grUeBERfest 2009 ROUND 1 - Fresh In Our Flesh (563 hits)
Category: RomanceRating: 1.96 on 20 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Snark << snarkk.at.gmail.com (View user info) at 2009-10-10 06:47:55 EDT
And everything is just fine.
I got a belly full of whiskey warmth and a woman under my arm. I got a strong engine under the hood of my rusted old piece of shit and it's just fucked up enough to rattle our bones. It keeps us from slipping into the siren call of whatever we ingested tonight; keeps us moving along to new exciting regrets... keeps the promise of debauchery fresh in our flesh.
Everything is cool, and fluid, and surreal, and thats why we're here in the first place right? Cuz life ain't quite right unless you give in to the need once in awhile, and (tonight) the itch is crawling up all our spines.
My car is made for this. It's the masochist from Detroit. It's the 'Eat Me Beat Me Machine', and don't for a second think I'm lying when I say I beat the hell out of it and it cries for more. Every squeak of the brakes and squeal of its tires is a man made motorized half plea of pleasure, and we're giving it more man. We're pushing it to the limits tonight round every piss colored street lamp corner and hobo blood stained railroad crossing. We're leaving shattered bottles and echoing screams behind us like the rejects of society we want to be. We're waking up the neighbors and giving them dust to eat when they poke their mundane heads out of their Ikea shuttered windows.
Miriam is driving. Her hair is dyed fire engine red and the wind rushing through the half mast window is making it fly around the car like the brilliant florescent tentacles of some previously undiscovered deep sea something-or-other.
I wish she was mine like I wish every woman with a thick chest and 'fuck you face' was mine, but she's not. She's Tim's and she's screaming and laughing and pointing to her right. Her high pitched voice is almost higher pitched than I can handle and it's cracking from whatever we smoked - before we drank - before we swallowed... and still... our chorus from the back seat sounds somehow less sane, because as fucked up as we all are, and as screwed up as our own particular non-realities have shaped our perceptions of the world, we all know one thing:
The man in the passenger seat shouldn't be there.
He wasn't there before; He wasn't there a minute ago, or a half a minute or even the blink of an eye. That seat was empty. There were four of us in the car, not five.
He shouldn't be there. We shouldn't be wherever we are. The moon shouldn't be so big through the cracked greasy windshield.
That seat was empty. I swear it. I just fucking hopped out of it to jump in the back seat between Miriam's on again off again boyfriend and my flirtatious, torturous, pixie Jezebel girlfriend.
It's wrong that he's there. It's wrong cuz he wasn't before and it it's wrong cuz every fiber of whatever the hell he is is freaking out ever fiber of whatever the hell we are. The knowledge of his wrongness is primal. It doesn't need to be understood. It-just-is and its written in the wrinkled glowing pale flesh of of his sunken cheeks and the sharp piercing gaze and his maniacal eyes as if his face was the parchment of some pagan god of the blood soaked underworld. Like some geeks D&D nightmare made flesh in my rotting creaking car.
And everything is just fine.
Cuz its the drugs right? Or the worm maybe. My girlfriend told me I shouldn't swallow the worm. "This is the real shit." she said. "Jessica's brother's best friend brought it across the border." she said. But that sounded like a challenge to me and so I did what testosterone told me to do, but that doesn't matter right? What matters is that HE shouldn't be there grinning cold death in the passenger seat - and so - he can't be there.
This shit ain't real. Miriam's choke scream is the worm's toxins hitting my brain. Our screams are everything else. This is some new brilliant addition to the craziest of crazy nights, and that's just fucking cool.
So I reach out to him with fingers that don't feel like they're mine then pull back as he smiles, and dribbles black worms down the front of his chin, and grabs the wheel and pulls, yanking the 'Eat Me Beat Me Machine' of the road... breaking her back.
I remember my mother dropping Pull Taffy on the floor and teaching me my first profanity. I remember being half asleep in my dad's beat up old station wagon when I was ten. I saw a castle in the clouds. It was beautiful. It made me feel like my age... and then I remember the trees coming out of nowhere in the night as if they were jumping out at us rather than us at them, and then I remember Miriam's head painting my greasy windshield bright red and I want to rewind to the before but the rest is pitch black nothing, save the chuckle of a man who should not ever have been there.
