[i]Now, there’s a terrifying thought. Have you ever genuinely believed you’d gone insane, but were fully aware of your own insanity?[/i]
***

     I shot up off the couch, startled by the sound of a massive machine passing by outside. I had nearly thrown my laptop onto the cushion next to me, almost causing it to slide off the sofa and plummet to the ground, but I still managed to catch it before shit had hit the fan. 
     Wildly intrigued at the noise, I sprinted to the window to catch the last glimpse of the taillights from a Nissan GTR speeding away while I craned my neck just to look a little longer through the glass. The four bright red circular rings of LED lamps with the outer two being a bit larger; they were unmistakable.
     That high-revving monster of a vehicle disappearing into the night brought a wide grin upon my expression despite only having seen its back end for a brief moment. It had to have been a twin-turbo V-6 engine, but seemed to have been boosted up from stock power with an aftermarket exhaust and a clearly-defined blow-off valve sputter that could be heard from even so far that it had completely left my sight and disappeared into the darkness by the time I’d noticed.
     [i]Wait, the darkness?[/i]
     Yes, it did appear that the sun had set some time ago already. The time had come to retire for the evening for most. But of course, I'm not most.
     I turned myself away from the window to take a glance at my phone that had been left on the table. It only took a few elongated steps, but having gotten up so suddenly still made me feel a bit woozy, and I collapsed back onto the couch almost immediately where I laid before, reclining against the low back. I reached and grabbed hold of my bong and took a long hit that sent a new wave of euphoria through my body, ridding me of the light-headedness.
     It felt welcoming, to say the least, as I let the high consume me for the fifth-ish time today, and it was at that moment I realized my laptop was still running Grand Theft Auto Five. I had neglected to pause the game before standing up to see that car; my character had driven his dumpy little sedan into a lake, and was now treading water with a three-star wanted level. I grappled the controller and paused the game hurriedly, and took another hit. Then I set my pipe and lighter back down on the table before picking up my cell phone to check the time.
     [i]Definitely sleepytime,[/i] I thought, noticing that the clock had rolled over 10:13. [i]Ivy should be back soon though, so I guess that'll be fun.[/i] I was definitely stoned again, and I could tell because, well… “That’ll be fun?” I muttered, almost hopefully. [i]Riveting narration, you fucking pissderg.[/i]
     I picked up the controller again that actually had slipped off the little ottoman and fallen to the ground and scrolled in the menu to the, 'EXIT,’ icon, shutting down the game. Immediately, my computer breathed a heavy sigh of relief and after nearly six hours of intense resource-usage, the hard disk began to slow, the fans stopped spinning, and the whole machine went quiet.
     I was startled yet again though, even despite the anticipation of her arrival, as the door in the kitchen burst open with the loud crack of paint chipping off the frame, and an even louder crash as the door impacted and shook the little table that had our microwave on it.
     I stood up again, but was almost trampled by the wolfess as she stormed through the pantry tunnel in tears.
     I couldn't think of much else to say. “What happened?” I tried to inquire as my own expression grew solemn and worried.
     She cut me off, almost shouting back, “Just leave me the fuck alone tonight, please!” Her face was soaked in tears, and I didn't want to risk a fight. I merely nodded and stayed silent, being sure to keep my distance as she slammed her bedroom door behind her.
     It wasn't all the time she would come home with such a sour attitude, but it certainly wasn't uncommon. If I tried to approach her now, for all I knew, she could come up with some justification for baring her teeth and swiping her claws at me, and while I did always have the option of fighting back or calling law enforcement, I never liked the idea. She'd been my friend for what was, essentially, my entire life - we knew each other before kindergarten, even. It never felt right to me, throwing her under the bus like that. I always thought it would simply be more productive to be a good friend and to give her space.
     She had her own methods for coping with stress, much like I do mine, and being stoned as hell already, I opted to pack myself up from the living room and migrate to my bed for the night.
     I shut the lid of my laptop and carried it off with the power cable, my controller, its wireless dongle, and, after returning for a second trip, my bong setup - lighter, stash can, pipe and all.
