H: Chapter Five

Thomas woke up approximately five days later, laying face-down on a stained, and rain-soaked mattress. He stretched his arms out and let out a long, exasperated, groan. Thomas slowly sat up and rubbed his eyes.

He looked around the alley. It must’ve been near a seedy McDonalds as the smell of french fries permeated throughout the air. Two dumpsters were located right in front of him, leaking a strange white substance, and were overflowing with trash.

Thomas reached into his pocket for his phone. It was a shitty ol’ Samsung that he had had for seven years. It’s amazing that the thing still worked. He checked his notifications as any sane person would do after waking up in an unknown alley with no recollection of getting there. And then it hit him. The seven missed calls from an unknown number made him remember that he was supposed to bail me out of prison. He was supposed to use the six grand to free me, and he failed.

Flashes of the past five days murmured around in his head, like a pot of hazy colors and smells. However, among the vast sea of reds, greens, and blues, there was one memory that he was able to grab on to.

He was sitting on a leather couch, as poppy rap music blasted. There were many faces around them, though he recognized none. In front of Thomas, was a tray with lines of coke on it. He leaned his head, closed on nostril, and snorted a line.

Thomas leaned back and let out a deep sigh. He looked to his left and saw Jack staring at a stripper. The stripper in question was a massive lady. She wore nothing but a black bikini, revealing rolls upon rolls of fat. Her legs were stricken with blue veins that ran up to her turkey-sized thighs.

“Are you into that?” Thomas asked.

Jack snapped his head back to face Thomas, with wide eyes and rosy cheeks.

Thomas took it as a yes.

The memory soon faded, and Thomas was back in cold, dark, reality. He jumped up from the mattress and paced around like a jack rabbit on steroids. He combed his fingers through his shaggy hair and let out a screech. What was he to do? How could he save me now? Thomas decided to call Jack, perhaps he could help him. Where was Jack anyway?

Thomas raced to dial Jack’s phone number. He could hear Jack’s phone ringing just a few feet away. He turned his head to where the rings were coming from and sprinted. As Thomas got closer and closer he could hear the phone ringing from inside a dumpster.

He approached the dumpster and lifted it up. Jack laid inside, knocked out cold, with his phone sitting in his hands. Thomas kicked the dumpster with the tip of his shoe and Jack jolted awake.

“What’s going on? Where am I?” Jack yelled, shocked.

“Don’t worry about that, man. We were supposed to help Payte and Travis!”

Jack climbed out of the dumpster and stood up. He dusted the dirt and food particles off of his clothes. He groaned and buried his head in the palm of his hands. “Fuck, man, we screwed up. We really did it this time…”

Thomas grimaced, “Don’t say that, maybe we can still do something…” Thomas paused for a second and sifted through his pockets. “What happened to the money? Maybe we still have enough!”

Jack put his hand into the pocket of his jacket and retrieved a wad of cash. He flipped through it and said, “We have twelve dollars.”

Thomas took a seat on the ground. He felt as if the world was spinning around him. He felt as if he was in a dream, not truly awake.

Jack stretched his arms out and yawned, “Man, how long were we out? What if they’ve gone to prison already?”

Thomas shrugged, “I don’t know… a week, maybe?” Thomas groaned.

Jack reached into his pockets for a cigarette. As he lifted his arm up, Thomas said, “Hey, you have something written on your arm.”

Jack looked up at Thomas with a confused glance. He brought his arm to his face and read it out loud. “Carlene, call me.” After the name, was a string of numbers, presumably a phone-number. The both of them locked eyes for a moment before racing for their phones.

Jack was the first to dial. It rang for a moment before a lady, presumably Carlene, picked up. “Hello? Who is this?” She spoke very nasally, like there was something caught in her throat.

Jack scratched the back of his head. “Uh… Jack. It’s Jack.”

“Oh! Jack! You know, I’ve never had a client like you before… you’re something else entirely.”

Jack’s mouth dropped and he stared at Thomas. “Client? I… I was your client?”

“You don’t remember? How much coke did you do?”

“Wait, shut up! I was your client?”
“Just get to Lizzy’s, I’ll explain everything to you, since you obviously have no clue.” Carlene hung up the phone and went back to whatever it is a stripper does. Maybe she went back to giving lap-dances to old men or doing a line of coke, I don’t know.

