#4 Jack

Jack drives to work every day. He commutes alone, from a subburb an hour away from the city. He lives with a wife he knows is cheating on him, and two kids which make the only two reasons he stays with her. And they’re pretty piss poor reasons.

His job is boring, “but it’s a job” he tells himself. He doesn’t go to bars. He doesn’t go to movies. He spends his days at work, and his nights inside, surrounded by his family, and alone. He sighs in the morning when he gets up, and when he climbs into his own, seperate bed, he fails to remember the good times.

He just drives to work every morning, and drives back every evening. And it’s in what would under any other circumstances, be a boring drive, a lament of everyone else’s existence, that Jack looks forward to. That Jack lives for. In his car, in that drive, is when he’s careless, wreakless almost.

It’s not that he drives like he’s crazy, or has an expensive sports car. He’s cautious, and his car is an old ‘97 sedan, the kind that even when it was new, was just a car.

It’s what he becomes in this car, when he’s alone. He puts in his CD, and sings along with the band, who seem to sing about all his wants. He wants to live his life without the care and caution he always shows. He wants to end his relationship with his wife, and leave her with the kids that spit in his face. He wants to quit his job for something exciting, and he wants to finally ask out that girl in the cubicle a few down from his. He wants to buck up, and tell the people in his life, just once, to shut the fuck up.

In his car, he’s who he wishes he was, and who he knows he can’t be. When he opens that door, he knows he has to be the Jack everyone knows and depends on, and not the Jack no one suspects even exists.

One can only guess who he’ll be after the impact…. If he’ll even be anyone.

Category: 2011, Drama