     A few minutes later, I had set everything up adequately in bed and on the bedside table, and crawled my way into bed with my back propped up against the wall. My head still stood free as I lounged, and I could feel my red hair grazing against the fleece tapestry I had nailed up behind the pillows. It depicted one of those southwestern, geometric patterns that consisted of a deep navy blue, sandy brown, orange, and maroon. The overhead light had been shut off,the door was closed tight, and I had pulled the chain to turn off the table lamp as well. All that I could see now was illuminated only by the string of rope lights that were draped over the tapestry, and snaked around the whole corner of the room above the bed, stopping just before the window to my left. I opened my laptop back up, finally unbuttoned, unzipped, and removed my jeans and undergarment, and pulled out my junk that had already grown to not be hiding, but was still a bit floppy.
     “Active today, aren’t we?” I mumbled to it, reaching to take it in my grasp and stroking it slowly with a tight grip. I clicked the browser icon that sat on my taskbar, and it opened right back up to the document my father had shared with me as well as the porn page I had opened earlier that day, but never took the chance to appreciate. It was a video of a decently young mare diddling herself and moaning loudly. [i]Shit,[/i] I uttered in my mind as I quickly stretched my arm out to find the volume key. It was reasonably difficult with only the function numbers being backlit. I cursed the designers of my machine briefly for not allowing light to pass through the multimedia icons as well, but I had remembered it was set to F2 after a moment of searching.
     With the sound off now, I was about to click away to find another video before seeing a black and white mare begin to squirt all over the camera lens, which enticed me to stay on the page a bit longer. She looked to be in pure ecstasy at that point, but she wasn't smiling at all. That lack of joy in her presence made me go soft again, even despite such a massive spray coming from that gaping, pink and red pussy of hers.
     Fluids had always caught my attention whether it was semen, urine, or whatever the term was for girl-cum. Needless to say, I moused over the search bar at the top of the page and typed out, “peeing compilation.” A moment passed, and a number of videos I had seen numerous times already popped right up. Hovering the cursor played previews of the videos though, so I began to move from one video to the next before finally finding one that was new on the eighth page of search results.
     This one, titled, “Hot Pissers United Compilation - Vol. 17,” opened up, and a plus-sized gazelle standing up in a white bathtub surrounded by brown tilework came up first. She was fully clothed, but it was easy to tell she was moving to strip herself down. It seemed almost hastily done, showing off her thick curves and a short, fluffy tail that shook wildly for the camera that was steadily zooming in. Now, she had removed her top, and her breasts were bouncing and jiggling around in near perfect harmony with gravity as I listened to her giggles and had begun fapping myself again.
     It could have been that I was so high already, or that I just hadn't been in the mood to paw off for nearly eight hours, but even though she wasn't squirting, dripping, or even visibly wet at all, but she’d managed to bring my dick up to full mast. She continued to remove her clothing, and the camera had centered in right on her vagina that was still moving about from side to side, and after panning back out to show her whole body again, she had removed her baby pink panties as well, and her teats were now fully visible, two reasonably-sized nubs hanging and swinging about the top of her chest, and slightly poking out to either side.
     I usually wasn't into breasts, but somehow this woman made me want to paw even harder at myself, and I saw my bright pink tip begin to leak pre-ejaculate quite profusely as I gripped tighter.
     It was that moment though, that she began to make it rain. Her stance widened, and with a wink to the camera, her pussy began to heavily shoot her golden liquid all over the inside of the tub. She held her lips open with both hands, spreading them wide and letting her stream be thick and free. It started small at first], only landing just in front of her, but she looked to be pushing more after a  short moment, and sure enough, her shower extended to nearly two, three, five, and then seemingly seven feet in front of her, arcing up in response to her leaning back against the wall behind her. Soaring far past the edge of the tub and sprinkling the tiled floor in front of her, she even swayed her hips from side to side, wetting more of the ground. In response to this growth, my pawing began to quicken, my hand running all over my barbs, shaft and knot, stopping just short of the tip each time which allowed the droplets to flow down and coat my entire member in my own slick musk.
