The Fiend's End

The wind picked up and sprayed the entire length of my body as I stood in the dark awaiting my ride. Across the street, trees were visibly bending and twisting to the will of the storm. Seconds passed by like hours as I stood in the freezing atmosphere. I thought through countless scenarios in my head to justify this tardiness, vicious thoughts entered my head. The slick pavement eerily reflected the light of the neighboring houses, creating one smear of presence in front of me. The real blended with the reflection, the bizarre with the concrete. Two opposites joined together by slick, hard pavement.
At that very moment a red shark screeched around the corner and onto my street shattering the sublime state that I had entered. My heart pumped as I wondered about the identity of the driver. Could this be my ride? My insecurities were confirmed by the honking and cheering emanating from the car. He had finally arrived, my ride. "Are you fucking ready", exclaimed the driver, "it's gonna be a fun night!" Already, his infectious mood had spread to my head and was pumping through my veins. "Did you bring the cactus", I screamed, "it's hardly a party without the cactus!" At the mention of the cactus, his eyes slowly rolled forward, followed by his head, and then his whole body. "Holy shit, did he pass out?" This was beginning to look like an evening for the ages. "Wake him up! How do you expect to get to the party with the driver drooling on the wheel?" I slowly reached into the passenger window, across the copilot's chest, to rouse the driver. O rue the day it every happened, the sun god was frowning on us that night. At the touch of my hand on his shoulder, he swung his arm violently towards my head. I took the blow straight to the temple; pain coursed through my head as I tried to straighten out my body. I toppled over onto the car, my quick pulsating breaths trying to relay oxygen to my brain. However, my efforts were not in vain, he had been waken.
I laid in the back of the car on the way to the house trying to regroup from the awful hammerfist to the head. Transparent hallucinations flashed across my eyelids, slowly blooming into one large crazed dream. I could see what was happening in the car, but I was looking at it from the outside. The driver and his copilot took on the shapes of the same man. Well the same man only superficially. However, morally and psychologically, complete opposites, a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One's face was contorted in a treacherous grin as he looked at me in the back seat. Who knows what evil schemes that demogorgon was hatching, his eyes spat fire and mischief as he looked on. The other was trying to control the car with an elbow, while he hit the twin with his free hand. Pure bedlam ran free in that car.
As my out-of-body self went for a closer look, the picture dropped out. All was surrounded by whiteness. Nothing was separate from the other; everything was one. The eternal battle for right and wrong was finished, solved; all was okay in this brief state of nirvana. However, this only lasted for mere seconds, as I was dragged back into the car and jolted back to reality.
The windows of the car were open as we drove down the two-lane road. I heard a tin voice spewing out the latest figures concerning deaths in Iraq. "That's right folks, we're up to 30000 now. Can you believe that? I sure can't. Anyway, in other news, local Philadelphia resident's cat gets stuck down a drain. Let's go to the field for some on the scene reporting." Even when coming out of the ether, I couldn't believe the stupidity of the current news.
The driver's smoke lazily drifted across the windshield, like a cloud drifting across the sky, only to be viciously sucked out of the opposite window and into the earth's atmosphere. Apart from the tin voice, other voices could be heard, it sounded like the two drivers were having a conversation. Something about getting massive quantities of rum, but I couldn't be sure.
Was this a wise choice? Had I entered the car of a closet dope fiend and murderer? I couldn't articulate my thoughts in the back of the car; my mind was clouded with too much drink and too much adrenaline. "Hey, where are we going?" I asked. My question went un-answered. "Hey you whore, where are we going?" I screamed while kicking the passenger's seat. I quickly regretted my method of questioning because the passenger turned towards me faster than I could register and stuck a knife to the side of my neck. "Hey man, just sit down, and shut the fuck up." I silently slid back and shut my mouth.
While that close, I finally got a good look at the passenger's face. His hair was short and wild, high on the forehead. To match the wild nature of his hair, his eyes were blood shot, redder than the car's paint job and moving back and forth trying to absorb everything within sight. The five o'clock shadow that covered the lower part of his face made him look wilder than he actually was though. Taking all of these features into account, however, there was nothing particularly notable about his face. I strain now to remember all of the details, even though I was delirious, because of this very fact. The nose, the mouth, the ears; nothing particularly stuck out to me as memorable.
The one thing I do remember, however, is his expression when he turned around with the knife. His face was contorted into a painful grimace, something along the lines of George Bush doing something sincere and compassionate, crossed with a man having a large quantity of duct tape ripped off of his leg. This was burned into my memory, a sort of beacon of depravity.
Such is the way of an adventure in Southern New Jersey. Adventures don't come to you, not even if you try. It takes sweat and tears in order to find one in this backwards excuse of a town. Words cannot describe the fear and regret that raged within me as the car careened down the road. Why had I gotten into the car with these fiends? Only pain could result in such folly; only pain could save me.
I thought these vicious thoughts as I sat quietly in the back of the car. I could see a gossamer beam of sunlight coming down through the clouds in front of the car. Ye gods, was this a sign? Could this be my ticket out of this snake pit? I would never find out.
The crash rattled my brain and organs. I couldn't get my thoughts together as smoke gently rose from the hood of the car. What had happened?
I looked in horror at the two bloody mounds in the front seats as the realization dawned on me. "O shit," I muttered in sadness and rage. I couldn't deal with this; not now, not today. What day was it? What town was I in. I realized then, that I knew not a single thing about my current situation other than I had just witnessed the death of two great men.
They were the only ones in this goddamned town that got away. They were the only ones who found the secret to suburban life: drive fast and far, and don't look back until you've done some damage. I knew that I would never witness such a spectacle ever again; they were martyrs, they new the way.
Although they were crazed drug fiends with blades and ammunition, they were my friends, they were pioneers. However, they crossed that thin line between martyrdom and stupidity, and ran yards away from it. They found the true end for fiends of their likes, they found their end.

         I silently thought of them as I ran from the car in the trees. It was imperative that I get away, I had to find somewhere to rest. I ran and ran until I found a clearing in the trees and sat down. I needed to collect my thoughts, for the biggest test was still to come.