They gathered their senses before heading off down to the road to find a taxi. They found one and explained that they were going to, “Lizzy’s.” The taxi driver, an immigrant from Turkey, recognized the name, but scolded them and said, “That’s no place where sensible young men like yourselves would go.” But when the driver was promised a hundred-dollars, he agreed to go.

When Thomas and Jack got to Lizzy’s, they were not able to pay the driver. Thus, they ran out of the cab and sprinted down the street as fast as their legs could carry them. The driver then took off after them with a baseball bat in his hands. He could actually run pretty fast for an old man, much to Thomas and Jack’s dismay. They took a turn down an alley and hid behind a pile of wet cardboard that had the distinct smell of rotten eggs. The taxi driver lost sight of them, flipped them off, cursed at them in Kurdish, and walked back to his cab.

Jack placed his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “That was close.” He said, in between coughs.

Thomas craned his neck to the left and right, cracking it. “Yeah.” He mumbled.

A light bulb soon went off in Thomas’s mind and he turned to Jack. “That lady you called, was she a prostitute?” The only memory that Thomas had from the five-day blackout was still fresh in his mind, and he was beginning to put the pieces together.

Jack took a deep breath and stood up straight, it seemed that he had recovered from the sprint. “I’m not sure, but she said that I was a, “good,” client. Whatever that means…”

“That means she was a prostitute, dude.”

Jack shrugged, “I’m not so sure about that…”
Thomas sighed and started walking back to the street, “Whatever, man. Let’s just get this over with.”

Thomas stopped when he came to a turn in the alley and peered behind a corner. A bright, flashing, pink sign, spelled out, “Lizzy’s Bar and Drink,” in sloppy cursive letters.

A homeless man dressed in a stained and torn leather jacket, drinking from a bottle wrapped in a paper-bag, leaned against a dirty fence. He mumbled to himself in quiet whispers, and his eyes had a vacant look. He wore a gray beanie, covering his white hair.

Thomas turned back to Jack and said, “This is the place, let’s go.”

They went through the door and followed a darkly lit hallway. Dim, and tiny, light-bulbs lined the bottom and the top of the hallway, along the walls. As they walked through it, the pop music became louder and more grating on their ears. Soon they came to another door lined with pink, electrical tape.

They opened it and saw a woman with many rolls sat on a leather couch, smoking a cigarette. She had brown hair that dangled to her neck and luscious curls. On her feet, she wore red heels with platforms on the front-end of them. She had on a thin bra and underwear that revealed everything, even the more unsightly parts of her unique body. Thomas soon realized this was the woman from his memory.

“Are you Carlene?” Asked Jack.

Carlene turned around and stood up. “Oh, it’s you!” She raced towards Jack and hugged him tightly, pressing her breasts full-force into his face. She let go of Jack and he took a step back, grimacing. Carlene did not notice the awful grimacing, or else she would’ve cried.

“How’s Payte doing?” Carlene asked.

“Payte’s doing great.” Thomas said. “He’s a great guy and an amazing friend. Really awesome dude all around.”

Carlene smiled and pushed her nose upward, revealing caked dust on her left nostril that had a certain white color to it. She used her pointer-finger to wipe it off, and said, “Thanks for the coke, we really needed some.” Carlene then snorted the coke off her finger and sighed.

Thomas raised a curious eyebrow, “We only had one bump left, how did we give it to you?”

Carlene sat down and picked up a hair-brush. “You guys said you got it from a dealer. And it wasn’t just coke, it was acid, shrooms, weed, you get the point.” She began gliding the brush through her thick and chocolate-colored hair.

“Did we say the dealer’s name?” Asked Jack, quietly. He stared at Carlene with eyes full of fear and sickness.

Carlene finished brushing her hair and picked up a longer, and thinner, comb. “You said his name was David. He hangs around the back door sometimes. He always has a bottle of beer with him.”

It was here that Thomas realized that the homeless man was the dealer. Though he did not say it out loud, Thomas felt a pit in his stomach. What else had he done during the blackout? He secretly hoped no other memories would come to him.

With this newfound information, Thomas turned around and started for the door. “Come on, let’s go.” He said.

