The MVC

It’s a snapshot, just a moment in time. Recorded for the future, for when the memories grow hazy. The glimmer, only visible in the mists of early morning.

Sometimes we remember the wrong story. Sometimes we only remember the stories where we are the villain. We materialize our truth in every retelling, in every axe we pick up, determined to throw harder, in every brick hauled to build the walls higher. We reinforce the belief.

This false dichotomy was constructed solely by remembrance. Etched into gray materials to be reborn every morning. A choice to be made.

Who will I be today?

What an eternal question. The weight is heavy on her shoulders. Sometimes it sits on your chest, compressing all of your organs, ribs threatening to snap. Your diaphragm lifts far above its weight class.

Fuck.

Sweet dread slowly washed its syrupy self over her. The MVC. The title. She had to go get the out-of-state title transfer. What an annoying errand. To insert oneself into the true American pastoral: an array of humanity, compressed and waiting. This is the waiting place, echoes a childhood existential book. She hauled herself out of her reverie. Pink sheets fluttered in the cool bedroom air as she groaned with disgust about the tasks that lay before her.

HEAVE!

She stumbled out of bed, dizzy from sleep, and banged her knee on the table near the end of her bed.

“FUCK!”

This day was already off to a bad start.

“Okay, get dressed. What should I wear?” she said to no one. “Oh, nothing! Let’s just be naked! That sounds like a fucking plan, Sam!”

Her body revolted at the thought of straps and wires and bands cutting incisions into her skin. She settled on what touched her skin the least — the softest, least constricting fabrics to adorn her. Armor for the environments that lay ahead. Her mind played visions of fluorescent lights buzzing at 440 Hz, piercing their beams mercilessly upon the huddled masses’ glistening foreheads.

Ugh.

She shuddered. Nobody wanted to be there, and everyone always forgot something important. She was convinced.

The sun hung high and heavy in the air, almost as if it had beamed itself closer to the earth. Dust hung in the humidity, a sparkling cloud draping itself over asphalt, gray and sticky. Parking lots reflected the magnificent orb into shivering waves that rose from their surfaces. The air stunk of industry and exhaust, notes of rotting marshes fluttering in every so often, reminding the denizens of the greener histories buried beneath the concrete. Human invention epitomized within the rolling strip malls planted on routes.

“New Jersey is just routes and strip malls,” her mother’s voice echoed.

Welp, the bitch ain’t wrong.

She pulled into the weather-beaten lot. The plaza buildings were low and flat, reaching further than any city block, clawing at the edges of the horizon in all directions. Engines of commerce. Birthplaces of Gross Domestic Product. The teal roofs were bleached by UV rays eating holes in the finish. Tarnish.

Oh, the depravity of civilization. This is our greatest triumph. Conquering the land, converting one frequency into another. So why couldn’t she convert her eternal dread into joy? Wouldn’t that be using her biology to its highest calling?

No.

It insisted on staying, an invisible noose hung around her fragile neck. A thread she could not cut, and she knew begging the Fates was to no avail. What use was she to them? They were the ultimate storytellers, weaving lifetimes into unison. She was but a fiber, a wisp carried by the wind to their weathered hands.

As she swung open her car door, the menacing heat enveloped her, grasping at her skin and suffocating. It was as if the asphalt was possessed, begging her to join it in its scorched peril. A portal to hell opened in front of her. Her vision blurred, hazy in the periphery. A darkened vignette under the merciless sky.

She strode toward the hidden glass doors, barely perceptible from the gray stone stacked to contain state-run offices, beauty stores, Chinese carryout, and gift shops. There were so many stores in the plaza, she could barely find the white-and-blue lettering indicating she had arrived at her destination. She stepped under the concrete overhang leading to the entrances. A respite from the burning brightness that lay behind her, the air already cooler from soaking in the shade.

Her hand grabbed the smooth, cool metal handle and swung open the door, transporting her into the cool, dissociative realm of the MVC.

Chaos rose up to meet her. Every selection of humanity cloistered around tables and standing in lines. Some perched anxiously on blue leather chairs, while others seemed to try and take up as much space as humanly possible.

A contractor with a gold chain cursed Jimmy, while a teenager shushed their baby sister, rocking the car seat with one foot. A young mother stood with a toddler slung on her hips, belly ring blinding and hot pink claws extending from a hand holding a bedazzled Android. The toddler dropped its pacifier on the white linoleum floor, the nipple landing smartly face down on the filthy, scuffed surface.