I can here my car burning. I can't see it but I don't need to. I know that leather. I know that paint like only someone who has truly abused something can know a thing, and despite the screaming of my flesh and bones, I feel its pain as the heat from the fire twists it.
My eyes are closed. I want to keep them that way. The ground beneath me is moist from night air. The smell of rotting leaf fills me full and then is brutally pushed out by his breath, and when my eyes open (despite my screaming brain) he's there.
He's lying on the ground beside me and the black orbs of his sunken eyes reflect the mangled mess of my girlfriend slow cooking on the burning hood of my car, and they're full of pleasure.
His face is no more than a couple inches from mine. Every bit of me feels broken. My muscles feel soft. I don't think my lungs should work and I don't know if I'm breathing on my own or if I'm being mechanically resuscitated by the demonic invasion of the miasma from his tepid breath.
I open my mouth to ask "why?" but all I can do is spit teeth and blood and something that belongs deep inside me onto the leaves and moss moss and crawling things between us. The worms will eat that, the rest will fertilize what comes after.
I need some kind of reason; A half-assed human way to pass from here to there besides this, but I can tell, (and I'm sure you know by now friend) that he's not about answers. He's just about this... and when he places his cold slimy lips against my forehead and sucks out the last spark of everything that I am, I know in my leaking marrow.
Every thing is not fine. Everything is not fine at all.
User Reviews
Submitted by joedaddy (user info) at 2009-10-19 22:47:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
those types of cars are becoming harder and harder to find
they just-don't-make'm like they used to
Submitted by rob_berg (user info) at 2009-10-19 17:12:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I came so close to almost reading this.
Submitted by Trishtopher (user info) at 2009-10-19 15:23:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2009-10-14 08:40:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by shitfuck (user info) at 2009-10-13 22:12:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 TALENT
Submitted by RoadSong (user info) at 2009-10-12 14:08:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"He wasn't there before; He wasn't there a minute ago, or a half a minute or even the blink of an eye. That seat was empty. There were four of us in the car, not five."
I hate it when this happens...
heh
ps
(very cool story}
Submitted by AngelsGateEvictionist (user info) at 2009-10-11 12:39:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Favorite Line: "It's the 'Eat Me Beat Me Machine', and don't for a second think I'm lying when I say I beat the hell out of it and it cries for more."
Submitted by AngelsGateEvictionist (user info) at 2009-10-11 12:38:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Definitely better than a jpeg of Celine Deon ;)
As per the usual, I loved it.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2009-10-10 20:49:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2009-10-10 20:49:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I guess I have to be the dickhead that breaks the streak. Snark, you know I like your stuff, and there are some good lines here, but it doesn't seem complete, if you know what I mean. Still, you'll be on to round 2.
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2009-10-10 16:55:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
This was literally written in the submit box last night so it probably has more than the usual grammer abortions.
Seemed a bit more fluid when I was drunk.
Submitted by TuTs (user info) at 2009-10-10 13:52:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was creepy. But I am at the stage where I am just waiting for the room to stop spinning so I can sleep.
Submitted by Ducky (user info) at 2009-10-10 13:49:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
awesome.
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2009-10-10 11:10:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Oh lookee, I DID resist the "urger" to glance back over my comment before I clicked rank.
Submitted by peckerhead (user info) at 2009-10-10 10:49:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2009-10-10 09:50:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I resisted the urger to +2 it on faith, prior to reading. Just barely.
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I don't have much spare time today but I made time for this. -glad I did.
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2009-10-10 10:19:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Kingerouac.
Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2009-10-10 10:08:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Late? Check.
Scary? Possibly.
Who cares. Good read anyway. You're in for the round.
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2009-10-10 09:50:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I resisted the urger to +2 it on faith, prior to reading. Just barely.
Loved it. Wish you'd post more.
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2009-10-10 09:25:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 Nice piece of writing, which I expect from a guy like you, but not particularly gruebery, like I expect from a guy like you.
I WANT MY BLOOD AND GUTS AND GORE, GODDAMMIT.
Submitted by ridiculous (user info) at 2009-10-10 07:26:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice story. Not very scary though. Nonetheless; I will be looking for some other posts from you. Thanks.