Jack followed Thomas out the door and down the hallway. Half-way to the back door, Thomas turned to Jack and said, “You had sex with that girl, didn’t you?”

Jack groaned, “Shut up…”

* * *

I watched the flies buzzing about on the prison wall. I had been in prison for five days now, and there was nothing to do but breathe and wait. By this point, I had named the four flies that were flying around. One of them had died already, presumably of starvation. The one with part of it’s wing torn off was Jerry. The one with a full-set of wings was named Mark, and the one missing a leg was named Shelley.

Jerry had flown through a tiny crack in the ceiling and hadn’t come out in ten minutes. I was beginning to get worried for him. Maybe he would find another jail, or escape his prison. Or did he even know he was in prison? Do flies have consciousness?

Mark liked the double-paned window the best. He had tried to fly through it multiple times, and always failed. I guess flies aren’t that smart after all. Nevertheless, he always stayed by the windowsill, relaxing and buzzing his wings.

Shelley definitely had undiagnosed Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity-Disorder. She would fly to the crack in the ceiling, then to the window, then to the bed, to my arm, and then to the floor. Sometimes she would fly onto my nose, and then I would cross my eyes and watch her rub her legs together. Then she would fly next to Mark and speak in fly-language, which was just different frequencies of her wings buzzing.

I got off my bed and walked over to the cell-door. I leaned my head through and watched the police-officer typing away at his desk. Her name was Cassandra, it was printed neatly on her name tag. Twenty minutes ago, she had just gone to pick up food from a food-truck down the street. She returned with two hot-dogs, and a large soda.

Cassandra was a big woman. Her hair, tied neatly in a pony-tail, complimented her tan skin. She wore a sky-blue button-up shirt and jeans.

“Can you let me out now?” I asked. My hands gripped the bars of the cell like I was clinging on for dear life.

The police-woman bit into her hot dog, not even bothering to look me in the eye and treat me like a human-being. “Just give it time.” She said. The clicks from her fingers on the keyboard echoed through the tiny room.

I frowned and pleaded, “Listen, you ugly bitch, we both know me and my pal here, aren’t going to jail. You’re too busy eating hot dogs to process us, so why not let us out now?”

She stopped typing and looked at me. She picked up her drink, sucked the straw, placed it down, and then looked at me again. “Just give it time.”

I groaned and jumped on the bed, landing on my back. I kicked the wall with my feet and looked up at Travis, who was watching a rat scurry about in the cell. “We need to break out of here.” I said softly. My voice was raspy and dead.

Travis rolled his eyes and sighed, “You heard what Johnny said, we’ll be out of here soon. Besides, how are we gonna break out of here, exactly?”

“I don’t know…” I moaned. “Can’t you come up with something? You’re the smart one here.” Travis shook his head and brought his attention back to the rat.

Travis and I both sat in silence for quite a while. He watched the rat scurry about, while I stared out the window and counted each car that passed. Cassandra chewed away at her hot-dog, and Shelley got caught in a web. Rest in peace.

A couple more hours with very little words said. Eventually, another police officer walked down to our cell and unlocked it. “You’re free to go. We’re not gonna charge you with anything, just get out and don’t come back.” The poor guy sounded absolutely defeated. I would’ve felt bad for him had he not waited five days to free us.

We were given everything else we had in our pockets. Our cash, wallets, and the keys to the van. We walked down a long hallway to the doors. There was a single police-dog waiting. My blood began to curdle, knowing that the shrooms we had were packed inside our underwear. As I approached the dog, it snarled, revealing jagged teeth. It’s shroom-sniffing senses turned on. The dog knew I was hiding them.

“Kyle, calm down.” A police-officer said to the dog. He grabbed Kyle by it’s leash and yanked him away.

Travis and I stepped out of the police station, and breathed a sigh of relief. Once again, we were both free men.

* * *

We both stood outside the doors to the police station, contemplating on what to do. Our heads were hazy. It seemed that the boredom of being in jail had caused our minds to dissociate from our bodies. It didn’t help that we were aching for a joint. Hell, we’d take anything, just as long as it’d get us high. Luckily, we weren’t doing any of the hard stuff, otherwise we’d be puking our brains out on the sidewalk. You know, from the withdrawals and all that shit.

