There was but one simple mission bouncing around the almost completely empty head of my tried and true companion, who was sitting in the passenger seat gazing at a giant red ball disappearing over the horizon. He saw the textures that I did not, the soft hatch-marks like those of a playground kickball, moving back and forth across his eyes, sinking into the recesses of his brain where I suppose, for brief moments, he was recalling his childhood. All I saw was the sun. It must have been the mescaline.
He reached over slowly, as if at any moment his hand might fall helplessly to his lap, extending his fingers to the car door handle. His index finger hovered over the trigger for a few seconds as a bead of sweat rolled down his face and landed in a small pool on the right leg of his pants, beading up and rolling off in either direction before being soaked up by the seat cover, a towel as colorful as his face. And without warning, his hand fell and he pulled the handle, the light turning on overhead.
And he let it go, turning the light off. He stared up, pulling the handle and letting it go. A shrill laugh sounding something like Bob Dylan being strangled with piano wire spewed from his lips (it spewed, Dammit, laughter doesn’t fall in a cascade down the front of your shirt like that!), grasping the handle which was now slick with sweat and popping the door open, extending his leg and swinging his leg out of the car, his eyes never leaving the light on the ceiling.
With considerably less difficulty, I opened my car door, fumbling only for a second with the child safety before stretching my legs out and looking up at the sky, which was changing clothes and hoping no one was watching. Three minutes passed and I saw the jeans and t-shirt turn into something with slink and sparkle, all while Ricky stared at the car light.
I turned to him slowly as he opened and shut the car door, shrieking with laughter. I reached into the back of the car (I don’t recall opening the door, but I must’ve) and swung my fist up, retarding the life-span of the overhead and grinning at the cracked glass.
“What the **** did you do that for!”
“Come on, then, we can’t stand here all day. We have to get a move on.”
“Like hell we do! I’m calling the – ****, let’s get inside. Those look like acid clouds.”
A clear sky, but the terror in his eyes was something real. It must have been the mescaline. He began to move like Frankenstein’s monster, something only a woman could imagine, towards the sign that sat proudly atop a gentle green slope in front of the interstate. It was quiet at this time of night, perhaps because people grew weary of night traveling or perhaps because it was Vermont, but Rick’s movement was unhindered by the sounds of passing cars.
And in his state, sound would have probably been a major hindrance.
I began to follow, trying to place my feet exactly in the prints he left in the gravel, but finding myself trying to fit my foot into deer prints and a bicycle track more than anything else, and I couldn’t turn my foot into a wheel (although honest to God, I was trying). And then I was on the ground, humming a song to myself as I watched Ricky dance, his open Hawaiian shirt fluttering behind him, smacking his belly and screaming something. I laid on the ground, staring at the tiny rocks in front of me, realizing that the amount of Robitussin I had ingested minutes earlier might be detrimental to the plan, but at the same time, not really caring, because the rocks below me were moving.
Ricky must’ve seen that I was down on the ground because the next thing I knew, I was limping along next to him, staring at and through the windows of the truck-stop at the people inside, but at my angle (which was one incredibly ****ed up, hallucinating angle) they all looked like mice-people. Nice mice people, people I might feed a bit of cheese to, if they were to perhaps grace me with their company. The people behind the counters looked more like rats, something that I would probably catch in a trap and throw out the window of my apartment.
No, no, I don’t have an apartment anymore. There was that fire. Why was I remembering this now… Must be the Robitussin.
He helped me step up onto the sidewalk, but we were both careful to avoid the cracks because at this time of night, it was entirely possible that they would open up and we would fall forever and starve to death as we circled the center of the Earth (something Ricky said we’ve done before, but I don’t quite recall it) looking for some kind of food. Carefully, like two ex-cons, we made our way to the door to the truck-stop, Ricky looking ahead and me, well, I was staring at the ground warning him of any upcoming hiccups that might kill us.
I must’ve blacked out, because the next thing I knew I was in the room with the mice-people, watching them watch me, but they weren’t really watching me, they were watching Rick, who had reached into the back of his belt-loop and pulled out the gun (which at the moment looked like a shoe; but a shoe to mice is a gun to people) that he had loaded before the mescaline. He was waving it around, generally in the direction of the fat mice that I assumed were truckers due to their rag-tag clothes and bits of cheese that they had spilled over themselves.
There was also something about their eyes, something sadly poetic, reminding me briefly of the time Rick was drunk and lost a bet, which really wasn’t a poetic moment and ended with him emptying his intestines.
