You can also watch or listen to me read at Hindsight Story Night #82
Hosted by Chuck Palahniuk's Plot Spoiler
Bubbles
Instead of a podcast, or Taylor Swift, it’s a big, white, powdered fist that blasted my friend, Alice, in the face. The fist busted out of my steering wheel so hard she didn’t hear the plastic clatter of my makeup against the dash. Over the phone, over the sound of my car alarm, she told me how she thinks her brains got on the windshield. Except instead of her brains, it’s really just an exploded pistachio latte with oat milk. Same difference TBH.
Over Facetime, on her phone, the latte dripped all over my compacts and lipstick and Bubbles’ cage. Alice’s face on the phone, dusted white with talcum powder and bleeding out her nose, the least I can say is maybe she’ll finally get that nose job she always needed.
Supposed to be, in a car wreck, everything fell back down on the floor and the seats. Supposed to be, gravity pulled the world down. Instead, Alice’s hair fell forward over the steering wheel.
Over Facetime, instead of drivers rubbernecking at how my bestie totally trashed my whip, the inside of the car looked like outer space, or an aquarium, all blue with light shimmering. In the corner, her pet boa constrictor, Bubbles, slithered out of his cage, and the least I can say is, if she doesn’t drown, maybe she can get a normal pet, like a boyfriend or a gerbil.
Alice said, “I think I’m going forward. And down?” and the phone went black.
Forward and down, like how Alice drove on the first rainy day after summer. All that oil crusted over with dirt, with miles of micro plastics and tire shavings, one really hard rain washed all that crust away, and cars left snake trails, tires skidded.
Supposedly, Alice needed to take her boa, Bubbles, to the vet. She was supposed to drive her dad’s truck, but it was in the shop. If she crashed her Dad’s truck, instead of mascara and eyeliners, the dashboard and windshield would’ve been pelted with hammers and screwdrivers and McDonald’s bags. Instead of K-pop, the music that cut would’ve been dad rock, like AD/HD or Megameth.
According to Alice, same as the difference between the shower at her dad’s and my mom and dad’s, it only takes the slightest touch to take the water from scalding to freezing. Same as the brakes on what used to be my Prius, the slightest touch takes you to freezing.
So many things in Alice’s life needed a heavy touch.
Bubbles understood that. Bubbles the snake needed to wrap something up until it snapped before he ate. Even with mice, even though he could just swallow them whole the way girlbosses on spilled-tea podcasts do with boys, Bubbles still wrapped up mice until their little bones popped. With how big Bubbles was, you could fold him in half and he’d still be longer than Alice’s wing span. Watching Bubbles eat was like watching a professional wrestler pop a zit with a choke hold.
A couple weeks ago, Bubbles got out of his tank. Alice had turned every piece of furniture over in the house to find him, and still didn’t. Coincidentally, my cat, Sissy, had gone missing. Picture a tuxedo if a tuxedo was made of fur and had a fluffy tail and the cutest little ears. I’d been posting pictures of her on utility poles and Insta when I saw Alice walking around.
I said, “Hey girl, have you seen Sissy?”
And Alice looked into the bushes.
She looked up at tree branches.
As if she would see my kitty’s tail swishing up there.
One night, on the back porch, I snuck hits from my weed pen, and something moved in the bushes. Or maybe it was nothing but the weed hitting different. That thing moved too slow for you to know it was moving. Those little non-movements like how you adjust your friend’s shower, or how you're supposed to brake when you get cut off by someone texting while changing lanes on the Glenn Jackson.
This big lump slithered through the grass. At first, it looked like a firehose if you painted it with black spots and got it pregnant. Skinny on two ends but round in the middle—just like Alice! But the hose had yellow eyes and a pitchfork tongue. Bubbles.
Alice came and got him. His belly stayed swollen for so many weeks, Alice stopped smelling like the pet store where she bought live mice. But even after the swelling went down, like Bubbles looked like he’d been doing Pilates and was all skinny and pretty again.
He still didn’t eat, didn’t do the old wrap and snap.
We figured he probably got a racoon or a squirrel or something.
According to Alice, obvi my bestie, the check engine light and every light all around it died, and all that’s left with her was the surround sound of leaking faucets. Cold water dripped onto her shoulders and the inside of the windshield and dash. Drops glided off of Bubbles, mixing with the spilled coffee.
Alice explained what looked like driving into the night sky was exactly the opposite. Forward and down, into the Columbia River.