     Just as quickly as it had started however, the show was over though, with the clip lasting a mere eighty-six seconds before fading to black - no final wink or anything. [i]Well, that was a bit disappointing,[/i] I critiqued in my mind, analyzing how closely and powerfully my climax had come to being a reality. And, just as quickly as that clip had come and gone, another clip took its place.
     This one featured a quadruped though, and it looked to be a little white poodle dog that was outside on, what seemed to be a public sidewalk. She had come up to a fire hydrant, took a sniff at it, and, rather than squatting down, she stood up on all fours and lowered the front of her body, keeping her rear end high in the air to let her piss flow out onto the red-painted metal object. With fluid looking much more pale than the gazelle, this canine definitely seemed more hydrated, and as the camera panned to her face for a moment, it showed her looking back and forth between the camera and right in front of her. Her tongue was hanging out, and she was panting like, well, a quadruped, but this girl here seemed to be an intelligent one as she mumbled to the audience, “Mmmmmmhh, I bet you’d like to take me for a walk, wouldn’t you?.”
     [i]FUCK, she’s good![/i] I was almost yelling in my head as all my fireworks suddenly blew off when the camera panned and zoomed to a close-up of her flowing spade that she was now wiggling back and forth, altering the sound as it impacted the water silo just off-screen.
     The pleasure struck me just as intensely as that moped on Goldenrod did earlier today, and I began to coat my belly in thick ropes of semen, one after another for nearly twenty seconds before the climax calmed. I took a glance to see that I hadn't produced nearly as much as I had before, and the coverage only extended to the top of my belly, just where my chest began. [i]Disappointing,[/i] I remarked, plainly. [i]I guess that’s what happens when you do it three times a day, though.[/i]
     I reached down under my mattress to feel around for the brown hand towel I had used last night, and I found it quite easily with it being a distinctly different texture from the carpeted flooring - fluffy in most spots, and a bit crusty in others. I was breathing quite heavily now as I wiped up my cum, and I could even hear whistling in my nose with each exhale. I glanced back at the video to see that the time stamp had just crossed the four-minute mark. [i]Still pathetic as ever.[/i]
     I promised myself I'd get better at lasting longer, didn't I? Or, maybe that was just some dream I had? [i]But how can I...[/i] I pondered for a moment before remembering, “I gotta take a wicked shit, don't I?” The feeling of fullness and anguish in my lower intestines hit me like a bullet up the butt the very second I spoke aloud. It would have been legendary to see my body tense up so tightly and quickly before hastily waddling to the restroom, pulling out the tiny plastic stool from underneath the toilet bowl where it lived, and setting myself down on the seat to unleash the horror that had been laying dormant since last night. I unbuttoned my jeans, unzipped the fly, unsnapped the ring around my thick tail, and allowed my pants to drop to the tiled floor before plopping my body down on the seat.
     “Uuuuuuugghhh, one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten-ten-ten-ten, I poop, I poop, I poop, and then I [i]brown…[/i]” The strain and heat of the tiny droplets of feces that fell out of me was painful, sure, and it would make me moan and grunt the entire time while I sounded out this… utterance. But, I still couldn't help chuckling at the joke I was recalling. The turds splashed about in the porcelain bowl gently, but quite audibly, and they continued to evacuate my body for nearly half a minute before the heat finally began to subside, and the torrent of shit slowed to a halt. I twisted my upper body around to either side a few times each, wringing out my inner tunnel and encouraging one final rock to drop into the water.
     Relief washed me over, so I reached for the roll of paper to my left before unspooling five squares of tissue, wrapping it around three fingers and utilizing it as best I could. The residue came off easily, but I took care to wipe a second time in the opposite direction anyway, just to be certain I was clean. After contorting my back once again to reach for the box of wet ones and wiping it over my tailhole for the final bit of sanitary enhancement, I stood myself back up and raised my jeans before a lightbulb lit up inside my mind.
