Chapter five
Chapter Five:
The singer was sweating and had blood dripping down from his head, but Nate was apathetic. The guy had just cracked a green beer bottle over his own head and the jagged pieces that didn’t lodge themselves in his forehead were tossed by gravity to the grimy nightclub floor. Nate only went to these places because the beer was cheap and there might have been someone looking to fight. This place was called Hammer & Nails. It was a tiny club on the Southside of town near the industrial section, always infested with the punk and metal kids. They smoked cheap cigarettes and brought in their patented pungent aroma of Patchouli and noxious body odor.
The band tonight was called Rectal Anarchy. The music was all feedback, crunch, blast beats, and vocals that sounded as if the singer was screaming and dying. They were slicing away at full-speed, providing the chaotic soundtrack for two trains colliding into a nuclear power plant. The drummer’s arms moved so fast, they became blur lines. The bassist and two guitarists frantically beat their strings like they were trying to break them, which happened all too often. And of course, the singer’s trademark was self-flagellation. He’d beat himself with the microphone or jump into the pit and fight people. Most of the time, he “sung” in the obligatory Cookie Monster growl, occasionally breaking into a high-pitched demon shriek.
The distortion died down for a moment in between songs.
“ALRIGHT YOU MOTHERFUCKERS, WHO WANTS ANOTHER ONE?” the singer roared at the crowd. The sweat-soaked kids wore the uniform of black shirts and ripped jeans and cursed or cheered, clapping and ramming their fists in the air to say “yes” to him. “Ok, this next one is called… (In a low Cookie Monster growl) ‘BLUDGEON AND DISEMBOWEL!!!’” The guitarist belted out a few “DUN-DUHDUHDUH-DUN’s” and then the rest of the band kicked into their 1,000,000,000,000 BPM fury.
Nate put his arm around Tina and sipped on his can of Lost Lake. There was a guy with long hair freaking out next to the couple. He was shaking his head, throwing his fists, and quivering like he was either going through a seizure or possession. A mass of teenagers was moshing next to the stage. They formed a hurricane of pink and black as they forcefully punched, pushed, and elbowed each other. Two would grab each other and throw themselves around and they’d fall to the floor after slipping on spilled beer. They’d sneer and get back up to do it again. Another would pace in circles, punching people in the chest. A member of the group was pushed too hard and flew in Nate’s direction. Nate thrust his elbow into the kids’ back and shoved him.
Another guy was mosh-dancing in a circle, throwing his fists back and forth and marching with no real rhythm. He was wearing a hole-ridden Black Sabbath shirt and a backwards baseball cap with a weed leaf patch sewn onto it. He strutted like a proud cock and punched people in his triumphant dance around the floor. At the last show Nate went to, that same guy had picked up a gray trashcan and thrown it into the crowd.
The band was flying through each song with speed and intensity that was unheard of for anyone not accustomed to extreme acts. There was a whole scene in Nate’s town that was into heavy metal and hardcore punk rock. To the uninitiated, it was noise, screaming, indiscernible guitar parts, chunky distorted bass, and drums that sounded like a sub-machine gun going off in an oil drum. Of course, it sounded like this to the other kids, too, but in a good way. Nate dabbled in a little metal, but he was more into the older 80’s style thrash. Anything with a strong riff, fast 4/4 drums, and high-pitched solos stole his attention.
Most of the crowd consisted of the younger kids that he didn’t like. They’d show up with plugs lodged into their stretched and pierced earlobes, shaggy black hair, and newer clothes. They’d snicker at Nate sometimes and call him “trash.” Generally, he would fight them, unless there was a large group of them. He could take out one or two with no problem, but enough would gang up on him.
Nate pulled his head all the way back and chugged the rest of his can of beer, then threw the can on the filthy black and white checkered floor. The club was in a state of total decay. Holes dotted the black drywall and the stage had big gashes where pieces of plywood had been kicked or otherwise broken out. Even in the low green fluorescent lighting, it was obvious that this club had been torn up over the years. No one ever had the time, money, or willpower to fix it. It was passed around from club owner to club owner, each one having to get rid of it because of bankruptcy, tax problems, or overwhelming drug tribulations. The place would close down for a few months, then open back up under new ownership, then close again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
“Hold on girl, I’m gonna go and piss,” Nate growled to Tina.
