A Steady Decline
Iowa was a blur. The last thing I remember was pulling over Stephen Robert Garrison in his Dodge Ram circa 1998 somewhere at the border, before crossing into the next forsaken state.
"Was I speeding officer?" Poor Stephen. I made little work of him, before he could even realize that I wasn't a real pig.
"Step outta the car, sir." It didn't even sound like me anymore. I was slowly becoming someone... something else.
"I really don't see why this is necessary, sir. I was following all the..." I shined Reggie's gleaming black maglite into the cabin, successfully concealing any sign of my semi-battered, and totally inebriated state.
"Just step outta the car... NOW." He reached for his registration from the glove compartment and hopped out of the truck handing his information to me with one hand and blocking Reggie's light with the other.
"Can we try to make this quick, officer?" I shined the light down at his licencse to learn his name, then back at his face.
"I'll do my best Stephen." Three downward swings of the maglite.
WHACK!
"What the fuck are you doing?!" Garrison stumbled back into the car catching his balance on the seat. He attempted to lurch towards me as his gushing forehead began to blind him.
WHACK! Silence now. A faded consciousness keeps him balanced enough not to fall over in the dirt. No, instead he drops to his knees with a vegatative stare and a bulging left eye. He begins mumbling something incoherrently about flowers on a mountainside, some of that "I never got to see France" bullshit I assume. The last of the coke is pumping through me on all 8 cylinders and all I can think about is wanting to split him open as hard and as fast as inhumanly possible.
WHACK! And that's that. The maglite shuts off on the third blow and the batteries get cast off into the darkness. His body collapses and retires in the dirt. He whimpers up a few short, labored gasps of breathing before what appears to be his expiration. The maglite slips out of my good hand and I drop to my knees to investigate the body. $437 and a brand new cell phone. Now up until this point, dear readers, I had forgotten the sting of guilt. All I knew was the unrelenting pull towards my Colorado showdown. Any unlucky fuckers who could potentially help or hinder me along the way were going to get what they had coming to them, plain and simple. But then, in a flashing glimmer of moonlight I caught a glimpse of that bulbous left eye of Stephen R. Garrison. It seemed to be staring at me... staring through me. I waited for something to happen; anything. I 1/2 expected the hawk-eyed bastard to get up and do a little gory jig, blood spurting in every direction.
"Fuck it." I stated as I lit up one of his cigarettes, being a fellow clove smoker. I leaned in closer and checked his pulse. It was faint but, it was there none the less. Here it came, overwhelming... stinging... deep, dark, and dreaded guilt. I did my best to make it quick and my best wasn't even close to good enough. I had to keep it quiet, maintain a low profile in these parts due to my run-in with Reggie the night before. With my survival instincts running on overdrive and such short notice of Stephen's speeding truck I was left with little options of subduing him and the maglite seemed the most logical. I thought about all these variables as I continued checking his pulse as it flickered out slowly. It got to the point of a dull and infrequent vibration in the artery. Then suddenly, by force of divinity or unstable insomnia/drug-driven hallucination, Stephen's pulse jackhammered back up to a steady 70 or so beats a minute. The change in blood flow knocked me on my ass by pure surprise.
"Fuck, man. You're some kinda fighter, Garrison. I'll give you that." Guilt was converted into round 2 of an insatiable blood lust. I beat him with the broken end of the maglite until there wasn't much left of his face but a kind of bloody gray skull pulp. This time I didn't even bother hiding the body much less wiping its contents off of myself. The edge was just a memory now, a distant nostalgiac plane that I used to dance along freely. I had gone over it and now I was in freefall. It's just a matter of time before I hit the bottom now. As I pop another pack of pills and squander a couple fresh blotters I noticed myself slipping into a kind of dreamworld. I couldn't tell how much of it was drug-induced and how much of it was brought on by my exponentially growing insanity but, I was sure that it was all in my mind. It was a kind of ephemeral playground with people running through it, people I had never seen before but who, none the less wanted to see me. Blacked out faces all looking for the "Professor" but, no one could find him. Finally, a familiar looking child walked up to me and he said the words that shocked me out of the whole damn mess:
"Sorry sir, the professor's not here anymore... can I take a message down for him?" The whole dreamworld ignites and the child crumbles to ashes. I welcome the blackness like a warm blanket. When I wake up it's 2 days from Eva's deadline, I have a new car, a broken nose and I'm on the outskirts of Colorado. What the Hell happened in Nebraska?