     [i]I should go home,[/i] I instructed. In my head, I knew exactly what I was talking about. I already was home, sure, but I did have another one. I flipped the handle on the toilet, and it flushed away what I’d left behind while I washed my hands detailedly. I stepped out of the restroom only to see just outside that my phone had been accidentally left on the pine wood table next to the sofa. I stepped over to it and picked it up, and with a few flicks of my thumb, it was unlocked and displayed the weather widget that showed the forecast for a surprisingly warm and clear night tonight. [i]69 degrees, eh?[/i] I chuckled a little at this seeing how it was Christmas eve, and then it was decided: I was going to drive back to Mount Barnaby tonight.
     What would I find there? I couldn’t even think about that. Probably nothing, for all I knew. What I did know though, was where I wanted to venture to this very moment. I had no true reason for going, aside from getting away from Ivy, but I had the slightest, sinking feeling that it might inspire me, somehow. They say that going somewhere you've never been is a great way to get new ideas, but that saying never had anything to say about going somewhere you hadn't been to in a while, so…
     [i]The baseball field?[/i] That might do the trick. I hadn’t set foot on the diamond since first grade in elementary school, and even then, I could barely remember anything about it much less anything about what it would be like at nighttime.
     [i]A piece of childhood left unexplored. Maybe I should just go explore it,[/i] I whispered in my mind.

     It only took about fifteen minutes to get all my things together. I had packed my laptop in my old, blue and green college backpack with its power chord, a pair of headphones, as well as my stash canister with a lighter, my metal grinder, and my old, dark-green-striped dry pipe handed down to me by Ivy last year. Arnold, that devil, was tiny, sure, and his smoke always burned a little when I hit him, but he would get the job done.
     After donning the sweater, underwear, and jeans I was wearing earlier, I figured that I might be hungry later on, so I grabbed a few pieces of bread from the cabinet, and dug through the fridge to retrieve some salami, pepperoni, and cheese with romaine lettuce, some pre-sliced tomato I had cut up a couple of days ago, and half an onion sealed in a ziploc bag. I began to fashion them into a sandwich only after sniffing the tomato thoroughly, and making sure it wasn’t bad.
     I took extra care to be sure that I had my phone and wallet safely tucked away in my denim purse with a ten dollar bill I had retrieved from my emergency stack I kept in the bottom cabinet of my nightstand. I slung both bags over my shoulders, one on each arm, hooked my keys around one of my belt loops, shut the light in the kitchen, and finally turned the knob to the door before stepping out and gently closing the slab of white wood behind me.
     One at a time, each wooden step creaked loudly as I tiptoed my way down in the dark, and I prayed desperately to not wake up our landlord who lived on the first floor, at least not until I made it to the bottom landing. I snuck by his front door that stood to the left at the bottom landing as best I could, given that my claws would scratch the finished wood floor a little with each stride. I slowly clicked open the door, stepped outside, and started to breathe… clearly.
     The air was so different from the air in the apartment. It was definitely a clear night, and I could hear cars mucking about on Goldenrod Avenue a few blocks to the north. One stuck out quite a bit as I hit the bottom patio step; it sounded much like a low-displacement four-cylinder that was decked out with an eBay muffler from China, likely painted in bright colors and stripes, adorned with an obnoxiously large spoiler welded onto the trunk lid and sitting on lowered springs.
     I could hear the river running quietly a few houses over, and after taking a few more steps from the old, rotting porch that creaked even more than the staircase, I set foot on the cobblestone patio to take a moment and catch myself from falling over as a gust of wind came by with a sharp wisp. I caught myself against the railing that was still close by, and I turned right to walk away from the train station, and up the road to where my car had been parked on the street. The last time I had even used it was to go shopping with Ivy nearly a week ago. Across the road, I could see the tattered and decrepit windows of the old, abandoned deli that stood dark and somber in the glow of the street lamps overhead, and further behind it, I could make out the silhouette of the old warehouse that took up most of the property there.
    All this, along with the massive unpaved parking lot between the buildings, was completely fenced off from the outside world, and the gate was draped over with a sign that read, “B-H Asbestos Cleanup, LLC. Licensed by the State of New Dunlop.” Construction equipment was scattered throughout the lot: an excavator, a bulldozer, and a large tanker truck, all resting peacefully for now. Surely, they were patiently awaiting the employees to come back to work in the coming days when their Christmas break would come to a close.