I turned to Travis and asked, “Well, how much money you got?”

“Uh….” Travis reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. He thumbed through it and said, “Seven dollars.”
“Shit.”

We started walking down the street. Empty soda cans, coffee cups, and wrappers littered the sidewalks. Many people walked by. Some were dressed in baggy and ripped clothes, while some were dressed in jeans and a tank-top. A few wrinkled their noses up at us and went out of their way to avoid Travis and I. We must not have looked or smelled good at all.

We found a taxi shortly after. The driver was a man from Turkey. I explained that we needed to get to Lizzy’s and the driver paused for a moment, before cursing aloud in Kurdish and slamming his fist into the steering wheel. He paused for a moment, collected himself, then reached his hand out. “Pay up front, that’s how far I’ll take you,” he said. I locked eyes with Travis for a moment and shrugged. Travis grabbed the wad of cash, and placed it in the driver’s hand. He took us three miles into the city, and the rest was up to us.

“Lizzy’s is just a mile down street.” The driver said. “Now go away, get.”

Travis and I opened our doors and stepped outside. “What an asshole,” I muttered under my breath. Travis laughed, and we started walking.

Somehow the streets were even worse than before. I don’t know what the smell was, but it was just terrible. You had to walk with your shirt covering your nose just to not vomit.

Every town we came across was just like any other. Sure, the first couple months of traveling was nice. It was absolutely wonderful. But, after a while, it gets old. Everything just tends to be the same people, the same buildings, and the same roads, all painted the same shade of gray.

Just as the sun had fully set, we made it to Lizzy’s. There was a line of about fifteen, to twenty people, outside the doors. Pink lights were lined up against the walls and roof, illuminating the sidewalk and road.

We got in line and waited. After a while we reached the front doors, where a bouncer stood, and the fucker was huge. Bulging muscles, tight-fit clothes, the whole nine yards. He was scary.

I started walking inside, but the bouncer grabbed my shoulder, and shoved me away. “No under twenty-ones.” He growled.

“We are over twenty-one.” I said.

“Got ID?”
I turned to Travis, grimacing, then back at the bouncer. “We forgot our ID’s. Can we just go inside?”

The bouncer reached over and shut the door. “No. If you lost them, go get em’.”

I looked at Travis with eyes full of fury. I shook my head, and in silence, we walked away. We decided to go through the back door, it would’ve been easier. We turned right at an alley and walked down it. Just as we got to the back-door, I saw two people gathered around a dumpster, drinking and laughing. And wouldn’t you know it, it was Jack and Thomas.

“Jack?” I gasped.

Jack turned around and with wide eyes full of disbelief and joy. “Payte?”

Thomas jumped up from where he was sitting and ran over to me. “I thought you guys were in prison!” He went to hug me but I shoved him out of the way.

Jack turned to me and asked, “So, what are you guys doing here?”

I filled him in on our mission and what we had to do. The four of us walked through the back door and down the dimly lit, pink, hallway. Soon, we made it past the private lap-dance area and into the lobby. A woman in purple panties and a bra, spun along a rail. A fat, old man in a wheel-chair, reached into his pocket to grab a twenty, and deposited it into the woman’s underwear. A DJ sat in the back, prodding buttons and flipping switches.

Thomas and Jack sat down on a couch and watched the stripper dance. She spun around to Thomas’s side and leaned in, locking eyes with him. This was enough for Thomas to gulp and walk away in fear.

Travis and I went over to the counter and leaned over it. A man with a beanie and a long beard mixed drinks. I looked over the counter and saw that his left leg was a prosthetic. “Are you Chris?” I asked sheepishly.

Chris stopped mixing a drink and set the glass down on a table to the side of him. He looked up at me, and with a raised eyebrow, said, “Yeah, who’s asking?”

“Uh, My name is Payte.” I leaned in further and whispered, “Johnny sent us, we have the shrooms…”
“Don’t say that shit here!” Chris said. “Where the hell is Johnny?” Chris reached for a pistol on the counter, and hovered his hand over it. Any wrong words, and we’d be in a world full of pain.

I took a step back and whimpered. “Johnny’s in jail, we met him there!”