“Ok, honey. I’ll be right here.”
Nate pushed his way through the thick heap of sweaty people. The ones in front of the stage were watching the band or moshing. The further he moved away, the more the aggregate thinned out. Most of these people were not watching the band, instead opting to drink and try to have yelling conversations with each other.
Luckily for Nate, there wasn’t a line for the bathroom. There usually wasn’t when a band was performing. The restroom was in even more destitute condition than the rest of the club. Graffiti was scrawled everywhere with black markers. Some of it was from bands passing through the city, trying to leave something behind. The rest was lewd phrases and dumb jokes that only made sense when the authors were drunk.
Occasionally, someone would tag the wall and get a response. The one on the wall holding the urinal that Nate was peeing in read, “MY DICK’S SO BIG, MY DICK’S A DICK AND MY DICK’S DICK.” Underneath, in someone else’s handwriting: “IT’S STILL REALLY SMALL!”
There were also band stickers in the urinals and on the mirror. Usually black with red or white lettering, they were plastered not only in the bathrooms but also anywhere one could find to place them. At this moment, Nate was urinating on something called The Fecal Disassociative Murders. It fit the general qualifications for a metal or hardcore band name, which is to be threatening and vague. This one also had the typical lettering, which was illegible lettering and either blood dripping or scratchy and Satanic-looking.
Nate zipped up and walked towards the mirror. He had black rings around his eyes. He hadn’t slept in three days, nor did he consume anything besides beer, cigarettes, frozen waffles, or crank, more crank than anything else. Ever since Tina came home with him a week ago, he’d been binging on the stuff. She stole a few ounces from Igor the day before she was thrown out of his house. She told Nate that she always stole Igor’s drugs and he never noticed. This was apparent in Tina’s overwhelming meth addiction. She told Nate that she’d already lost thousands of dollars, three teeth and a baby to it. Right after Nate brought her back to his home, he witnessed her cut three lines that were laced with laundry detergent and inhale them with ease, blood still trickling from her face from Igor’s mighty blows.
He was so spun on meth that he felt his heart fluttering like the hyper blades of an industrial fan. He’d go on binges like these, sometimes lasting a whole week. When Nate was smashed, he couldn’t sleep at all or eat more than one small meal a day. Even through the wall of noise bursting into the bathroom, he thought he could hear his own yellow teeth chattering. He turned the sink on and splashed a handful of cold water on his face. Rough stubble was leaking through his greasy pores
Nate reached into his grubby lint-ridden pocket and felt around until he found his balloon of crank. He pulled it out and shook a small amount of the contents onto the dirty black ceramic tiled counter. No one else was in the bathroom, so he stooped over and put his face next to the yellow-tinged powder. He blinked a few times, breathed out an exhausted sigh, and then snorted the tiny pile. A rush of blood, powder, and endorphins flew up to smash his brain. His head jerked, he sniffed profusely and shook his head. He then swept the pink balloon off the counter and back into his pocket.
Nate’s mirror image saw its eyes jittering and the room spinning. There was a massive earthquake pounding in his body and mind. Every bit of his gray matter was jolting and vibrating in his cranium. He was just short of hallucinating, which was something he got into occasionally. He hardly ever did enough crank to start tripping, but he’d take other drugs sometimes. Nate wasn’t too big on acid, but he’d do it if it were offered. The last time he did it, he ended up slicing through his palm with a box knife.
Ketamine was Nate’s preference if he wanted to trip. Ketamine is a painkiller, but it’s much more, causing hallucinations as well. He would sometimes get his friends with dogs to hurt them so the veterinarian would prescribe the drug. Nate would buy it from them and take a handful, then resell the rest. He could take a few hundred milligrams, fall down a flight of concrete stairs and not even feel the last step crack his jaw, nor care (True story!).