     I pictured in my head, an image of one of the construction workers. They were probably sitting by a fireplace in their home right now, complete with pipe and slippers, their kids would be sound asleep or playing and opening presents early, and their spouse was sitting next to them on the sofa, snuggling up tightly. I quietly thought aloud, shaking my head with a smirk as I strolled my way along the sidewalk that had now become the short, concrete bridge that stood over the running river, “Fucking amateurs.” It wasn’t really fair to judge like that, but I was in the grind, who could blame me?
     The moment I stepped onto the public sidewalk, I could just make out the red plastic light fixtures mounted into the body of my 2008 Hyundai Elantra up the road past the river’s bridge. She was only the base model, and she was mounted with a four-speed slush-box, but she still got me where I needed to go, and I loved her for that. Lucky was handed down from my father to my mother, and then finally deposited into my hands about a year and a half ago. She was always there, always up for a fight, and never left me stuck. Cheap and reliable, reasonably practical with a built-in lifetime subscription to premium satellite radio, there wasn’t much to dislike about her. She certainly wasn't my first love when it comes to vehicle models, but she was mine.
     Lucky’s body was decorated with a wide variety of dents and scratches by now, with one massive scrape along the rear passenger door from one time my mother had accidentally rubbed against a light pole in a parking lot, and the front bumper was especially messy after so many other cars trying to park in front of and behind her on the street this past year. As I approached her, I ran a hand along the big scrape on the passenger side after unlocking the vehicle with my remote, almost trying to soothe the wound. The blinkers flashed twice, and the locks could be heard unlatching from their holds as I yanked the front passenger door open.
     I spoke aloud, earnestly, “How you doing, baby girl?” The car didn't answer. I set my backpack down in the passenger footwell, and tossed my purse onto the seat before firmly shutting the door. “You up for an adventure?” I asked, but she still remained quiet.
     In my mind, I was imagining her voice responding, in a low-pitched, but still genuinely sweet voice, “Where are we going, honey?”
     “I think we're gonna go home, girl. I wanna be inspired.”
     “Isn't that, like, a forty-minute trip?” Said the car, as I walked around to pull open the driver-side door. I plopped myself down inside and made myself comfortable in the cheap, light-grey cloth seat.
     “Yeah, but don’t worry, I won't drive hard,” I answered. “We’re gonna be chill on this ride, I promise.”
     I slid the key into her ignition slot, turned it hard, and I could hear her moaning as the engine kicked into life, “Uhhhnff… Okay, well I'll need drink on the way.” I looked down at the gas gauge, and it was reading about one sixth of a full tank.
     “Definitely with you on that one.” I reached over to the seat next to me and began to fish around for my phone. I pulled it out of my purse, unlocked it with the fingerprint reader, and swiped over to my Utilities folder to tap open my gas app. I clicked the button to find stations near me, and I was almost immediately greeted with a host of options, all with varying listed prices that ranges from $2.78 to almost $3.60 per gallon in cash. After switching to the map view, I scrolled westward, looking for any place I could fill up at on the way to Mount Barnaby. There was a station in Notewell, about fifteen minutes away, but the price looked to be $3.19, and I wasn't a fan of that. I zoomed the map out, scanning my eyes left and right, up and down, and dragging my thumb all over the screen to see if there was something better, and while I did find a different station for one cent less per gallon, that station wasn't a brand that I had ever heard of. “Exxon it is, then,” I said to the car, who had now warmed up a bit and was idling at nine hundred rotations per minute.
     “Is there really nothing better?” Said Lucky, saddened by my decision.
     “Not at this time of night, sorry honey buns.” I switched on the headlights, grabbed the green auxiliary cable with the little, white adapter piece on the end, plugged it into the charging port of my phone, and opened up the music app to find [i]The Wall,[/i] one of Floyd's albums that I still had yet to try and listen to. I had seen the movie months ago, inebriated as shit, of course. I had downloaded the entire discography, illegally of course, but I never wanted to listen to any of it badly enough to actually do it. [i]What better time than now, right?[/i] I asked myself, before clicking the gear selector into the low gear, flipping down the parking brake that no longer worked, checking my side-view mirror to see if anyone was coming, signaling left, and driving away with the accompanying accordion and clarinet duet that opened up the show. Immediately, that image of the camera slowly panning its way down the hotel hallway popped into my head - it was the same song as what played in the opening scene of the movie.
