The wind picked up and sprayed the entire length of my body as I stood in the dark awaiting my ride. Across the street, trees were visibly bending and twisting to the will of the storm. Seconds passed by like hours as I stood in the freezing atmosphere. I thought through countless scenarios in my head to justify this tardiness, vicious thoughts entered my head. The slick pavement eerily reflected the light of the neighboring houses, creating one smear of presence in front of me. The real blended with the reflection, the bizarre with the concrete. Two opposites joined together by slick, hard pavement.  At that very moment a red shark screeched around the corner and onto my street shattering the sublime state that I had entered. My heart pumped as I wondered about the identity of the driver. Could this be my ride? My insecurities were confirmed by the honking and cheering emanating from the car. He had finally arrived, my ride. “Are you fucking ready”, exclaimed the driver, “it’s gonna be a fun night!” Already, his infectious mood had spread to my head and was pumping through my veins. “Did you bring the cactus”, I screamed, “it’s hardly a party without the cactus!” At the mention of the cactus, his eyes slowly rolled forward, followed by his head, and then his whole body. “Holy shit, did he pass out?” This was beginning to look like an evening for the ages. “Wake him up! How do you expect to get to the party with the driver drooling on the wheel?” I slowly reached into the passenger window, across the copilot’s chest, to rouse the driver. O rue the day it every happened, the sun god was frowning on us that night. At the touch of my hand on his shoulder, he swung his arm violently towards my head. I took the blow straight to the temple; pain coursed through my head as I tried to straighten out my body. I toppled over onto the car, my quick pulsating breaths trying to relay oxygen to my brain. However, my efforts were not in vain, he had been waken.  I laid in the back of the car on the way to the house trying to regroup from the awful hammerfist to the head. Transparent hallucinations flashed across my eyelids, slowly blooming into one large crazed dream. I could see what was happening in the car, but I was looking at it from the outside. The driver and his copilot took on the shapes of the same man. Well the same man only superficially. However, morally and psychologically, complete opposites, a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One’s face was contorted in a treacherous grin as he looked at me in the back seat. Who knows what evil schemes that demogorgon was hatching, his eyes spat fire and mischief as he looked on. The other was trying to control the car with an elbow, while he hit the twin with his free hand. Pure bedlam ran free in that car.

As my out-of-body self went for a closer look, the picture dropped out. All was surrounded by whiteness. Nothing was separate from the other; everything was one. The eternal battle for right and wrong was finished, solved; all was okay in this brief state of nirvana. However, this only lasted for mere seconds, as I was dragged back into the car and jolted back to reality.The windows of the car were open as we drove down the two-lane road. I heard a tin voice spewing out the latest figures concerning deaths in Iraq. “That’s right folks, we’re up to 30000 now. Can you believe that? I sure can’t. Anyway, in other news, local Philadelphia resident’s cat gets stuck down a drain. Let’s go to the field for some on the scene reporting.” Even when coming out of the ether, I couldn’t believe the stupidity of the current news.

The driver’s smoke lazily drifted across the windshield, like a cloud drifting across the sky, only to be viciously sucked out of the opposite window and into the earth’s atmosphere. Apart from the tin voice, other voices could be heard, it sounded like the two drivers were having a conversation. Something about getting massive quantities of rum, but I couldn’t be sure.