A hurricane began spiraling in Nate’s stomach. As all the graffiti in the room blurred by his face in so many circles, he began to salivate more rapidly in that way the body does when it is getting nauseous. He stumbled into the bathroom door. His feet were meat bags that wouldn’t move on command. Everything outside his body felt like lead and his stomach and intestines had been hollowed out. The club patrons stared at him as he dragged his legs behind him drudgingly. The band was playing too fast and too loud even though they were gradually f a d i n g o u t.
Everything turned into several navy blue blurs that differed in shade and operated on a separate frequency from the now-distant and muted death metal. This is what the bottom of the ocean felt like, nevermind the seaweed and anglerfish with their lights hanging down and beaming fluorescence, the ancient ruins of a civilization that never existed plastered in algae and barnacles. Nate tripped over nothing and collapsed to his hands and knees. The carpet really was water (or felt like it, at least) and his palms pounded into it. There was no splash, although his knees were sinking as well. He bit his lip, but saliva was still foaming out of his mouth, soaring from his heavy panting. He “RRRR’d!” in frustration at the carpet for turning into quicksand on him.
He began to walk on all fours, wading through the boggy sandy water. The water kept getting deeper and deeper until it went up to his nose. He could still breath, but bubbles shot out of his mouth whenever he tried to scream. They would bob in a spiral all the way to the surface, which was a mile up now. Nate’s lungs were filling with water. The cilia inside the organs were soaking wet and his bronchial tubes were water hoses. His chest was burning from the lack of oxygen.
All of a sudden, the water cleared out around him and he was lying on the wet concrete in front of the club. He crawled his way across that obstacle and now embarked on a new one: finding his car.
There were probably only thirty cars in the parking lot, but to Nate, there were three million. Each one had been multiplied and stood as an armada, together with all of its clones. His arms flailed widely as he weaved in and out between each army of vehicles. As he ran past them, their engines turned on in synch, roaring at Nate and jabbing him with their crisscrossing headlights, each one exposing a beam of rocks and torn, puddle-filled pavement. They bellowed at each other, revving up and beeping in a cacophony of still traffic. Past the Buicks, past the Pontiacs, past the Fords… Their hoods flung open and hissed steam at Nate. Gaskets blew and the monstrous car batteries sparked vicious fuchsia flashes.
The cars began to drive themselves and formed a circle around Nate. They were squealing their tires at him, headlights reflecting off the wet midnight asphalt. He dropped to the ground, curled into the fetal position and bit his tongue. The breaks locked them in place, although they were ready to pounce forward… Tears leaked from Nate’s sockets while the automobiles were still pumping their motors. The cars released themselves from their fidgety formation and flew towards Nate. He shut his eyes.
The engine noises stopped. Nate lifted his head and all the cars were gone, aside from twenty Novas that were identical to his, down to the black racing stripes and rusted tailpipe. They were arranged in three straight rows; he ran for the middle one.
Nate tried opening the first door, but when he touched it, it disappeared. The second one did the same. He cursed under his sobbing breath at the situation while banging on windows and trying different door handles. All of them dropped into the ground like they were simply a projection, leaving only one left. It was eighty feet away.
Nate clenched his teeth and sprinted to his car, making sure to avoid the cracks in the ground that were now rapidly opening up. The earth ripped apart in front of Nate, sending pavement, dirt and weeds into the hole and exposing the nine million degree orange molten mantle that steamed underneath. His toes balanced on the edge and he was wavering on top of it with his arms outstretched. His stability was rather poor, but he was leaning further back than forward so he would be safer. The sediment under his shoes crumbled and he fell forward into the scalding gelatinous mass and then blinked.
He opened his eyes.
It was the black backseat of the Nova.
The interior was soft and plush. Nate was lying on his stomach with his t-shirt torn. He panted quickly, then he rolled off the seat and fell on a pile of empty glass liquor bottles and gasoline-soaked rags on the floorboard. The front seats shifted forward about forty yards, stretching the car impossibly far.
