20 Minutes

My favorite smell will always be the smell of smoke. This is why I love wildfire season. Something about the fact that there are things even man can not tame brings me the slightest joy. The muffled vibrations of my dingy little 1987 Chevy soothe me as I take a deep breath of the dull, smoke-filled mountain air. It was very clear that wildfire season was raging. Driving towards the wildfire made me feel more powerful than the untamed nature, and in only 20 minutes I will use that power to reach my truest joy. I was going to my happy place.

When I was in first grade my teacher told me something that changed my life. She told us that whenever we are in a situation where we are unhappy, all we have to do is close our eyes and go to our happy place. She told us that everyone’s happy place is different. For some, it may be a calm meadow of sweet smelling lilacs, for some, it may be a soft bank of snow, for others, it may be a happy childhood home. But my happy place? Now that is a complicated question. As a wee first grader my happy place was going home to my father’s loving arms. But zoom that picture out? It was my father protecting me from my mother’s drunken screaming. The same drunken screaming that drove him to up and disappear without a trace that same year. I always wondered how he could just leave me with such a terrifying woman, and the worst part was I never knew what the last straw was. He was just gone.

This is the reason my happy place changed because within that year is when her screaming turned to unprecedented punishments, which turned to slaps, which turned to fists. There was never a real reason. Sometimes she wouldn’t even say a word; as if it was just routine. The beatings were where my true happy place started to form. With each beating, I would close my eyes and envision how I could strike back in the most painful ways possible. Each time I returned to my happy place it was different - fires, guns, ropes the whole shebang. Eventually, I started writing my updated happy place in the little black book I found in a box of my father’s stuff that he had left behind. The very first page was simple; set a wall of fire around the house with my mother slowly baking inside, it is probably the simplest one I have. Each page is filled with drawings and detailed descriptions of the ways I wished my mother would die. After a few years, it was not just my mother, it was my history teacher, anyone who made a snide comment - really anyone who did me any wrong. So from that point forward? It was me and my happy place against the world.

I haven’t spoken to my mother in years. As soon as I turned 18 I was out the door; vanishing without a trace just as my father had. I had not a single person to stay for, so I took my little black book and I left. I wonder if it would have ever gotten better if I had stayed, if maybe, just MAYBE, she would have eventually stopped drinking and we could have lived happily ever after as a little half of a family. Maybe my father would have come back. Maybe the emotions that I tried so hard to block out would have returned. Maybe I could have stopped writing in my little black book, and just maybe I wouldn’t be in a car; 16 minutes away from my happy place.

My little black book is the very thing that makes me fear myself. I have never understood my own mind and how twisted it has become. The progression of my writing and drawings is what I am most proud of. In fact, I even started submitting my work when I had first run away so I could get out of my dead-end fast-food job. It was really quite easy, all I had to do was take my story and manipulate it to have the right balance of reality and fiction. It took years to form my craft enough to finally win contests. I had to let myself give into my violent thoughts, and only then did my little black book start paying off. The push for my little road trip was the last contest I won. It was a horror story contest, and boy am I good at that. First prize? $20,000. Just yesterday I got the email, and let's just say that money is funding my road trip, and happy place. The only person I have to thank for my creativity was an art teacher I had. She taught me how to draw, and those drawings are what inspires my writing.

10 minutes. I can feel the shivers of joy running up and down my spine. I vaguely recognize my surroundings, and that's how I know I am close. The red tint of the mountains brings me back to childhood. The little ice cream shop where my dad used to take me looks like a mirage, almost as if the memories never happened. The roads twist and turn around fields of cows and yaks as the smoke grows slightly thicker. The fires are far enough away, only the on-edge tourists are evacuating. Honestly, this is probably to their better judgment; the tall pine trees are very dry this time of year.

5 minutes. The road converges close to the river now, and it brings two vivid memories. The first being the last camping trip with my father. We fished and he taught me how to make a fire that catches quickly to cook our dinner. It was the most peace I have ever felt with a member of my family. The second? My mother took me camping two years after my dad left in the same spot. I couldn’t catch a fish so she held my face under the water until I was sucking in the mountain stream gasping for air. She made me sleep outside on the rocks while she ate the only food we brought. I press harder on the gas pedal thinking of this as I watch the time flick on the dash from 12:59 am to 1 am.

It is 1:05 am and I finally get to do the very thing I have wanted to do all my life. I parked about 100 ft from the one-story house miles away from another living soul that I have always loathed. Her bedroom window is on the right side of the house, just as it was 20 years ago. It took me years to scour every record I could to make sure she was still in the same pathetic place she had always been. She never left even after she remarried and had 2 more kids. I hate those kids for getting a better life than me. I walk up to the window and peer inside to see two peaceful souls at rest. With my gas can tipped, I walk the perimeter of the house; soaking every inch of the walls that I can. I walk the trail out onto the driveway. I pull out my little black book and tear out my first page to set at the very end of the trail of fuel. I strike one match and suddenly my happy place comes to life with one sweet scream.