A mutiny of language met her ears — all pitches and volumes, the loudest ringing out annoyed. A bubbling crescendo of stimulation. She peered around the masses in front of her, and the familiar sight of office chairs set up in impossibly long rows greeted her eyes.

Loneliness is a plague.

Snaking its way through generations. Isolation, self-imposed in one way or another. We sneak through the airwaves, desperate to connect to other framed realities. Something to take the edge off. Something to soften and soothe the rumination.

Plan A vs. Plan B. Which road? Which reality?

The clocks ticked loudly in the background.

Tok Tok Tok Tok Tok Tok Tok Tok. Eight seconds here, millennia within the multiverses encased in our particles.

Path A? Path B? The question spins again. Around and around, switching like binary code: 1, 0, 1, 0.

Why is it so uncomfortable?

Legs sticky against the state-funded chair.

“Next,” a shrill voice pierced the noisy chatter of confused humans.

She had filled out her paperwork. She had been sitting there for at least 20 minutes, why wasn’t her number coming up? The lady had said to get in the next line. Weren’t the chairs the next line? Isn’t this what you do when you come to the MVC? You sit and wait.

She tried to remember the instructions, visualizing what the lady had said to her. Of course, she was late to the appointment, flustered in apology. She hadn’t actually heard where to go, her brain blanking on given instruction.

She looked around furtively, scanning the environment for context clues.

I don’t think I’m supposed to be here. I fucked up. I for sure fucked up, her inner monologue carried on. Adrenaline shot into her chest.

“Oh, haha, silly me,” she said to the room, making eye contact with the disgruntled, unkempt man who had heaved his mass onto the chair next to her, his denim shorts scraping her bare leg, the smell of his body enveloping her.

She escaped the rows of chairs, banging her knee a second time.

FUCK!

Only this time, quiet and in her head. She almost tripped over the post holding the retractable belt cordoning off the line she was supposed to have been in. Adjusting her skirt, she held her paperwork in neat succession, tucked perfectly into a glinting paperclip. She was certain she was prepared for the task ahead of her. She had triple-checked her documents, even going so far as to create a record of the “gifted vehicle” in case they asked for proof.

She drifted away as the hubbub continued around her, fidgeting her feet as she stood in line.

Rewind to find the parts you don’t want to leave behind. The softness of your hands. The softness of your heart. Find buried either the terrifying truth or the log function of “what if.”

It’s just fear of a specific fear.

The ultimate catch-22.

Ponder. Sonder. Folklore.

“I’m a storyteller!” she proclaimed — a justification, a modification of the perception perceived. Hold the truths we know. Parse the realities and weave them into a broadcloth to tie around your torso. To shield you, to protect you.

The glowing shield partitioned her from the world.

She was already covered in wounds. She had faced her hardest battles alone, naked, cold. No armor, no weapons but what she could craft. And let’s be honest: she was not very well-equipped. Neither skills nor materials were immediately obvious in the surrounding environment. A babe in the woods, as it were.

She had to dig deep, down to the softness, to hold it and cradle it. Whisper to it, “Hi. You are going to be okay. Look at what you did. It’s okay to feel it. That’s the next step. You just have to feel.”

“Next,” that same shrill voice now beckoned her to the floating island podium.

Gray felted walls and plexiglass separated her from a disgruntled woman. She handed her paperwork to the papery mottled hands that reached through the crevice. The woman looked over the top of her glasses shuffling expertly through the neat stack.

“Do you have the release of lien?”

“The what?” Confusion whirred in her hears.

“The release of lien,” the woman repeated herself, slowly enunciating each syllable as if the girl were simple-minded, disabled.

“Uhm, what do you mean?”

Her brain scrambled. Release of lien? What was this woman talking about? She had just handed her the title. The financing company releases the title upon payoff, everyone knows that. How would she have the title if there was a lien?

Her mind raced, trying to comprehend this inevitable failure. It seemed as if no matter how many times you read the website, there was always a crucial document you must be a moron not to have. Of course, you hadn’t even heard of that document.

The woman was not amused.

“The company here” — she pointed at the title’s top corner — “gives you a release of lien.” The woman stared down her glasses.

“Oh, yeah, but the title is the release,” the girl explained.

“No.”

“Uhm… okay. Yeah, I’ll get it, got it. Thank you so much. I’ll go get that. Thanks.”

Sorry for existing.

“Next,” the woman screeched.