     I mimicked a clutch pedal with my left foot and switched to second gear around twenty-five miles an hour. I gave the accelerator pedal a firm roll with my ankle just for fun to see if Lucky would take off, but she barely climbed, as expected. She was running at three-thousand rotations per minute when I suddenly floored it, and it took nearly a second just to make it up to four grand.
     “Still pathetic as ever, eh?” I asked her, jokingly as we crossed thirty-five miles an hour.
     “Yeah, suck my dick and speak for yourself,” said Lucky.
     “Oooh, feisty li’l thang!”
     “You know, I really do hate you.”
     “Of course you do,” I said back, playfully jerking her gear selector from side to side after popping into third gear and getting up to a satisfactory speed: a modest forty-two that propelled me up the hill.
     Just then, the music changed rather suddenly. Guitars, heavy bass drums, and an organ all began playing loud enough to distort my speakers, startling me and making my steering loose for a moment. I straightened out, and reached to turn the volume dial down to almost zero, a look of horror plastered across my face.
     “Fuck!” I exclaimed, panting heavily after almost side-swiping a Celica. “I thought that part would last a little longer, like the movie.”
     I slowly turned the sound back up, eventually finding a suitable level as the key changed, and then the lyrics kicked in. “So you thought you might like to go to the show…” Another minute passed, and I had come to a red light. I signaled to the right, slotted Lucky’s gear selector into neutral, and waited. I leaned over a bit to switch on the fan that began to blow a soft breeze of warm-ish air before going back to listening. “Tell me, is something eluding you, sunshine?”
     Half a minute passed, the light turned green, and I continued along. By now I had driven past a park, a number of shops, a wide variety of interesting cars parked on the side of the street including a dark green sedan that displayed an AMG badge. There were many broken-over houses that stood blank and empty, and there was yet another park, this one much smaller than the first until finally turning left at the end of Oak Avenue. The ancient firehouse on the corner still had the lights on, of course, and the garage door was open with a massive red fire truck inside. I glanced over it quickly and smiled at the gigantic hunk of testosterone that stood tucked away neatly inside before pulling out of the stop sign after a dark-colored SUV passed me by, claiming its right of way.
     I followed, chasing its tail lights but keeping a cautious distance all the time. Further down the road, I ran into another stoplight, and after glancing around at the opposing lights on the far side of the double-three-way intersection that shone a bright, but soft green, I slotted Lucky into Park for the time being, taking a moment to sit back in my seat and just listen to the music that had been soft and sullen for a time now, going on about cracks in the ice. I stared blankly into the SUV’s paint before the music kicked back up to a powerful drum and guitar drop. It was this moment in the music where Pink, in the movie, was floating in a pool of blood and had begun to fall, over and over again, drowning in his own despair and confusion as he tried desperately to reclaim that high of his.
     The light turned green just as the music changed again, boiling down to a steady rhythm of guitar that bumped its way along the work day, and after slipping the shift knob into low and switching off the air conditioner and fan, I took off, mimicking the clutch pedal with unbridled passion and a simper on my mug. The front wheels spun wildly for a good second before finding traction, letting out a deafening screech while the car got up to speed. I rounded the right hand corner after the SUV had finished pulling away and turning the other way, making sure to hit the apex perfectly before drifting out to the left lane like a true road-hog. With nobody left on the road in sight, I pushed harder on the gas pedal, nailing it to the floor, and sending the engine all the way up to redline before lifting off, popping the imaginary clutch, shifting up to second, and smashing the gas again.
     “I thought this was going to be chill!” Lucky screamed.
     “Yeeeeeeeeah, suck my dick, bitch!” I hollered back.