The truck-mice wore looks in their eyes that they had seen this before, two guys in a room full of mice, ****ed up on mescaline, Robitussin, and coke. Wait, was there coke? I can’t remember.
“Come on, come on, give me the keys, give me the keys, keys, keys, keys, keys,” Rick began chanting. One of the truck-mice looked like it was frowning.
“Keys, keys, keys, keys, keys, keys, keys,” I began to chant, hoping it would help them with their keys, my voice perhaps acting as a hand to their pocket, but they refused to budge.
There was a brief pause and a deafening roar, something somewhat like a lion, if a lion had been firing a small side-arm and if I had my head on the lion’s shoulder. I saw one of the mice drop back to the ground on his back, pretending to run on a wheel, the motions helpless (due to the fact that there was no wheel) and slowing.
“Rick, did you just shoot that mouse?”
“What’s it to you!”
“Well, yes.”
“Yes isn’t the proper answer,” he said, turning the shoe-gun to my face and cackling. I began to laugh, too, laugh-laugh-laugh, but something wasn’t quite right. I could feel the bile rising in my throat, a cacophony of color spreading across the floor, timeless and visceral, and I kept laughing.
One of the truck-mice threw its keys at Rick, but he was laughing. They bounced off his chest, sending a little jiggle across his skin and landed on the floor in my timeless mess. He stooped, bending down to pick them up, letting me slide. I was floating sideways for quite some time before I was on his shoulder again, and let me tell you, that was an interesting perspective. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen it all floating sideways slowly (very slowly) in a white haze.
But his shoulder kept jabbing my head. I think I was doubled over, staring at the ground with my head somewhere in the vicinity of his ass, but the ground can be so pretty sometimes. Rick threw me into the passenger side of the truck, and I let my head roll back against the leather. Yes, yes, it felt good, it was cool and the top of my head was on fire, pieces of rock sticking to my hair.
“What are you doing? Put the keys in!”
The engine chugged to life slowly, the cab rumbling beneath my bottom, causing a tickling sensation that I both enjoyed and abhorred. There was a moment of sheer panic on Rick’s face, and I looked down to see his mortal nemesis, a snake coiled around the gear-shift, although it was no real snake (I’m speaking in metaphors, as my head clears) it was him coming to terms with the fact that –
“I can’t drive stick, man.”
“You can do anything! You’re on mescaline!”
And he tried to shift out of park and stalled the cab out.
“Maybe not, maybe not.”
“You have to drive it!”
“Rick, I’m in no shape to drive a vehicle, especially one of this caliber.”
“You’re the designated driver!”
“Godammit, Rick, you certainly are in the habit of exclaiming things, aren’t you!”
“I want to leave this parking lot before they call the police?”
“I don’t have time for your silly questions. Quick! Change seats!”
We fumbled for a few seconds, the gear-shift sliding someplace uncomfortable that reminded me of prison movies before I was in the captain’s chair, all aboard. I didn’t think to tell him I couldn’t drive stick either, because I was a fast learner and I had seen someone drive something like this in the talking pictures, once.
We rolled out of the parking lot staying in the lower gear (I think it was a lower gear) until I saw the flashing lights behind me. I tried shifting up but there was an uncomfortable sound that repeated a few times before the cab stalled. Rick was fiddling with the radio, talking gibberish on the police channel, and I listened as they requested we pull over. I listened, and I –
The cab started moving much faster. I think I did something right, but I couldn’t be too sure, but the cab was moving somewhere with the needle near 80 and I was driving in a straight line with the cars behind me, Rick still chatting it up with whoever would listen. I had a headache, oh Jesus did I ever have a headache, but I didn’t mind because the sun looked like it was coming up.
Spike strips are no fun. Rick got out of the cab before it even stopped moving and started running, and he climbed over my lap and left through the drivers side kneeing me in the stomach, which was incredibly inconsiderate and I briefly considered calling him a foul name. The lion’s roared a few times and there were roses in his back and he dropped to the ground.
The police were moving in slow motion, luckily for me. I took a few giant steps over to him, and he looked up at me, his mousy nose in a point.
“Jesus, they shot me, man!”
“Terrible luck.”
“At least I was dying anyway. Why the **** would they shoot me!”
“Well, you did kill a truck-driver.”
“****. You’re right.”
I tripped over the guard rail and there were some shouts, perhaps to the effect of “You shouldn’t be climbing a guard rail in your state!” but I ran into the woods, fighting the titans that were grabbing at my shirt and losing the voices of the police behind me.