Chris began to laugh and took his hand away from the gun. He reached over and grabbed my hand to shake it. “I wasn’t gonna shoot you! The gun’s not even loaded, chill out.”

I stepped back and nodded. I reached into my pants and pulled out the shrooms. They had been crumbled up and the bag was torn open, but the delivery had been made. That’s all that mattered. Travis did the same and we placed them on the counter. Chris grabbed the bags and nodded while stuffing them away in a drawer.

I swallowed what little pride I had left and said, “Johnny said you could get us a new car battery. Can you do that?”

Chris nodded, “What model is it?”

“A 1969 Volkswagen.”

Chris smiled and slowly nodded. “That’s a classic, just give me one moment.” He turned around and walked through a doorway on his left. Travis and I silently looked at each other in confusion. Chris must’ve been throwing or tossing something, as all we heard was the clatter of metal and plastic. I imagined Chris tossing aside box after box of drinks and utensils to find that precious battery.

As we waited, Thomas and Jack noticed the same bouncer we saw, glaring right at them. Thomas felt his heart race and sweat drip down his neck as the bouncer maintained his same, fixated, death-stare.

“You think that guy wants to kill us?” Thomas whispered over to Jack.

Jack was frozen in fear. The bouncer’s stare was enough to make anyone’s soul leave their body. “I hope not…” Said Jack.

Thomas nodded slowly, “Why do you think he’s staring at us like that?”

Jack gave a slight, and timid, shrug. “I don’t know, but I’d wish he’d stop doing that.”

“You think he’s a body-builder?”

“Probably. You see those muscles?”

“Yeah.”

“I bet the dude eats, like, twenty eggs a day.”

Thomas blinked a few times, and after each blink the bouncer suddenly got closer and closer. Inch by inch, foot by foot. “Uh, Jack…?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s walking towards us.”

“Oh God.”

The bouncer moved behind a pole and grabbed a golf club from the side of it. He stepped forwards, facing Thomas and Jack. His eyes were at a needle-point and smoldering in flame. “Hey!” He called out. “What did I say would happen if I caught you two here again?” He screamed.

“Us?” Thomas asked, pointing to himself.

The bouncer sneered and brought the golf club into the air and swung it down. Thomas and Jack dove out of the way and onto the floor, just as the golf club hit the couch. The bouncer spun around and swung the club through the air, knocking over a table of drinks.

“What did we do?” Jack cried out as he hugged a wall.

The bouncer sprinted over to Jack and swung the golf club at him. Jack crouched and fell to the floor, just barely missed by the club. “You come into MY club,” The bouncer shouted as he picked the golf club up from the ground. “And you sell coke to MY girls? Now you don’t remember?”
“We don’t remember, we don’t!” Thomas cried out.

I turned around just in time to see Thomas and Jack running for the door. Chris finally came out and placed the battery on the counter. I sniped it into my arms, and raced out the door. The bouncer followed, but I managed to slam the door on him. Travis followed, and soon we were all running down the street.

Our legs were carrying us as fast as possible. I looked behind me and saw the bouncer was still chasing us, and he was a fast fucker. We turned down a corner and sprinted down an alley.

“Get the fuck back here!” The bouncer screamed.

We got to the end of the alley and found a dumpster. I lifted the lid of it and the four of us climbed in. We were stuffed shoulder to shoulder in the trash, panting and sweating.

“What did you guys do to piss that guy off?” I whispered. I could see nothing in the dumpster. I could only hear the heavy footsteps of the bouncer coming along through the alleyway.

Jack slowly turned to me in the dark. In a barely audible whisper, he said, “I think we sold coke in the strip club…”

I let out a heavy sigh. I wanted to say something, maybe call them both idiots or dumbasses, but there was no chance to speak. The bouncer was standing right outside the dumpster.

“Man, fuck it.” I heard the bouncer say. He dropped the golf club on the ground and started walking away. When I was certain the coast was clear, I lifted the dumpster lid, and we climbed out.

“I’m never trusting you guys with something like that again.” I said.

“Payte!” Thomas called out. “We were just trying to help.”

I shook my head, “Forget it, we got the battery. Let’s just head to the van.”