Alice unbuckled her seatbelt, and she fell onto the steering wheel, onto the airbag. Alice, who never took swim lessons, never got thrown into a pool by her dad, at best has only been in a Jacuzzi, like, once at my senior boyfriend’s party when we were in high school. Alice, alone in a sinking car, and there’s no true crime or morning spilled-tea podcast. Alice sank without Taylor Swift or even BTS to keep her company. Just running water on all sides.
Alice will post on Twitter how even dying to Lynard Skinhead is better than a leaky faucet in stereo. She’ll post selfies of her sideways, bandaged nose. She’ll look like a raccoon with her two black eyes, but same diff because that’s how she did her makeup anyway, TBH!
Alice pushed against the car door, tried the lever, but nothing. Like all that water pushed back. She tried the window, but unlike her dad’s truck, there’s no rollers. Those little electric buttons only clicked.
Those podcasts we listened to, those girls talking who have their fitness routines together, their cleanses, which bath salts to use and how to maintain a proper skincare routine, those girls who sit around microphones will tell you about how you can use your shoelaces to break through zip ties, or how to find the trunk release of a car in case you ever get kidnapped, or even how easy it is to get your mouth around duct tape after you’ve been gagged, or to cut the car brakes of sluts you catch making out with your monosyllabic boyfriend. Those girls teach us just about everything except how to swim.
But for sure if she didn’t get out of the car, Alice pictured in a day or two, a crane yanking her out of the river. On camera, her super bloated blue corpse, like more bloated than normal, which will be retweeted and reposted by all her friends and all her not friends, and obvi me, her BFF. And Bubbles. Who was just supposed to go to the vet to get some snake vitamins or a laxative or whatever.
Just because Alice didn’t get a breast stroke, or a side-basket type swim lesson instead of a yeast infection from my boyfriend’s hot tub doesn’t mean her big boa boy had to drown.
Those podcasts, at least they mention how to break a car window. Not that Alice remembers the why, but according to those tea-spillers, you can take the headrest off a car seat, and hit it with the hard metal parts underneath to bash the window.
By the time Alice got the headrest off, the dash was covered in water. Coffee cups and sea turtle-killing straws floated around her legs. Her snake filled the entire space of the car, like a super-giant pool noodle.
Alice bashed. The headrest bounced off the window and slipped out of her hands, missing Bubbles and splashing into the freezing waist-high water. She checked the door lock, clicked the lock switch, but nothing happened.
No Taylor, no lights, no electricity.
Water filled up to her chest and even alone, Alice would still lose a wet T-shirt contest. Alice hit the window with the headrest again.
If Alice’s life were a movie, the soundtrack to the rest of her life was window banging and running water and “fuck” over and over.
Some things in life just needed a heavier touch.
What started as a star on the window, turned into a constellation, turned into a flood. The window crashed, and instead of the leaky faucet sound, it sounded like a waterfall inside my car, like all of the Columbia hosed Alice in the face.
All those makeup kits floating around her, all those Starbucks cups. The lipstick and mascara suspended right in front of her in zero gravity. No forward, No down. Just the bubbles drifting from her nose, and the snake covering the windshield.
The giant snake unfurled all around her. The way his body twisted and floated made Alice look like a total ditz for thinking she needed to know how to use her arms and legs for things like swimming instead of grinding on boys in hot tubs.
When Alice shoved the snake out the window, he’s heavy. But not heavy like she needed to lift with her legs to get him in my car heavy. Heavy like trying to shove a balloon underwater heavy. Alice followed Bubbles out the window into complete dark. So dark there was no up.
All that progress, just to go from drowning inside a Prius to outside.
According to a crying Alice, all that disappointment just takes the breath out of you. Stars blotted Alice’s eyes, like she really was drowning in space. Stars and bubbles and heartbeat in her ears.
Alice still held Bubbles’ tail. The air bubbles from her nose floated up to the twisting, tugging firehose above her. That super-giant pool noodle.
Alice followed the air bubbles and her snake, Bubbles, up! She thrashed her legs and kicked. When she broke the Columbia, she pulled Bubbles around her like a floaty and kicked for the shore.
How funny would it be if right then, Bubbles did the old wrap and snap?
Days later, at the vet's office, the vet ruled there was a blockage in Bubbles. Snake constipation. They did a little gut surgery, and pulled something out. Something pink, like yarn. Just threads really. Pink threads, and a flat, valentine-shaped hunk of metal lodged the wrong way, causing the block.
The metal valentine said “Sissy,” and my phone number.
Not that anything has gone the way it’s supposed to, but the least my friend Alice does is send me a text, telling me what happened to my cat.
The End.
You left the comments on because there is nothing other than praise that could be said about this gorgeous story. I don’t blame you.
One of my favs!