THE CHEAPEST WAY TO FLY

North it is, yet southward bound...



EPISODE II: The Cheapest Way To Fly

(If you don't know what's going on, go about two posts down...and also, bite me).

As fitful, lumpy stretch after stretch of pock-marked pavement and dirt roads in denial gave way to warped concrete zits that barely escaped the appearance of cobblestone, our Meat Wagon and sloshing bladders were rocked about, as an empty medicine cabinet shaken by some desperate asthmatic poltergeist. Funny…I didn’t remember it being like this when I was twelve. I looked out the back window sleepily, amidst a pissing contest of vile sounds…ripping snores, bland music, Jesse’s Gameboy—twirping madly like a molested and violated canary, the slosh of lukewarm soda, and soft, gooey rattles of asymmetrical shelf lumps.

This didn’t look like the highway. It didn’t look like anything.

Eerily aware of everything around me, every noise in proximity seemed unbearably loud. Among these, certain alien and unfamiliar sounds made themselves known. Some swept like the wind, yet whispered like a frail, rasped voice, or worse, several in unison. As I began to isolate it all, it became as some hush-voiced, cancer-throated choir. I heard what could have been flapping wings, or violent wind-blown garments. And still I heard everything else, every breath of my van-mates, and every crackle of static from the mediocre radio spew. Yet nothing I saw was familiar, or given to any words I knew. Something distant within urged me repeatedly to be still, lending further substance to a sudden, uncomfortable sensation suggesting I could fall out, or stranger still, through.

A rapid chill swept though me, yet it never actually felt like anything—nothing given to a name, a face, or certainly flesh. It was cold, but not in an arctic sense—like winds or water could be…or anything that could be touched. It was violent, and alive. It grappled me in some formless fashion from above and around, and snarled angrily like a teased animal. I spun around to struggle, feeling myself fight—yet nothing that I fought with…just my defiant, willful angry attitude, and a frightened strand of reason within, that recalled every pitiful child’s prayer I ever resented to speak, and in silence pulled away.

I felt smothered a bit, until I became aware of breathing again—lungs full of air, yet the sinking feeling of constriction—and of being caged, though all was as it ever was before… Nothing remained then, but the elbowed, dented shelves and sneaker-scuffed sticky floor of our slowing van, parking at a rural rest area. There were dirty Cheetohs and Funyuns encamped around me on the floor, three ruined road maps, a dripping failure of a cooler, two groggy yawning yuppies, and one rubber-limbed, wild-eyed gimp who fumbled with some magic peg and pyramid game stolen from a Stuckey’s many miles and misturns past.

The crew had chosen an alternate route while nodding off some half a state ago. Rick spoke what were likely slurs against me, but out of earshot. He looked toward me crossly, as if it were my fault for not remaining awake and in the correct dimension, so that I might continue nodding in agreement at the mind-numbingly obvious, or listen to more soul-punishing Huey Lewis and Mr. Mister tunes. He rolled his eyes, shook his head, and went to find a vending machine with Twinkies to go with his Creatine.

I remained bunched and crinkled upon the floor like an aborted Goth fetus, waiting until Jesse and Carl left for bathrooms and beef jerky. Earlier, I had spied Rick’s copies of Barely Legal—while he was all red-eyed and puffy-cheeked, digging around in his sporty, star-spangled man-purse for allergy meds. Now alone, I quickly seized the moment to score a few of the drier issues. I then traded them to a giddy, pot-bellied trucker in exchange for directions. Though shaken from my earlier, unexplained soul-scramble, I regained gladness of heart by realizing where we were now, and by watching Rick miss his porn while trying not to look like anything’s wrong—eyeing us all in suspicion, yet too embarrassed to question a soul.

Almost an afterthought, I headed for the bathroom—relieved to find one filthier than my own. The graffiti in the stall was quaint, and very “rural,” if you know what I mean. I found the religious graffiti even more amusing. I finished some of the statements. In big blue marker was scrawled, “JESUS WEPT.” I wrote beneath it, “Vandalism makes Him cry.” In either crayon or thick, dried snot were the words “Jesus Is Coming.” To this I added the standard reply: “Everyone look busy!” Above the seat behind me was a pen and ink rendering of “Jesus Saves.” I mulled endlessly over whether to pencil in “Satan recycles,” or “But did His children invest?”

Just then, I heard someone walk in, press the soap button several times, and perch in the stall next to mine. Suddenly, I got a nasty gut feeling—like horny, microscopic New Guinea cannibals were licking my intestines. It doesn’t happen often, but you know when it does. Trapped in mid-purge—unable to escape the twisted fate less than a flimsy hinged wall away—the happy flaps and squishes of the deep-breathing self-love devotee beside me slowly began to register. Rushing my processes like I was sandpapering a homemade shelf, I fled as the jerking jerk next door began to gasp and grasp for names and tissues. Never so relieved to be back at the van, I was told we had to wait for Carl. He was still in the bathroom.

TO BE CONTINUED...


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