for weeks he had felt bloated. it had started the night of the cheddar party. it was called the cheddar party because of the loaf of cheddar he had purchased on impulse when buying detergent at the grocery store. he said, 'it will be like a wine and cheese tasting party,' jokingly, to a friend. they loved the cheddar loaf, and it became a cheddar party in the chaos of minds directed in exponential tangents to reality rather than with it, or what he had been accustomed to referring to as reality so that his friends wouldn't know he was high. if he told them what he could see (which was what they could see, if they wanted to -- he wasn't a mystic, following the impulses of shameless relativism, but he was an objectivist) they would consider him crazy. and crazy is only being out of place, with thoughts, with words. and those thoughts and words too quickly being the end of the hands. in the dark room he ate himself into a stupor following the carving of the cheddar loaf, and the systemic consumption of it, leaving only a third on the table with everyone feeling the tight, hard, bolus of muscle that his stomach had become. after the party came the feeling of suddenness, and then an echoing silence of hollow after that terrible, miserable night of sexless self-antagonization. he succumbed to mental frenzy and tension, a reduction of him to an absolute state of disrepair and neurosis. this put him behind the wheel of a medium-fast car, sleek and streamlined as if by seamless freeway travel, in full transit to an unresearched, unindexable destination. noone can stop for this, noone can imagine it, he thought. what a rush -- of air, of lights, of the smooth acceleration of the engine, flawlessly mechanical with the rustling of internals. for this he celebrated; for its sudden entrance in speed and power and wind and reflections melting past in the distorted reflection of the shiny car finish. for four hours he covered desert and city and suburban freeway, reaching to further his ability to reach a new destination. heavy distillate of food and stress sat bricklike in his stomach. bloated, god i feel. the wheel turned heavy and narrow in his hands. onward until morning. the sun comes up and the sky may be orange or pink or maybe a vague lavender. that much is known.