I woke up in a driving car. I knew it was driving because I heard the engine, but I couldn't open my eyes yet. 

"Who's car is this?" I asked softly. 

"My car." Carl answered. He was using his low voice, which warned me that what had happened had not been an accident. 

I opened up my eyes. I was sitting in the left backseat of Carl's car. Every detail about it was correct: the chairs, the shape, and of course the ceiling with those little lights in it. They represented the night sky on the day Carl was born. There was a dark purple blanket draped over me, that smelled like lavender. 

"Where are we going?" I asked. 
"We're driving to my place." Carl answered.
Just as I expected, I thought. 

I knew I had to be alert, that the situation wasn't right, but it seemed a lot easier to not worry about it. And I knew that wasn't natural, because I always worry about things. But even about that I couldn't worry. 

I tried to get a negative association to warn my brain that the situation wasn't good, for example when I was once driven hysterical by my little brother and fled out of a car, and a while later was forced to wait for that car to come get me, and I was in the corner of the garden close to the remains of the lavender that used to grow there, and I still smelled it. But I couldn't recall the feeling. It seemed so distant. 

Outside it started to rain. I heard Carl laugh softly.

"As if I ordered it..." he mumbled to himself. 

The sound of the rain reminded me of a song I wrote. It was called "Mare", which is Latin for sea. It was about the feeling I sometimes used to get at school, as if I was in a fish bowl and the world outside is blurred and not understandable, or as if I was drowning in a sea of all the things I had to pay attention to.

I softly hummed the chorus. It would probably be the worst association I could hold on to.