Nate spread his arms out and closed his eyes once again, trying to go to sleep and forget about this mess. He tried to convince himself that everything outside of this black infinity was gone, nothing else was out there to get him. A light shone brightly and his face and his vision was a faint red, exposing the veins in his eyelids. They revealed hidden fighters that swooped down to him in full 3D, dropping 8-Bit bombs and making pixilated Commodore64 sound effects. One of them was coming right at him! It was flat, but only a yard away…BAM! He flung his eyelids to the top of their sockets and looked around.
The front seats started creeping back in Nate’s direction. The backseat was moving forward, pushing him in the same manner as a trash compactor. The ceiling, on the other hand, was expanding, outstretching itself to touch what was, moments ago, the cloudy night sky. It was bright blue now and the sun leaked its burning radiation, melting the metal roof. The seats climbed with the roof, creating two massive towers that were looking to smash into each other. Nate tried to push the backseat in the opposite direction, but nothing he could do would halt the behemoth’s massive iceberg-esque force.
He was sweating profusely and whimpering. Having given up on trying to stop his destruction, he curled into a ball again and awaited doom. The walls were getting closer… closer… Nate dared to blink…
The walls stopped so abruptly, it was as if they had never begun to move. They were now not car seats, but phallic alabaster monuments. They reflected the mid-day’s impossible sunlight and were multiplied, extending in a narrow hallway that stretched for assumably a mile. Nate peeled himself from the floorboard and stood weakly like a newborn giraffe, covered in amniotic fluid and blood. There was a marble bust of a generic eighteenth-century figure at the opposite end of the hall. Nate slowly ambled over to it.
In between each monument, there were a tiny cracks where vines were rapidly growing through. Their smooth olive tendrils snaked around the structures in the same mid-tempo refrain, each reaching as high as the pointed tips. They must have had identical genetic bases because they grew the same and their leaves were spaced equally and evenly apart on each. The ground he walked upon was tiled in paper-bag brown stone covered in fine gritty dirt. He made a point to step over the cracks that segmented the tiles. The ground was uncharacteristic of the rest of his surroundings, which were immaculate and beautiful. The light was pure white and the walls hummed and groaned contently. The room had the sterility of a hospital.
When he reached the last yard to the statue, it hovered calmly, silently. The statue pushed itself to Nate, a few inches from his chest. He reached out to touch it and his hands pushed through it. It burst with luminosity and heat that shot thick white bold lines in seven thousand directions. Nate’s face turned to a quizzical expression. The statue transmogrified into a baseball bat and pummeled him in the face.
It was all black from here.
…
Blurry… blurry… His eyes tingled with bee stings and Tabasco sauce and his gut weighed a thousand pounds of sweat. Tina was lurking above him in her white cotton panties and bra.
“Are you okay?”
Nate groaned and shut his eyes.
“What the fuck is going on? Where the hell am I?”
“We were at the club and then you left. I found you passed out in your backseat. Then I had to drive your ass home and dragged you into bed. You’ve been sleeping all day now.” Tina slid her hands over Nate’s bare hairy chest. Her words had the impact of a bucket of feathers being dropped on his head; he was more confused than anything. All he could concentrate on was the open window letting in an ocean of obscene and blinding white light.
“You must’ve done half that shit I gave you… That was strong shit, too… I TOLD you not to be doing all that!”
“I didn’t do more than I usually do…”
“Yeah, but that shit was laced!”
“Laced? What the fuck do you mean, it was laced?” Nate was wide-awake now, and at that last comment, his torso sprung forward and upright.
“Don’t worry about it, you’re okay now…”
“Did you lace it?”
“Well, maybe, but just forget about it!”
“No, tell me, what the fuck did you lace that shit with?”
“Baby, it’s ok! Just get outta bed and get something to eat with me!”
“Tell me, goddamnit!”
“Just get outta bed, will you?”
Nate shoved Tina in the chest, sending her tumbling to the floor. “Just goddamn TELL me!”
“I cut it with Ajax, ok? You’re fine now, don’t worry, I just thought it would make it better!”
Nate turned to the side of his bed and threw up on a stack of old magazines.
