Runaway Peregrination
Song of a Teenage Alcoholic
Black sky, will I die, or will I live to tell? …. If I should fall asleep tonight, will I awake in Hell? Something dark escorts me now, I know it smells my fear…. whilst I travel with Beelzebub, I know my fate is near.
Hideousness in motion, this …man… his cobra-like body rising upward from the bucket seat balancing on its coiled tail. His long torso wavering about enraptured by the roar and momentum of the huge Hemi engine in this old 56 Ford truck as we blaze on down the dark Interstate. I'm seated next to him, with my heart in a state of perpetual arrhythmia, trembling in tune to the hum of the beefy tires reeling down the highway. If not for the caustic reek of burning oil, I could not be sure that I am breathing still.
I am tormented by an unrelenting sound…I don’t know if its the shrill din of the metal interior of the cab or if I'm somewhere flat lining. I suspect I've already begun experiencing my death.
He has a human name…but it's unfitting, so I've named him Beelzebub in secret in my head. He is oozing depravity and foulness.
Though he terrifies me, I cannot take my eyes off of him. I am fascinated by his profile silhouetted against the starry, black pearl sky whooshing by outside of Dallas. His long, stringy blonde hair faintly illuminated by the glow of the dashboard, waltzes on the night wind that tumults through the open windows. It whips upward and backward and then suddenly forward as if being sucked from the dark funneled view before us. It implies the form of beastlike horns before my struggling eyes.
The rhythmic, piston-like, lift and fall of his long, emaciated, forearm and pivoting hand is a mesmerizing sight. I see bones but I'm not sure I'm seeing skin.
While the left hand remains high on the steering wheel with elbow solidly positioned in the air, the fingers on the right hand seem to pluck and toss the never-ending guttural words from his mouth, as if they lodge when they come in clumps to the outlet.
I watch in awe as Beelzebub's excitement grows… his chin remains in place while the top of his head repeatedly drops back from the hinge at the back of his giant grin and then shoots forward, thrusting out in loud southern locution, the hints and clues to my impending fate.
Under his large beak-like nose, protrudes a set of oversized front teeth that chomp at the space in front of his face with the taunting laughter that is tossed back and forth over me, between him and his fat Cajun friend wedged in on the opposite side of me.
The Cajun is clearly thrilled by the anticipation of his participation in my demise. He is so happy that he can barely contain his short, three-hundred-pound self. Prior to our departure from Austin, we stood waiting forever for him to load his gigantic body into the passenger seat of the truck. His head bobbles and whips about like he has a spring for a neck, he sweats profusely, and he belts out everything he has to say like a Southern Baptist preacher. Every frenzied few sentences are followed by, "boy she sure picked a pair to break her in!"
During all of the amusement, there seems to be very little concern with driving, in fact I realize now that this fierce machine is driving itself and Beelzebub is simply hanging on.
I am not afraid of the fat Cajun.
Though he is massive, he is fragile, for he is a hemophiliac. A bump to him means a bruise, a bruise to him means he bleeds pools into that area of his body. This brings him consistent pain and so he is marinated in Opiates at all times. They are prescribed to him in pills by several different doctors on both sides of several county lines who are somehow unaware of one another. He crushes the pills and mixes them into a liquid in a syringe and shoots them into his veins. After which he promptly pukes. The puking is the meter-point that he must reach for gratification. No puke, no satisfaction.
