13 | Bluebird
Without drugs in my system to keep me down, my adrenaline kept me going until I realized we were flying through the woods with no idea where we were headed. Was the bear behind us? Who knew? When my knees buckled, I had no choice …
Chapters
12 | Run
Never thought I would make it out of that situation, but eventually, I did. Gonna need to go fix that part on my truck soon, I said.Give me your keys, CA Man replied You do realize that to work on a vehicle, I need the …
11 | Hen Heckler
Shasta Lake’s teal ripples melted into the shoreline and I tried to reach out to touch them, only to find my right hand was full of tiny blue mountains. I giggled. I guzzled what was left in the can and held it up in front …
10 | Chute
We reentered Bear Mountain Pizza under its awful awning. My eyes darted from corner to corner for the massive, bearded man we seemed eternally attached to. Ben Then and Ben Now eyed me from the wall. CA Man was nowhere to be found. We could …
9 | Jetpack
We gathered on the lawn behind Bear Mountain Pizza. By then, the clouds were spinning with my mind. The ground felt like it was up and the sky was down. Gravity was backwards. I probably did too many substances, but I didn’t care. Ben was …
8 | Ben’s Birthday
A very confused and heartbroken trucker grew smaller next to a lump in the middle of the road behind us. We were still going the wrong direction, but for now all that mattered was getting away from the scene of the crime. Roy was roadkill …
7 | SMITH
Before sunrise the next morning, I found myself speeding away from Camp 9. Roy was riding shotgun and every substance I’d ingested the night before still coursed through my veins with fervent vengeance. What the fuck did we just do? The sun began to warm …
6 | High Roy
Never seen anything like that before, I said, watching the ranger chide 1.0 in the distance. Gonna stare at him all day? asked CA Man, sneaking up behind us. Give me a heart attack, why don’t you? I jumped. You scare too easily. Up ahead …
5 | The Rod
No, no, no, no, I cried, cranking the engine. It turned over, but a heinous knocking sound pounded from inside the hood like a mad man trying to get out of his cage. What do we do now? We can’t stay with this guy. We …
4 | Escape
CA Man hadn’t said a word since we left Kramer Junction, an intersection so significantly in the middle of nowhere that its original three roadside stands and two gas stations had bloomed into a town, if you could call it that. By the time he’d …