Yellow Mama E zine

Driving

 

Luke Campbell

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          I like driving at night, always have.  You meet a lot of interesting people out on the road.  During the summer I graduated high school, 18 and restless, I would borrow my father’s car and go out driving late into the night, stereo drowning out any teenage insecurities that may have been spinning through my head.  I never set out with a destination, just got behind the wheel and took off.  Oftentimes I’d zone out and lose track of everything, time, space, what nowhere county I was in.  I would gaze at all the houses I drove past, wondering what secrets hid behind each picket fence and faded wooden porch, or up into the night sky looking for UFOs and ghouls between the silhouettes of treetops, until eventually I’d glance at the clock on the dashboard and realize I’ve been driving for over three, four hours, sometimes five.  Every night I’d end up somewhere different: an Amish town in Pennsylvania, a farm in West Virginia, a suburb in Delaware.  It didn’t matter, so long as no one there knew my name or face.  I’d watch the people walk down the street and stare into their eyes until they would meet mine before quickly looking elsewhere.  These cold faces, separated only by a few feet and a windshield pane, they could never know the real me, the root of my being.  I don’t think I’ve ever been able to quite grasp it myself.

          One night, I was still hungover from getting trashed on FourLoko in my room the night before, and the ceiling was spinning too much to let me sleep, so I snuck out around 1 AM with the car keys and drove all the way up to a small town in Pennsylvania called Hanover, just over the Maryland state line.  It was a small town, not much more than a couple cafes, an obligatory Royal Farms, a furniture store, and an old record shop next to a live music bar that had burned down many years ago.  I parked across the street from the boarded-up skeleton that once hosted lousy classic rock cover bands and forgettable small town country acts, stepping out of the car and feeling the cool August breeze brush against my stubbled chin.  I started to walk around the block towards Baltimore Ave, hoping the fresh air would take my racing mind off things, but even with the breeze, the humidity was suffocating.  I quickly turned around and headed back towards the car, thinking it best to start heading home anyways.  My head was still throbbing, wolves gnashing their teeth at my temples.  I sat in the passenger seat and sighed.  I checked my phone.  Still left on read.

          Emma.  That bitch.

         With her oak brown split ends and mall-bought chipped black nail polish.

          She led me on.  So many goddamn times.  Making googly eyes and pouting at me across the room in Honors English with those glossy fishcunt lips.  Always tolerated my presence when she needed help with an assignment, or a crumpled dollar for the vending machine, or any other measly favor which I always provided for her majesty, asking nothing in return, only expecting an ounce of fucking decency perhaps.  And how am I repaid for my generosity?  Two weeks after our high school graduation ceremony (which I did not attend, opting instead to get stoned and wander around record stores in Baltimore), she texts me out of the blue and asks if I’d be down to meet her at Midtown Park.  My heart beating like a Discharge song, socks soaked in my shoes, I rushed over there and got to the park 15 minutes before she showed up, nervously pacing back and forth in front of the empty swingset as I checked every passing car for her face.            When she arrived in a blue SUV, she was in the passenger seat, while her friend, a stuck-up whore named Madison who I had a chemistry class with in sophomore year, drove her.  When Emma opened the door and got out, I could see that there was another girl in the backseat, though I did not recognize her from school. 

       “Okay, so I know this might sound a little weird, but do you wanna kiss?”

       “What?”  I was dumbstruck.  Bewildered doesn’t touch this.  She had to have been fucking with me.       One of her friends must have had a concealed camera recording us for some sort of cruel amusement.

       “Well, listen,” she said, “we had this dare, and I lost, so now I have to kiss someone.  You wanna do this or not?”  Of course, I knew this was most likely devious teenage girl bullshit.  I’d been humiliated by the girls at my school before, but I tossed caution aside momentarily, excited to feel the embrace of a woman for the second time ever in my miserable, fuckless existence. 

        “Y-yeah, definitely,” I managed to choke out.  Stupid.  I sounded painfully desperate.  I leaned in and gave her a nervous peck, the way one might kiss their grandmother on the cheek.

          “That was terrible,” she laughed.  “Here.”  She grabs me by the sides of my face and pulls me into her, tongue and all.  To this day, I’ve never been kissed like that, with that kind of fire filling my lungs.  Or at least that’s what I thought.  After she and her friends drove off, I practically skipped home listening to Jawbreaker’s “Want” on repeat.  The next day, I worked up the nerve to message her and ask if she wanted to go out sometime, thinking naively that because she’d technically kissed me twice, she must really like me.