The singer was sweating and had blood dripping down from his head, but Nate was apathetic. The guy had just cracked a green beer bottle over his own head and the jagged pieces that didn’t lodge themselves in his forehead were tossed by gravity to the grimy nightclub floor. Nate only went to these places because the beer was cheap and there might have been someone looking to fight. This place was called Hammer & Nails. It was a tiny club on the Southside of town near the industrial section, always infested with the punk and metal kids. They smoked cheap cigarettes and brought in their patented pungent aroma of Patchouli and noxious body odor.
The band tonight was called Rectal Anarchy. The music was all feedback, crunch, blast beats, and vocals that sounded as if the singer was screaming and dying. They were slicing away at full-speed, providing the chaotic soundtrack for two trains colliding into a nuclear power plant. The drummer’s arms moved so fast, they became blur lines. The bassist and two guitarists frantically beat their strings like they were trying to break them, which happened all too often. And of course, the singer’s trademark was self-flagellation. He’d beat himself with the microphone or jump into the pit and fight people. Most of the time, he “sung” in the obligatory Cookie Monster growl, occasionally breaking into a high-pitched demon shriek.
The distortion died down for a moment in between songs.
“ALRIGHT YOU MOTHERFUCKERS, WHO WANTS ANOTHER ONE?” the singer roared at the crowd. The sweat-soaked kids wore the uniform of black shirts and ripped jeans and cursed or cheered, clapping and ramming their fists in the air to say “yes” to him. “Ok, this next one is called… (In a low Cookie Monster growl) ‘BLUDGEON AND DISEMBOWEL!!!’” The guitarist belted out a few “DUN-DUHDUHDUH-DUN’s” and then the rest of the band kicked into their 1,000,000,000,000 BPM fury.
Nate put his arm around Tina and sipped on his can of Lost Lake. There was a guy with long hair freaking out next to the couple. He was shaking his head, throwing his fists, and quivering like he was either going through a seizure or possession. A mass of teenagers was moshing next to the stage. They formed a hurricane of pink and black as they forcefully punched, pushed, and elbowed each other. Two would grab each other and throw themselves around and they’d fall to the floor after slipping on spilled beer. They’d sneer and get back up to do it again. Another would pace in circles, punching people in the chest. A member of the group was pushed too hard and flew in Nate’s direction. Nate thrust his elbow into the kids’ back and shoved him.
Another guy was mosh-dancing in a circle, throwing his fists back and forth and marching with no real rhythm. He was wearing a hole-ridden Black Sabbath shirt and a backwards baseball cap with a weed leaf patch sewn onto it. He strutted like a proud cock and punched people in his triumphant dance around the floor. At the last show Nate went to, that same guy had picked up a gray trashcan and thrown it into the crowd.
The band was flying through each song with speed and intensity that was unheard of for anyone not accustomed to extreme acts. There was a whole scene in Nate’s town that was into heavy metal and hardcore punk rock. To the uninitiated, it was noise, screaming, indiscernible guitar parts, chunky distorted bass, and drums that sounded like a sub-machine gun going off in an oil drum. Of course, it sounded like this to the other kids, too, but in a good way. Nate dabbled in a little metal, but he was more into the older 80’s style thrash. Anything with a strong riff, fast 4/4 drums, and high-pitched solos stole his attention.
Most of the crowd consisted of the younger kids that he didn’t like. They’d show up with plugs lodged into their stretched and pierced earlobes, shaggy black hair, and newer clothes. They’d snicker at Nate sometimes and call him “trash.” Generally, he would fight them, unless there was a large group of them. He could take out one or two with no problem, but enough would gang up on him.
Nate pulled his head all the way back and chugged the rest of his can of beer, then threw the can on the filthy black and white checkered floor. The club was in a state of total decay. Holes dotted the black drywall and the stage had big gashes where pieces of plywood had been kicked or otherwise broken out. Even in the low green fluorescent lighting, it was obvious that this club had been torn up over the years. No one ever had the time, money, or willpower to fix it. It was passed around from club owner to club owner, each one having to get rid of it because of bankruptcy, tax problems, or overwhelming drug tribulations. The place would close down for a few months, then open back up under new ownership, then close again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
“Hold on girl, I’m gonna go and piss,” Nate growled to Tina.
