then,” Jonah said, “he went out driving one night and thought, ‘Wow, maybe I, Alex, could really make a tragedy happen. Could really maim myself on a level equal to being an actual victim of something.’ But all he could hit was a vampire, which is basically invincible. And so he just kind of messed up his car, which is sad, but in a funny way.”