         How’s that song by the Faces go again?  The one about Ronnie Wood’s grandpa telling him what conniving witches girls can be.  Regardless, you already know I didn’t get a response from Emma.  That was about two months ago, and now here I was, sitting alone in my father’s car on an empty street in bumfuck, Pennsylvania at 2 AM, tapping my phone over and over again to reload the message thread, but to no avail.  A couple years later, I would find out through a mutual acquaintance that the conditions of the dare Emma lost required her to kiss “the ugliest guy she knew” as penance, but at the moment I was in the dark and still holding tight to the slim hope that she truly cared for me.

        Fuck this, I thought, and started up the ignition.  “Dead Flowers” by the Stones resumed playing over the car's stereo. Noticing that the tank was low on fuel, I made my way towards the Royal Farms.  Outside the gas station, a group of four junkies - two sweaty dreadheads, a Mexican in tattered jeans, and a white woman covered in acne - were huddled in front of the entrance smoking cigarettes.  Even in this sticky summer heat, they sported long sleeves to obscure their track marks.  Under the neon lights, their sunbleached and wrinkled skin made them look to be in their mid 50’s, though they could have been in their late 20’s for all I knew.  Heroin tends to age people far beyond their years, at least judging from the junkies I’ve seen.  The group turned and stared at me like deer in headlights as I pulled up to the nearest pump and stepped outside.  I locked my doors and inserted the gas pump to start fueling, before heading towards the store’s entrance to take a piss, staring straight ahead to avoid eye contact with the coughing, muttering skeletons as I made my way inside.  The lighting in the bathroom was a dark blue, almost aquatic, undoubtedly to keep addicts like the ones outside from finding their veins and shooting up on store property.  When I got back outside, the junkies were crowded around my car, with the woman sitting on the hood, her bony legs spread provocatively as she leaned her head back towards my windshield.  Only then did I notice there were no other cars in the parking lot, or down the street for that matter.  I started to panic, thinking I would surely be robbed, or worse, and my only means of self-defense - a small switchblade that I had bought from an antique store a while back - was hidden behind the passenger seat.  Nervously, I began to approach the vehicle, hoping these zombies would disperse, but instead they just watched me and smiled.

        “Hey there, brotha,” one of the men said, revealing a toothless grin as his menthol breath wafted in my face.  “You lookin’ to party tonight?”

        “Yeah, nigga, you tryna see some action?” another chimes in.

        “Listen man, I just stopped to fuel up.”  I said, trying to push past them and make it to the driver’s side door.  “I don’t wanna buy anything.”

         “Now hold on, brotha, how do you know you ain’t buying when you haven’t even looked at what we sellin’?”  He gestures toward the woman, who licks her swollen upper lip flirtatiously.  “This girl is wild, man!  She been turnin’ tricks since she could ride a bike.  She’ll take you ‘round the world and back, my nigga!”  The woman began to rub her crotch over her ratty camo yoga pants, which it looked like she hadn’t changed out of in weeks.  The thought of the smell alone made me nauseous, when suddenly it came on like a sneeze.  The itch.  It’s been my burden for as long as I can remember, both confining me and providing me with a freedom most could only dream of.  In the distance, past the baboon laughter and exaggerated moans immediately surrounding me, an owl’s cry in the trees sounded like a woman screaming for her life, which I took as a sign to go through with it.

         “Y’know what?” I turned to the main salesman.  “I think I’ll take her for a spin.  How much?”

          “$200 will get ya half an hour alone with her, but you can just give me half now, the other half after you get ya nut off.” He laughs a charcoal laugh.  I looked inside my leather wallet and handed him my last two fifties, swiftly shoving the wallet back in my pocket before any of them could see that it was now empty except for my license and debit card. 

          “Alright, brotha, there’s a visitor’s lot just a couple blocks down that should be empty this time of night.  Head down there, and then bring her back for us in half an hour.  I’ll be checking my watch.”

         “Sure thing,” I said, opening the passenger side door for my date.

         “And listen, man, no weird shit,” the Mexican finally spoke up.  “You better bring her back in one piece, ya hear?  This bitch gon’ make us rich.”  I could tell by her browning teeth and lazy eye that that wasn’t true, but whatever, that wasn’t any concern of mine.  I guess everyone needs a dream in life, even rural junkie pimps. 

          “Yeah, man, don’t worry about it,” I assured them, settling into the driver’s seat and turning the key.  We took off into the night, sweat caked to my forehead and down my back with the whore taking one last glance at her employers in the side view mirror.  Objects may be closer than they appear. 