“Ok, honey. I’ll be right here.”
Nate pushed his way through the thick heap of sweaty people. The ones in front of the stage were watching the band or moshing. The further he moved away, the more the aggregate thinned out. Most of these people were not watching the band, instead opting to drink and try to have yelling conversations with each other.
Luckily for Nate, there wasn’t a line for the bathroom. There usually wasn’t when a band was performing. The restroom was in even more destitute condition than the rest of the club. Graffiti was scrawled everywhere with black markers. Some of it was from bands passing through the city, trying to leave something behind. The rest was lewd phrases and dumb jokes that only made sense when the authors were drunk.
Occasionally, someone would tag the wall and get a response. The one on the wall holding the urinal that Nate was peeing in read, “MY DICK’S SO BIG, MY DICK’S A DICK AND MY DICK’S DICK.” Underneath, in someone else’s handwriting: “IT’S STILL REALLY SMALL!”
There were also band stickers in the urinals and on the mirror. Usually black with red or white lettering, they were plastered not only in the bathrooms but also anywhere one could find to place them. At this moment, Nate was urinating on something called The Fecal Disassociative Murders. It fit the general qualifications for a metal or hardcore band name, which is to be threatening and vague. This one also had the typical lettering, which was illegible lettering and either blood dripping or scratchy and Satanic-looking.
Nate zipped up and walked towards the mirror. He had black rings around his eyes. He hadn’t slept in three days, nor did he consume anything besides beer, cigarettes, frozen waffles, or crank, more crank than anything else. Ever since Tina came home with him a week ago, he’d been binging on the stuff. She stole a few ounces from Igor the day before she was thrown out of his house. She told Nate that she always stole Igor’s drugs and he never noticed. This was apparent in Tina’s overwhelming meth addiction. She told Nate that she’d already lost thousands of dollars, three teeth and a baby to it. Right after Nate brought her back to his home, he witnessed her cut three lines that were laced with laundry detergent and inhale them with ease, blood still trickling from her face from Igor’s mighty blows.
He was so spun on meth that he felt his heart fluttering like the hyper blades of an industrial fan. He’d go on binges like these, sometimes lasting a whole week. When Nate was smashed, he couldn’t sleep at all or eat more than one small meal a day. Even through the wall of noise bursting into the bathroom, he thought he could hear his own yellow teeth chattering. He turned the sink on and splashed a handful of cold water on his face. Rough stubble was leaking through his greasy pores
Nate reached into his grubby lint-ridden pocket and felt around until he found his balloon of crank. He pulled it out and shook a small amount of the contents onto the dirty black ceramic tiled counter. No one else was in the bathroom, so he stooped over and put his face next to the yellow-tinged powder. He blinked a few times, breathed out an exhausted sigh, and then snorted the tiny pile. A rush of blood, powder, and endorphins flew up to smash his brain. His head jerked, he sniffed profusely and shook his head. He then swept the pink balloon off the counter and back into his pocket.
Nate’s mirror image saw its eyes jittering and the room spinning. There was a massive earthquake pounding in his body and mind. Every bit of his gray matter was jolting and vibrating in his cranium. He was just short of hallucinating, which was something he got into occasionally. He hardly ever did enough crank to start tripping, but he’d take other drugs sometimes. Nate wasn’t too big on acid, but he’d do it if it were offered. The last time he did it, he ended up slicing through his palm with a box knife.
Ketamine was Nate’s preference if he wanted to trip. Ketamine is a painkiller, but it’s much more, causing hallucinations as well. He would sometimes get his friends with dogs to hurt them so the veterinarian would prescribe the drug. Nate would buy it from them and take a handful, then resell the rest. He could take a few hundred milligrams, fall down a flight of concrete stairs and not even feel the last step crack his jaw, nor care (True story!).
