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At long last, after a separation of years and oceans and fields and mountains, the man and the woman were reunited. Their correspondences had sustained each other with the warmth of love through the biting realities of life, cold and dark, hungry and alone. The memories of each other’s faces had become ever more obscure and, they feared, idealized. But when they laid eyes on each other, they were immediately struck with how no image in their minds could compare to the real things. And together, they were more beautiful than they were alone. They embraced, and the warmth they carried inside of them fused and burned with the intensity of a thousand suns. Zing! went the strings of her heart.

They spent the day together, the night together. Zing! went the strings of her heart. They laid in each other’s arms one day from sunup to sunrise, staring out at the horizon, speaking only of their love for one another. Zing! went the strings of her heart.

They walked along the beach, hand in hand, bathed in moonlight. They leaned into each other, they supported each other. Zing! went the strings of her heart.

“Are your heart strings going to keep doing that?” he asked.

Their steps halted. “I believe so,” she stammered, suddenly fearing, doubting his devotion.

He took a deep breath, mustering up every ounce of tolerance he could. “In time, I hope that I shall accept it, and maybe even grow to love it,” he said to the waves. Then he turned to her and smiled.

Zing! went the strings of her heart.

Four walls of tinted glass separate me from the rest of the world. From my leather throne, I can survey the world in all its dingy moral ruin. I can see the eyes of those who would scorn me, would persecute me. Though they may peer in, they may not recognize me, for here in my sanctuary of steel and iron, I am protected and appear to their wretched eyes only a dark shadow.

My hands rest on the wheel. Its mana infuses me with strength, energy, and peace. I look in the rear-view mirror. The eyes that return my steely stare are the only eyes that have ever seen my true self, for this is the only place I truly exist.

“Traffic school’s every Wednesday and Friday at seven at City Hall,” the police officer standing outside my window tells me. He returns to me my license and my registration, and with them is the citation I have received for the speed at which I live my life.

“Thank you, officer,” I tell him and receive these pieces of paper into my sanctuary. As the police officer returns to his vehicle, my left hand rolls up the window and my right turns the volume knob on my car stereo.

You got me shakin’, got me runnin’ away
You get me crawlin’ up to you everyday

With a satisfyingly plush noise, the window’s frame receives the glass and restores the division between myself and my seven billion antagonists.

Don’t bring me down
No no no no no

I turn the key in the ignition and I drive. When I arrive at my destination, I will be forced to leave my safe haven. When I return to that cesspit I call an apartment tonight, restlessly trying to sleep, this comfortable space will sit empty and cold beneath my floor.

I’ll tell you once more, before I get off the floor
Don’t bring me down.

And within sixty days, I will attend two hours of goddamned traffic school with twenty strange and filthy zombies. But now, in this moment, the road moves swiftly under my feet; now I drive; now I am secure.

Don’t bring me down–grroosss!
Don’t bring me down–grroosss!
Don’t bring me down–grroosss!

The world may even be able to stop my sanctuary, but so long as I am within it, I soar.

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This post is an installment in a continuing series of content coordinated by theme or motif with posts from Enoch Allred of Chiltingham, John Allred of clol Town, Jon Fairbanks of Funkadelic Freestylings of Another Sort, Eli Z. McCormick and Miriam Allred of Modern Revelation!, Joseph Schlegel of Sour Mayonnaise, Sven Patrick Svensson of Sadness? Euphoria?, William C. Stewart of Chide, Chode, Chidden, and WiL Whitlark of The Real McJesus. This week’s theme: ‘Sanctuary’.