        “So, what’s your name?” she asked me, touching up her firetruck red lipstick.

        “Doesn’t matter,” I replied, my eyes still fixed on the road ahead.  “I don’t wanna know yours either.”  She pauses for a moment, then asks if it’s alright if she lights a cigarette.  I tell her it’s my friend’s car and that he wouldn't appreciate me returning it to him smelling like an ashtray, which she seemed to understand and so she was once again silent, anxiously picking at a hangnail while I drove on.

         “You’re so hot,” she starts rubbing my erection through my jeans.  I could feel my heartrate building up like fireworks on Independence Day, though certainly not for the reason she was used to.  “Anyone ever tell you ya kinda look like Mick Jagger?”  A few.

         When I shoot past the entrance to the visitor’s lot, I can feel her tense up beside me.

        “Hey, man, you missed the turn.”

         “I know another place close by,” I said, surreptitiously grabbing my switchblade from behind her seat and hiding it in my fist beside me.  “It’s much more private.  Don’t worry, this won’t take long.”  She settled back against her seat and looked out the window, remaining guarded but foolishly taking my words at face value.

         Eventually, after we got to a remote enough location, surrounded by trees and empty roads for miles in all directions, I found a small clearing and pulled over.  I told the scab-covered whore to get out of the car, and that I wanted to fuck her on the hood.  She hesitated, complaining about mosquitoes, but then remembered that she had to make me like her if she wanted to afford her fix tonight, so she did as she was told.  Standing in front of the car, squinting through the glare of the headlights, the gutterslit watched through the windshield as I began to rub myself with shaking hands. 

          “Hey, c’mon, kid,” she said, a hint of irritation slipping through her submissive facade, “I don’t have all night.  We gonna do this or not?”  I rolled down my window to shout to her from my seat.

          “Start taking your clothes off,” I said.  “I need to get hard before we do it.”  Not too much of a challenge, as I was now excited enough at the anticipation that I could look past the purple-green bruises and rotting teeth and patchy scalp and unkempt fingernails to see the figure she might have had in a life where she never met junk.  She rolled her eyes but complied like the seasoned hooker she was, slowly lifting her grimy Slipknot 2007 tour shirt over her small, veiny tits.  They weren’t much bigger than golf balls and the piercings in her nipples appeared to be infected, oozing with a tan colored pus that resembled a newborn’s vomit.  The sight of this made me realize I wasn’t ready to get up close just yet, like a virgin on prom night, so I slipped the blade back behind the passenger seat.  As she stuck her thumbs into the waist of her yoga pants, she gave me one last (forced) seductive smirk before I stomped my foot on the accelerator and rammed my father’s car into her before she even realized I’d never taken the key out of the ignition.  In a split second, I was able to glimpse the final moment of terror captured in her pupils before her body crumpled beneath the front right tire, her face smashing into the right headlight and shattering the glass on the way down.  When I heard her skull pop under the tire, I came all over the steering wheel.

          “Fuck you, Emma!” I screamed as I cranked the volume on the car’s stereo.  Thin Lizzy’s “Dancing In The Moonlight (It’s Caught Me In Its Spotlight)” blared through the August wind.  I hurtled down the road and onto the highway, my heart beating in my throat the whole way home.  I kept darting my eyes towards the rearview mirror, thinking any second I would see police sirens approaching, but they never did.             As if by some miracle, a great thunderstorm broke the night’s humidity on the drive home, washing away any blood the junkie whore may have left on my father’s car.  The next day, I told my father that I had hit a deer while out driving, and although he was certainly frustrated that I had borrowed his car without his permission, he was mainly relieved that his only son was left uninjured from his first collision.  The only real loss was the $100 I’d paid the junkie outside Royal Farms. 

           I like driving at night, always have.  You meet a lot of interesting people out on the road.

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       Luke Campbell is a writer and musician from Silver Spring, Maryland. His work is influenced by transgressive writers such as Dennis Cooper and Bret Easton Ellis. He has had two short stories published so far: "North Star" on alien-technology.com, and "Poltergeists" in DarkWinter Literary Magazine. 

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       Sean O’Keefe is an artist and writer living in Roselle Park, NJ. Sean attended Syracuse University where he earned his BFA in Illustration. After graduation, Sean moved to New York City where he spent time working in restaurants and galleries while pursuing various artistic opportunities. After the birth of his children, Sean and family move to Roselle Park in 2015. He actively participates in exhibitions and art fairs around  New Jersey, and is continuing to develop his voice as a writer. His work can be found online at www.justseanart.com and @justseanart on Instagram.