A hurricane began spiraling in Nate’s stomach. As all the graffiti in the room blurred by his face in so many circles, he began to salivate more rapidly in that way the body does when it is getting nauseous. He stumbled into the bathroom door. His feet were meat bags that wouldn’t move on command. Everything outside his body felt like lead and his stomach and intestines had been hollowed out. The club patrons stared at him as he dragged his legs behind him drudgingly. The band was playing too fast and too loud even though they were gradually f a d i n g o u t.
Everything turned into several navy blue blurs that differed in shade and operated on a separate frequency from the now-distant and muted death metal. This is what the bottom of the ocean felt like, nevermind the seaweed and anglerfish with their lights hanging down and beaming fluorescence, the ancient ruins of a civilization that never existed plastered in algae and barnacles. Nate tripped over nothing and collapsed to his hands and knees. The carpet really was water (or felt like it, at least) and his palms pounded into it. There was no splash, although his knees were sinking as well. He bit his lip, but saliva was still foaming out of his mouth, soaring from his heavy panting. He “RRRR’d!” in frustration at the carpet for turning into quicksand on him.
He began to walk on all fours, wading through the boggy sandy water. The water kept getting deeper and deeper until it went up to his nose. He could still breath, but bubbles shot out of his mouth whenever he tried to scream. They would bob in a spiral all the way to the surface, which was a mile up now. Nate’s lungs were filling with water. The cilia inside the organs were soaking wet and his bronchial tubes were water hoses. His chest was burning from the lack of oxygen.
All of a sudden, the water cleared out around him and he was lying on the wet concrete in front of the club. He crawled his way across that obstacle and now embarked on a new one: finding his car.
There were probably only thirty cars in the parking lot, but to Nate, there were three million. Each one had been multiplied and stood as an armada, together with all of its clones. His arms flailed widely as he weaved in and out between each army of vehicles. As he ran past them, their engines turned on in synch, roaring at Nate and jabbing him with their crisscrossing headlights, each one exposing a beam of rocks and torn, puddle-filled pavement. They bellowed at each other, revving up and beeping in a cacophony of still traffic. Past the Buicks, past the Pontiacs, past the Fords… Their hoods flung open and hissed steam at Nate. Gaskets blew and the monstrous car batteries sparked vicious fuchsia flashes.
The cars began to drive themselves and formed a circle around Nate. They were squealing their tires at him, headlights reflecting off the wet midnight asphalt. He dropped to the ground, curled into the fetal position and bit his tongue. The breaks locked them in place, although they were ready to pounce forward… Tears leaked from Nate’s sockets while the automobiles were still pumping their motors. The cars released themselves from their fidgety formation and flew towards Nate. He shut his eyes.
The engine noises stopped. Nate lifted his head and all the cars were gone, aside from twenty Novas that were identical to his, down to the black racing stripes and rusted tailpipe. They were arranged in three straight rows; he ran for the middle one.
Nate tried opening the first door, but when he touched it, it disappeared. The second one did the same. He cursed under his sobbing breath at the situation while banging on windows and trying different door handles. All of them dropped into the ground like they were simply a projection, leaving only one left. It was eighty feet away.
Nate clenched his teeth and sprinted to his car, making sure to avoid the cracks in the ground that were now rapidly opening up. The earth ripped apart in front of Nate, sending pavement, dirt and weeds into the hole and exposing the nine million degree orange molten mantle that steamed underneath. His toes balanced on the edge and he was wavering on top of it with his arms outstretched. His stability was rather poor, but he was leaning further back than forward so he would be safer. The sediment under his shoes crumbled and he fell forward into the scalding gelatinous mass and then blinked.
He opened his eyes.
It was the black backseat of the Nova.
The interior was soft and plush. Nate was lying on his stomach with his t-shirt torn. He panted quickly, then he rolled off the seat and fell on a pile of empty glass liquor bottles and gasoline-soaked rags on the floorboard. The front seats shifted forward about forty yards, stretching the car impossibly far.