     Up the hill we went, a long straightaway lined with dozens of decoration-lined, bright, but sleepy houses on either side before the first banked turn. Nothing was stationed here, except for some trees and the homes on the inside of the corner, but by the time I had gotten there, I had made it to third gear and was almost three quarters up into the rev range. I let the throttle go for a moment and tapped the brake to meet the proper entry speed before cutting in and drawing my line. I shifted back down to second, and the engine zipped right back up to the top of the tachometer, hovering around a screaming 5,600 as I pushed us through gently. I slammed the throttle back down again, pushing the car into a bit of understeer as I carved through the exit, weaving through the left lane, to the right, and back again until I came right up to kiss the median, where I took extra care to not graze the concrete wall before pulling in for a long, easy left.
     The car slid even more this time due to the steeper incline of this left, as well as the fact I was trying to pull that perfect line. Unfortunately for me, however, it wasn’t so easy with touring tires, and a sagging rear suspension that did little but keep Lucky’s ass from bottoming out over speed bumps.
     Finally after a few more turns, and a wide grin thoroughly branded onto my face, Lucky spoke again. “Jesus, are you sloppy or what?”
     I didn’t even have anything to say to that one, she was right.
     
     We had gotten onto the highway without any cause for alarm, I drove slowly and carefully after cresting the hill and glanced at the city skyline revealed in my rearview mirror before the light let us through to the left. Interestingly enough, the music had now introduced as acoustic guitar, and the song that immediately made me recall the first sequence of trippy animations had come on, [i]”Goodbye Blue Sky.[/i] It felt eerily peaceful as I brought us up to sixty-nine miles per hour upon merging with the interstate.
     I sat us in the right lane, planning to stick there until I had to pass, and sure enough I eventually did, but only after quite a ways down when the road condensed into two lanes. I didn’t want to be a burden to anyone opting to drive significantly faster than me, so I tapped the acceleration button on my cruise control dials a couple of times to bring myself up to about seventy-four before going back down to my previous speed and shifting back to the right. There weren’t any more interruptions the rest of the way, though when the highway reopened and increased to five lanes, I took the route of staying where I was - right in the middle - for a short time before it went back to three lanes again.\
     10pm rolled up on my dashboard’s clock right as I hit exit twenty-seven, my ticket to home, and I exited as gracefully as I could, following a double-apex line as the westbound ramp ended to the south. It was only a short way before the ramp would have turned back up to make a u-turn and go back east, but I could see after an extended view of the mirror and an over-the-shoulder check that my way was clear, and I pulled right in. Another light stopped me, and while I waited for the green, I took the moment to remember Vera Lynn, whom I can only suppose was Floyd’s once-loved woman that… disappeared? Just as the boys came home though, I was able to pull away, and I passed the sign displaying, “Welcome to Mount Barnaby!”
     Two more lights and another ten minutes later, I came to the intersection I remembered so well. It was an off-ramp that lead to Barnaby-Snakestown Road, a long, winding trail that would go through the mountainous ravine and eventually would come out at both the local middle school I’d gone to years ago, and the neighboring town of Racketsville. I wouldn’t be going through there tonight though, instead taking the left that would pass under a railroad bridge overhead and pass next to the entrance of the large strip mall I remembered so fondly.
     Already, seeing these sights again after a mere two years of distancing from immediate family and local familiarity brought the memories of old back, like the time I was late for karate class and had to sprint to make it nearly ten minutes behind schedule. The dojo still stood with its bright red sign next to that of the much larger red sign of the Wise market, and the real estate office and liquor store on either respective side. Houses on the famed Petunia Hill Drive clearly inhibited travel, and since I wasn’t one for trespassing, I had to make my way all the way around, traveling nearly a mile and a half in total. Needless to say, I had little motivation to continue my practices after that. I had taken one more class, but I was, again, tired from other things during the day, and had pulled my sensei aside to thank him for his teaching, and ask for his understanding in my discontinuation.
     I felt a surge of calm though, as I turned right onto Petunia Hill. The buildings again, laid quiet but adorned with bright, neatly decorated lights, and lit the roadway just about enough to allow me to shut the headlights off. I wasn’t about to take the risk though, regardless; law dictations or otherwise. I cruised at about thirty here, counting the blocks on the left-hand side. One, two… and mine. The third block, designated Conifer Place, was where it began.