I’m pretty sure Rick is dead, or dying. I think dead.
As for me, I’ll stand on top of this hill until maybe time tells me it’s time to go on. And time has spoken to me before on matters of great urgency.
It must’ve been the mescaline.
He reached over slowly, as if at any moment his hand might fall helplessly to his lap, extending his fingers to the car door handle. His index finger hovered over the trigger for a few seconds as a bead of sweat rolled down his face and landed in a small pool on the right leg of his pants, beading up and rolling off in either direction before being soaked up by the seat cover, a towel as colorful as his face. And without warning, his hand fell and he pulled the handle, the light turning on overhead.
And he let it go, turning the light off. He stared up, pulling the handle and letting it go. A shrill laugh sounding something like Bob Dylan being strangled with piano wire spewed from his lips (it spewed, Dammit, laughter doesn’t fall in a cascade down the front of your shirt like that!), grasping the handle which was now slick with sweat and popping the door open, extending his leg and swinging his leg out of the car, his eyes never leaving the light on the ceiling.
With considerably less difficulty, I opened my car door, fumbling only for a second with the child safety before stretching my legs out and looking up at the sky, which was changing clothes and hoping no one was watching. Three minutes passed and I saw the jeans and t-shirt turn into something with slink and sparkle, all while Ricky stared at the car light.
I turned to him slowly as he opened and shut the car door, shrieking with laughter. I reached into the back of the car (I don’t recall opening the door, but I must’ve) and swung my fist up, retarding the life-span of the overhead and grinning at the cracked glass.
“What the **** did you do that for!”
“Come on, then, we can’t stand here all day. We have to get a move on.”
“Like hell we do! I’m calling the – ****, let’s get inside. Those look like acid clouds.”
A clear sky, but the terror in his eyes was something real. It must have been the mescaline. He began to move like Frankenstein’s monster, something only a woman could imagine, towards the sign that sat proudly atop a gentle green slope in front of the interstate. It was quiet at this time of night, perhaps because people grew weary of night traveling or perhaps because it was Vermont, but Rick’s movement was unhindered by the sounds of passing cars.
And in his state, sound would have probably been a major hindrance.
I began to follow, trying to place my feet exactly in the prints he left in the gravel, but finding myself trying to fit my foot into deer prints and a bicycle track more than anything else, and I couldn’t turn my foot into a wheel (although honest to God, I was trying). And then I was on the ground, humming a song to myself as I watched Ricky dance, his open Hawaiian shirt fluttering behind him, smacking his belly and screaming something. I laid on the ground, staring at the tiny rocks in front of me, realizing that the amount of Robitussin I had ingested minutes earlier might be detrimental to the plan, but at the same time, not really caring, because the rocks below me were moving.
Ricky must’ve seen that I was down on the ground because the next thing I knew, I was limping along next to him, staring at and through the windows of the truck-stop at the people inside, but at my angle (which was one incredibly ****ed up, hallucinating angle) they all looked like mice-people. Nice mice people, people I might feed a bit of cheese to, if they were to perhaps grace me with their company. The people behind the counters looked more like rats, something that I would probably catch in a trap and throw out the window of my apartment.
No, no, I don’t have an apartment anymore. There was that fire. Why was I remembering this now… Must be the Robitussin.
He helped me step up onto the sidewalk, but we were both careful to avoid the cracks because at this time of night, it was entirely possible that they would open up and we would fall forever and starve to death as we circled the center of the Earth (something Ricky said we’ve done before, but I don’t quite recall it) looking for some kind of food. Carefully, like two ex-cons, we made our way to the door to the truck-stop, Ricky looking ahead and me, well, I was staring at the ground warning him of any upcoming hiccups that might kill us.
I must’ve blacked out, because the next thing I knew I was in the room with the mice-people, watching them watch me, but they weren’t really watching me, they were watching Rick, who had reached into the back of his belt-loop and pulled out the gun (which at the moment looked like a shoe; but a shoe to mice is a gun to people) that he had loaded before the mescaline. He was waving it around, generally in the direction of the fat mice that I assumed were truckers due to their rag-tag clothes and bits of cheese that they had spilled over themselves.
There was also something about their eyes, something sadly poetic, reminding me briefly of the time Rick was drunk and lost a bet, which really wasn’t a poetic moment and ended with him emptying his intestines.
The truck-mice wore looks in their eyes that they had seen this before, two guys in a room full of mice, ****ed up on mescaline, Robitussin, and coke. Wait, was there coke? I can’t remember.