Nate spread his arms out and closed his eyes once again, trying to go to sleep and forget about this mess. He tried to convince himself that everything outside of this black infinity was gone, nothing else was out there to get him. A light shone brightly and his face and his vision was a faint red, exposing the veins in his eyelids. They revealed hidden fighters that swooped down to him in full 3D, dropping 8-Bit bombs and making pixilated Commodore64 sound effects. One of them was coming right at him! It was flat, but only a yard away…BAM! He flung his eyelids to the top of their sockets and looked around.
The front seats started creeping back in Nate’s direction. The backseat was moving forward, pushing him in the same manner as a trash compactor. The ceiling, on the other hand, was expanding, outstretching itself to touch what was, moments ago, the cloudy night sky. It was bright blue now and the sun leaked its burning radiation, melting the metal roof. The seats climbed with the roof, creating two massive towers that were looking to smash into each other. Nate tried to push the backseat in the opposite direction, but nothing he could do would halt the behemoth’s massive iceberg-esque force.
He was sweating profusely and whimpering. Having given up on trying to stop his destruction, he curled into a ball again and awaited doom. The walls were getting closer… closer… Nate dared to blink…
The walls stopped so abruptly, it was as if they had never begun to move. They were now not car seats, but phallic alabaster monuments. They reflected the mid-day’s impossible sunlight and were multiplied, extending in a narrow hallway that stretched for assumably a mile. Nate peeled himself from the floorboard and stood weakly like a newborn giraffe, covered in amniotic fluid and blood. There was a marble bust of a generic eighteenth-century figure at the opposite end of the hall. Nate slowly ambled over to it.
In between each monument, there were a tiny cracks where vines were rapidly growing through. Their smooth olive tendrils snaked around the structures in the same mid-tempo refrain, each reaching as high as the pointed tips. They must have had identical genetic bases because they grew the same and their leaves were spaced equally and evenly apart on each. The ground he walked upon was tiled in paper-bag brown stone covered in fine gritty dirt. He made a point to step over the cracks that segmented the tiles. The ground was uncharacteristic of the rest of his surroundings, which were immaculate and beautiful. The light was pure white and the walls hummed and groaned contently. The room had the sterility of a hospital.
When he reached the last yard to the statue, it hovered calmly, silently. The statue pushed itself to Nate, a few inches from his chest. He reached out to touch it and his hands pushed through it. It burst with luminosity and heat that shot thick white bold lines in seven thousand directions. Nate’s face turned to a quizzical expression. The statue transmogrified into a baseball bat and pummeled him in the face.
It was all black from here.
…
Blurry… blurry… His eyes tingled with bee stings and Tabasco sauce and his gut weighed a thousand pounds of sweat. Tina was lurking above him in her white cotton panties and bra.
“Are you okay?”
Nate groaned and shut his eyes.
“What the fuck is going on? Where the hell am I?”
“We were at the club and then you left. I found you passed out in your backseat. Then I had to drive your ass home and dragged you into bed. You’ve been sleeping all day now.” Tina slid her hands over Nate’s bare hairy chest. Her words had the impact of a bucket of feathers being dropped on his head; he was more confused than anything. All he could concentrate on was the open window letting in an ocean of obscene and blinding white light.
“You must’ve done half that shit I gave you… That was strong shit, too… I TOLD you not to be doing all that!”
“I didn’t do more than I usually do…”
“Yeah, but that shit was laced!”
“Laced? What the fuck do you mean, it was laced?” Nate was wide-awake now, and at that last comment, his torso sprung forward and upright.
“Don’t worry about it, you’re okay now…”
“Did you lace it?”
“Well, maybe, but just forget about it!”
“No, tell me, what the fuck did you lace that shit with?”
“Baby, it’s ok! Just get outta bed and get something to eat with me!”
“Tell me, goddamnit!”
“Just get outta bed, will you?”
Nate shoved Tina in the chest, sending her tumbling to the floor. “Just goddamn TELL me!”
“I cut it with Ajax, ok? You’re fine now, don’t worry, I just thought it would make it better!”
Nate turned to the side of his bed and threw up on a stack of old magazines.