     Well, that would be inaccurate. I was born in the midwest, near Tevago and Jilaukee. It took six whole years and two other homes before I ended up here with my parents and younger brother, but this was where we stayed the longest - it was home.
     Still, it felt like it wasn’t right to come back here yet to see the house. [i]I should be high for that,[/i] I told myself as I rumbled along. Just as I did, too, the music again began to kick up in tempo, bringing in a driving beat with a repetitive guitar, rocking drum beat and high synth melody. It commanded, “Run like hell…”
     Past the elementary school, and part-way down a short hill was my destination, the gravel parking lot of the baseball field dubbed simply, [i]”Steven Jacob Fields.”[/i] Familiar, but still alien in this light. There was a house at the top end, from the direction I’d arrived in, and its driveway light was up and running, inciting further caution on my part as I quietly rolled into the far corner of the lot.
     Once positioned, I allowed Lucky’s engine to idle and cool down for a solid two minutes as I finally glanced back down at her fuel level. The light had come on, but the needle was still hovering above the letter ‘E,’ and I could hear her wheeze, “Seriously?”
     “Oh shut up, you thirsty fuck,” I retorted back, turning the key to cut her off.
     Silence fell over the cockpit, and with the key now positioned in ‘accessory’ mode, [i]The Trial[/i] had begun tooting its faux-regal orchestral arrangement. I gazed out the windshield, listening as the song made me go crazy, and I darted down to the stash canister that sat in my center console’s cup holder, and hastily pressed the locking button and sild the lid off. I whipped the bowl out, as well as the small bag of bud, now just about half-empty. I popped open the seal, took a whiff, and gave it my index and thumb fingers, plucking out a single, small, soft nugget that I transferred over to my free hand. The dome light dimmed at that time, and the area went dark, but I quickly reached up and tapped the clear plastic, reigniting one of the bulbs that allowed me to see my workspace.
     I set the can back down in the cup holder, placed the lid on the passenger seat, and dropped the back into the hole from which it came. The nugget of weed was still held in my left hand, as was Arnold, the green pipe, and after setting him down in the crevice of my lap, I began to grind it up piece by piece with my fingers, dropping each little bit right into the spoon. There were a couple of crumbs left on the rim, and a single one had strayed fairly far, nearly an inch away. I brushed the residue off my fingers as best I could, trying to save every little smokeable bit I could and dropping them into the bowl, and I even went and grabbed the stray and threw it in the kennel.
    I used my jeans to wipe off the excess stickiness before reaching up again to shut the light, and reaching blindly back into the can to pull out my cigarette lighter. I clicked it intently and watched the flame come closer and closer to the bowl I had positioned in front of my lips. My red hair hung over my eyes, and the rising heat from the fire singed it a little as I took my first hit in this new, but old and truthfully familiar place.
     The high hit, and I brushed my hair aside, really adjusting my eyes to the darkness now as the light went out, and all that was left to see was the dim, blue dash lights, and the endless starry sky over the fenced-off field before me. It was up a little hill, and the bleachers over yonder were only five rows tall.
    Virtually no obstructions to be seen, I flipped my sun visors back to grant more visibility, as well as the shade for my sunroof. I pulled the handle and leaned my chair back while breathing a hefty sigh, blowing the smoke right up to the ceiling and staring up into the inky black scenery above. I closed my eyes for a moment as we wished goodbye to the cruel world.
     Of course though, the only true way to do that is to die, no? Yeah, at this point, I was only greeting it for the first time. Nobody around this immediate area would approve of what I was doing, but I wasn’t being bothered. It didn’t matter. I heard the accordion start to wish me off as I drifted away into serene elevation. I was floating, and this vehicle of mine, she and I were beginning a journey. We didn’t know where we were going, but we knew that we didn’t have a time limit. No, we had all the time in the world, and we could go wherever we wanted. It wasn’t clear what the options were, nor was it clear that we even had a goal to accomplish. I knew though, that I had started on my way, and that was when the album came to a soft, gentle, full-circle close.