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By Root 347 0

just after seven P.M., and his passenger and fellow traveler had expressed the need to use a restroom. Though Milo also needed to urinate, he decided to forgo nature’s call and use the time alone to access some of the jars of jelly from the trunk of the Honda in order to satisfy one of the mounting demands making rational thought almost impossible. Almost an hour ago, Milo had been forced to complain to his companion about the overwhelming headache that had been plaguing him ever since the first of these demands had taken shape in his mind. Though he was loath to admit to the suffering, always wanting to keep every aspect of the demands as secretive as possible, he felt he needed to in order to limit the conversation in the car and allow him to direct all of his mental energy to the road ahead. An offer had been made to take the wheel, as he knew it would, but Milo knew that the pressure would only increase if he were sitting in a passenger seat with nothing on which to direct his attention. With each passing mile, the demands had grown stronger and louder, though that wasn’t quite right since they issued no actual sound. Instead, each inexplicable demand blazed away in his mind like a small sun, a silent, unstoppable imperative that consumed all thought and reason. And as they did so, the confines of the Honda had seemed to become smaller and smaller. He had grown fidgety, his arms and legs feeling almost electrified. Even in the limited space of the driver’s seat, he was unable to sit still. The fillings in his teeth had begun to ache. He was perspiring profusely. His brain felt as if it were trapped in an ever-tightening vise.

The physical toll of the demands had never been so terrible.

He had tried switching the Honda’s cruise control on and off in an effort to release some of the pressure on his mind and body but found no relief. He had tried adjusting the power mirrors, and still no effect. He had pretended to accidentally lock and unlock the doors in hopes that the pop of the power locks might afford some reprieve, but it had not. Finally, he had risked snapping and unsnapping his jeans, just once, but even this had offered little in the way of respite. The demands were too many and too loud for his usual delaying strategies to work. There were four of them now, a never-before-seen number, pressing on one another like a crowd battling its way to a locked exit door in the middle of a fire.

The demand to open those jars of jelly.

The demand to replace the stale air in the Honda’s tires with fresh air.

The demand to bowl a strike.

The demand to sing “99 Luftballons” to anyone who would listen.

He expected others to follow shortly, as the mounting pressure would undoubtedly force new and ever-more-challenging demands to the surface. Weebles and ice cubes and drink boxes and those goddamn words would surely follow, and maybe even some new demands not currently found in his repertoire. He wondered how much more of this he could take.

In short, Milo was a man slowly losing his mind.

But he hoped that the jars of jelly would help. The twisting of the lid, the satisfying pop of the pressure seal, and the subsequent, almost imperceptible yet supremely powerful hiss might alleviate enough of the building pressure to allow him to continue his journey.

As he feared, two jars had not been enough. He had moved a total of nine from the trunk to the front seat, the remains of his stash, and though he would’ve liked to have found the time to conceal them under his seat, away from the prying eyes of his passenger, he had not. Delaying their opening for even a second had become impossible.

Milo was in the midst of opening his fifth jar, having lost all track of time in the euphoric pop of the pressure seals, when the passenger door opened, the interior light came on, and the woman attempted to reenter the Honda. She paused for a moment, staring at the four opened jars of Smucker’s grape jelly (Milo’s preferred brand for satisfying this demand) on her seat, their lids stacked neatly in a rectangular space in the console, before