P.S. sorry it took so long to update... the end is near
"Was I speeding officer?" Poor Stephen. I made little work of him, before he could even realize that I wasn't a real pig.
"Step outta the car, sir." It didn't even sound like me anymore. I was slowly becoming someone... something else.
"I really don't see why this is necessary, sir. I was following all the..." I shined Reggie's gleaming black maglite into the cabin, successfully concealing any sign of my semi-battered, and totally inebriated state.
"Just step outta the car... NOW." He reached for his registration from the glove compartment and hopped out of the truck handing his information to me with one hand and blocking Reggie's light with the other.
"Can we try to make this quick, officer?" I shined the light down at his licencse to learn his name, then back at his face.
"I'll do my best Stephen." Three downward swings of the maglite.
WHACK!
"What the fuck are you doing?!" Garrison stumbled back into the car catching his balance on the seat. He attempted to lurch towards me as his gushing forehead began to blind him.
WHACK! Silence now. A faded consciousness keeps him balanced enough not to fall over in the dirt. No, instead he drops to his knees with a vegatative stare and a bulging left eye. He begins mumbling something incoherrently about flowers on a mountainside, some of that "I never got to see France" bullshit I assume. The last of the coke is pumping through me on all 8 cylinders and all I can think about is wanting to split him open as hard and as fast as inhumanly possible.
WHACK! And that's that. The maglite shuts off on the third blow and the batteries get cast off into the darkness. His body collapses and retires in the dirt. He whimpers up a few short, labored gasps of breathing before what appears to be his expiration. The maglite slips out of my good hand and I drop to my knees to investigate the body. $437 and a brand new cell phone. Now up until this point, dear readers, I had forgotten the sting of guilt. All I knew was the unrelenting pull towards my Colorado showdown. Any unlucky fuckers who could potentially help or hinder me along the way were going to get what they had coming to them, plain and simple. But then, in a flashing glimmer of moonlight I caught a glimpse of that bulbous left eye of Stephen R. Garrison. It seemed to be staring at me... staring through me. I waited for something to happen; anything. I 1/2 expected the hawk-eyed bastard to get up and do a little gory jig, blood spurting in every direction.
"Fuck it." I stated as I lit up one of his cigarettes, being a fellow clove smoker. I leaned in closer and checked his pulse. It was faint but, it was there none the less. Here it came, overwhelming... stinging... deep, dark, and dreaded guilt. I did my best to make it quick and my best wasn't even close to good enough. I had to keep it quiet, maintain a low profile in these parts due to my run-in with Reggie the night before. With my survival instincts running on overdrive and such short notice of Stephen's speeding truck I was left with little options of subduing him and the maglite seemed the most logical. I thought about all these variables as I continued checking his pulse as it flickered out slowly. It got to the point of a dull and infrequent vibration in the artery. Then suddenly, by force of divinity or unstable insomnia/drug-driven hallucination, Stephen's pulse jackhammered back up to a steady 70 or so beats a minute. The change in blood flow knocked me on my ass by pure surprise.
"Fuck, man. You're some kinda fighter, Garrison. I'll give you that." Guilt was converted into round 2 of an insatiable blood lust. I beat him with the broken end of the maglite until there wasn't much left of his face but a kind of bloody gray skull pulp. This time I didn't even bother hiding the body much less wiping its contents off of myself. The edge was just a memory now, a distant nostalgiac plane that I used to dance along freely. I had gone over it and now I was in freefall. It's just a matter of time before I hit the bottom now. As I pop another pack of pills and squander a couple fresh blotters I noticed myself slipping into a kind of dreamworld. I couldn't tell how much of it was drug-induced and how much of it was brought on by my exponentially growing insanity but, I was sure that it was all in my mind. It was a kind of ephemeral playground with people running through it, people I had never seen before but who, none the less wanted to see me. Blacked out faces all looking for the "Professor" but, no one could find him. Finally, a familiar looking child walked up to me and he said the words that shocked me out of the whole damn mess:
"Sorry sir, the professor's not here anymore... can I take a message down for him?" The whole dreamworld ignites and the child crumbles to ashes. I welcome the blackness like a warm blanket. When I wake up it's 2 days from Eva's deadline, I have a new car, a broken nose and I'm on the outskirts of Colorado. What the Hell happened in Nebraska?
P.S. sorry it took so long to update... the end is near