“Come on, come on, give me the keys, give me the keys, keys, keys, keys, keys,” Rick began chanting. One of the truck-mice looked like it was frowning.
“Keys, keys, keys, keys, keys, keys, keys,” I began to chant, hoping it would help them with their keys, my voice perhaps acting as a hand to their pocket, but they refused to budge.
There was a brief pause and a deafening roar, something somewhat like a lion, if a lion had been firing a small side-arm and if I had my head on the lion’s shoulder. I saw one of the mice drop back to the ground on his back, pretending to run on a wheel, the motions helpless (due to the fact that there was no wheel) and slowing.
“Rick, did you just shoot that mouse?”
“What’s it to you!”
“Well, yes.”
“Yes isn’t the proper answer,” he said, turning the shoe-gun to my face and cackling. I began to laugh, too, laugh-laugh-laugh, but something wasn’t quite right. I could feel the bile rising in my throat, a cacophony of color spreading across the floor, timeless and visceral, and I kept laughing.
One of the truck-mice threw its keys at Rick, but he was laughing. They bounced off his chest, sending a little jiggle across his skin and landed on the floor in my timeless mess. He stooped, bending down to pick them up, letting me slide. I was floating sideways for quite some time before I was on his shoulder again, and let me tell you, that was an interesting perspective. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen it all floating sideways slowly (very slowly) in a white haze.
But his shoulder kept jabbing my head. I think I was doubled over, staring at the ground with my head somewhere in the vicinity of his ass, but the ground can be so pretty sometimes. Rick threw me into the passenger side of the truck, and I let my head roll back against the leather. Yes, yes, it felt good, it was cool and the top of my head was on fire, pieces of rock sticking to my hair.
“What are you doing? Put the keys in!”
The engine chugged to life slowly, the cab rumbling beneath my bottom, causing a tickling sensation that I both enjoyed and abhorred. There was a moment of sheer panic on Rick’s face, and I looked down to see his mortal nemesis, a snake coiled around the gear-shift, although it was no real snake (I’m speaking in metaphors, as my head clears) it was him coming to terms with the fact that –
“I can’t drive stick, man.”
“You can do anything! You’re on mescaline!”
And he tried to shift out of park and stalled the cab out.
“Maybe not, maybe not.”
“You have to drive it!”
“Rick, I’m in no shape to drive a vehicle, especially one of this caliber.”
“You’re the designated driver!”
“Godammit, Rick, you certainly are in the habit of exclaiming things, aren’t you!”
“I want to leave this parking lot before they call the police?”
“I don’t have time for your silly questions. Quick! Change seats!”
We fumbled for a few seconds, the gear-shift sliding someplace uncomfortable that reminded me of prison movies before I was in the captain’s chair, all aboard. I didn’t think to tell him I couldn’t drive stick either, because I was a fast learner and I had seen someone drive something like this in the talking pictures, once.
We rolled out of the parking lot staying in the lower gear (I think it was a lower gear) until I saw the flashing lights behind me. I tried shifting up but there was an uncomfortable sound that repeated a few times before the cab stalled. Rick was fiddling with the radio, talking gibberish on the police channel, and I listened as they requested we pull over. I listened, and I –
The cab started moving much faster. I think I did something right, but I couldn’t be too sure, but the cab was moving somewhere with the needle near 80 and I was driving in a straight line with the cars behind me, Rick still chatting it up with whoever would listen. I had a headache, oh Jesus did I ever have a headache, but I didn’t mind because the sun looked like it was coming up.
Spike strips are no fun. Rick got out of the cab before it even stopped moving and started running, and he climbed over my lap and left through the drivers side kneeing me in the stomach, which was incredibly inconsiderate and I briefly considered calling him a foul name. The lion’s roared a few times and there were roses in his back and he dropped to the ground.
The police were moving in slow motion, luckily for me. I took a few giant steps over to him, and he looked up at me, his mousy nose in a point.
“Jesus, they shot me, man!”
“Terrible luck.”
“At least I was dying anyway. Why the **** would they shoot me!”
“Well, you did kill a truck-driver.”
“****. You’re right.”
I tripped over the guard rail and there were some shouts, perhaps to the effect of “You shouldn’t be climbing a guard rail in your state!” but I ran into the woods, fighting the titans that were grabbing at my shirt and losing the voices of the police behind me.
I’m pretty sure Rick is dead, or dying. I think dead.
As for me, I’ll stand on top of this hill until maybe time tells me it’s time to go on. And time has spoken to me before on matters of great urgency.
It must’ve been the mescaline.
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