* * *

We found a man named Clay who willing to let us hitch-hike to our van, as long as we sat in the back of his truck. He was headed to Nebraska, and drove a red Ford F150. The back was covered in hay bales. We sat on the bales of hay, and it poked our backs and made us itch everywhere. No spot on our skin was safe from the hay. We tried to talk to each other, to say anything, but none of us could hear each other over the wind. I mean, I’m surprised Clay didn’t get pulled over for speeding. The fucker had to have been going a hundred miles-per-hour or something. Hell, I’m surprised none of us got flung off the back of the truck and had our brains splattered on the road. At least it would’ve been a quick death, right?

When we got back to the van, the bleakness of our reality set in. We were completely broke, had barely any gas, and worst of all, we were completely out of anything to sedate us. Jack managed to scrounge about half-a-liter of vodka and enough weed to roll one tiny-ass joint, which wasn’t even enough to get us slightly stoned. You could taste the rolling paper more than the actual thing. We considered just splitting ways. But that was not a decision to be taken lightly. I, being the almighty leader, decided that we would get absolutely blasted in order to make our decision on whether or not to split ways.

Travis was very adamant about his opinion. He said that we should continue on until we physically couldn’t. I guess there’s some honor in trying, even in the face of absolute uncertainty. I have to hand it to Travis, he was a brave little guy, even if he was kind of annoying. Thomas, always being the smart one, said that we should split ways. I mean, how were we going to make the money back or even, get gas? We were flat-broke. Jack didn’t really care what happened. It seemed that Jack was always apathetic to everything life tossed at him. I suppose that if you don’t care, nothing can hurt you.

Jack started a little campfire and we sat around it in a circle, passing the joint around and taking sips of the vodka. “Alright,” Jack said, silencing everyone so he could speak. “Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Anniston?” Jack brought the bottle of vodka to his lips and took a sip. He then passed it to Thomas who was sitting to his left.

I took a hit of the joint, held it in, then exhaled. I pursed my lips and made little smoke rings. “Are we talking about young Angelina Jolie, or old-plastic-surgery-Angelina?”

“Old.” Said Jack. “They’re both old as shit.”

Travis wiped the vodka off his lips and uttered a single, nearly inaudible, “Damn.”

I stretched my arms out into the sky and said, “I’d have to go with Jennifer Anniston.”

Thomas nodded, “Yeah, same here.”

Travis passed the bottle of vodka to me. “Hey, Thomas.” He called out.

Thomas looked up from his book and at the group, searching for who called his name. “What is it?” He asked in a monotone voice.

“Tell us the DMT story again.” Travis said.

A couple months ago, Thomas told us the story of the first time he did DMT. He was bored at home and found, what he thought, was his roomate’s weed pen. It was not. He took one hit, and was instantly shot to the fucking moon.

Somehow, he soon found himself having sex with the neighbor-girl. During this act of primordial love, aliens appeared, which then said, “She’s faking the orgasm.” This singular sentence caused Thomas to rail the lady so hard, he dislocated his hip.

Thomas sighed and closed his book. “Really?”

“Yeah!” I said. “Tell us.”
“That story was a total lie.”

I froze. “Really?”

“Yeah dude. I’m a total virgin.”

Jack smiled and grabbed Thomas’s hand to shake it. “Me too!”
“Yeah, same.” Travis said.

I laughed. “Damn, we’re all virgins.”

Thomas turned me with an eyebrow raised, “Really? I could’ve swore you said otherwise.”

I shook my head, “I never said that. You know, sometimes your brain can make up memories based on things you learn. Pretty simple psychology.”

“Really?” Thomas asked.

“Yeah, dude. I thought you were smart, or something.” I took a final hit of the joint and passed it to Thomas.

The circle fell into an awkward silence. Everyone was staring at me with raised eyebrows and mouths agape. I stared back, not understanding why. It wasn’t until I switched the subject to something else that everyone stopped paying attention to me. “So… have we reached a decision?”

Travis suddenly lit up and nodded. He finished the bottle of vodka, licked his dry lips, and said, “Yeah, I got an idea.”

“What is it? Cuz’ I have none.” Jack said.

Travis tossed the bottle into the fire and said, “We keep driving until we run out of gas, and then see what happens. Sometimes, life has a way of working itself out.” You almost had to hand it to Travis, he was a wise kid. And that was enough to give us a little bit of hope.