Showdown on I-5 by T. S. Hand

A little monster lives in me at all times. It has but one desire, one plan for my future. This demon wants me dead. Period. It has many ways of convincing me to take my own life, or making my life unfit to live anyway. You might have it in you, too. Maybe you call it something different. I call it The Dread.

It’s been louder and more active since my blow-out fight with my girlfriend. All day I’ve been running from The Dread and barely escaping; at least, I thought I had barely escaped. I woke up on the guys’ couch this morning in the aftermath of a party with a raging hard-on. I think my hair-raising caffeine intake is playing games with my hormones. I’ve been uncommonly jittery, capricious, moody and horny for the last few days. I’ve been over-spicing my food in hopes of singeing some component inside me that’s making me radiate like a light bulb about to exhaust itself. I feel flayed and raw, exposed to everything and dangerously absorbent. My impulses all tell me to fuck, flee, drug, force-feed these feelings out of me, this vulnerability. I feel like a child covered in smallpox, a cow succumbing to madness, confused, falling, prostrate.

But, like I said, I woke up with a hard-on and immediately everything I wanted was beyond reach…just one of those days: the girlfriend’s thousands of miles away and every fucktastic tart who’s easy is too far away, bitter, or asleep. Thus began the abusive relationship betwixt two of my most-used appendages. There had been a rash of such violence recently, though it was no longer stemming the tide of nervous energy. I thought of my girlfriend while I came, because at least this made me feel human, well-adjusted.

Then the roommates joined the world of the wakeful and rested. Our chatting made me feel like a bad friend; I just couldn’t focus. Their sentences would run up on me and knock me uncharacteristically speechless. I only knew it was my turn to speak by their facial expressions, which began to impart impatience and frustration as the conversations grew increasingly one-sided. My default response when I’m not listening or when I don’t know what to say is to just laugh and say, “No way,” although there were at least three instances in as many minutes when I did this and it was utterly uncalled for and out of context. Whoops. I scrunched up my face in concentration trying to understand them and add something to the sewing circle, but then I would notice a fly, or a stray hair, or a flickering shadow. My head felt like a vacuum cleaner with no bag attached, an Acme peanut canister housing spring-loaded cloth snakes.

I started frantically cleaning every surface in sight. I broke off conversations mid-sentence to sash to another room and collect bottlecaps, beers, matchbooks. I swept the floor with such fervor that no roommate in his right mind would dare interject. But soon the house sparkled dismally, and The Dread occupied every doorjamb, reminding me that I ain’t shit and these “friends” probably don’t even want me here, miserable fuck that I am. I thought maybe “productivity,” yes, that would help comfort me. Nothing quite like standing back from a glistening creation and saying, “I made this!” so I cooked everyone breakfast, too, in hopes that spattering grease and smoking toast would at least keep The Dread out of the four walls of the kitchen. This didn’t afford me much solace, however, because The Dread began to use its well-hewn techniques of self-pity, angst and acute ADD to have me on the verge of bloodletting or self-decapitation.

I plopped onto the couch and stared catatonically at the Duke game with my roommate and his un-amused girlfriend. “It’s beautiful outside, you know,” she kept repeating at her comatose flesh-pile of a boyfriend. The third time she barked this I took notice and peaked behind our khaki curtains. It was beautiful outside, pristine even.

By the time the notion bounced from my frontal lobe to my mouth, it had become a certainty: I would push up my plans to leave town in a week for home, and instead drive today. Work could be excused, and I had the nine-hour drive to think about the excuse on the way.

If I left quickly enough, The Dread couldn’t come, though it would probably just go to the airport and meet me in
L.A. But, hell, at least that’s nine hours with no Dread in sight. Within ten minutes I had merged onto the freeway, offered no explanation to my roommates and forgot four out of five essentials of travel, though I had somehow remembered the towel.

There was heavy traffic on the way out of town and it made me uncomfortable, not because I dislike driving, but because I could sense The Dread gaining on me. Apparently it did not jump on a plane to meet me in
L.A., but instead hang-glided over the freeway and onto the roof of a moving van. It was now probably biding its time until the United Van Lines semi-truck got close enough to me to where The Dread could do a somersault through my sunroom and into the passenger seat with me. Or it would probably do some sort of ninja move into the backseat and stretch wire cable across my Adam’s apple. I grabbed a stick of my ubiquitous chewing-gum, and shut the sunroof, unwrapping a toothpick for good measure. The summer air quickly grew fetid inside my car and I thought of The Dread even more. Once I got out of the city’s traffic and no vans or semis were encroaching upon me, I opened up the sunroof and windows once again.

—————————————

Two hours have passed. I’ve listened to the only two albums in my car and now I’m kicking myself for not owning an iPod. I’ve stopped outside of
Stockton for some gas, I think. I probably don’t need to stop here but it’s a little late for heroics or changes of heart at this point. I know The Dread’s here somewhere, I’m just not sure where. It just seems fitting to dispatch The Dread in a place that sells tamales, hot showers, and under-the-counter porno.

Hours of feeling hunted have made me defiant and bold. I’m being proactive and brave choosing this place as our O.K. Corral. It’s gutsy on my part because there are few witnesses in case anything goes wrong, no one to save me. I pump some gas and sniff out The Dread. But, I don’t notice it anymore. Perhaps it gave up, recognized an uphill battle, a dug in enemy? Perhaps this truck stop will remain a peaceful place after all.

I mosey on into the shop and head towards the bathroom. While I’m contemplating the thirty-two synonyms for pissing, a lighting-hot cattleprod jolts me from out of nowhere, my wrists are buckled with opaque snap-ties and a ball gag is shoved into my mouth and secured with black leather straps.

The short chain linking my feet manages to scrape and slither its way across the linoleum as The Dread pushes me out of the bathroom and towards the poor, hapless Hindi attendant at the counter. She’s literally the only person here besides me, the only person who could have warned me that The Dread was biding its time in that bathroom. She looks at my horrific, brutalized countenance and remains stony-faced and impassive. Apparently, she couldn’t give a shit less about what’s going to happen.

The Dread inches me towards the counter and un-straps the ball-gag. She looks at me, both of us look like we’re pleading for something. I finally ask, “Can I get the change on pump six, please?” She says sure, but she knows I’m stalling. I’ve already left a corona of condensation around my handprint on the counter. The Dread knows I’m stalling; it inflicts quick stomach cramps and a sinus headache, with the promise of more to come if its wishes are unfulfilled. I wish a meteor would blot out the one square foot of Earth I currently occupy.

As I’m waiting either for a meteor or The Dread to give up, both futile wishes, I’ve already racked up $15 in extemporaneous garbage I’ll never eat or need on this roadtrip. The clerk keeps asking, “Anything else?” because it’s her job but I want her to shut up and curse me for bringing her into this, curse me for choosing that dusty shop of all the I-5 haunts.

I quickly flash through my head what her dark lips would look like pursed in anger and desperation, telling me, “You shouldn’t have come here. Just get the fuck out. Get in your car, and don’t stop until you’re in a safe place.” Does she have some sort of foreign accent when she gets emotional? I’ll never find out, because she just keeps asking, “Anything else?” and I want to maim her for her foolishness. I want her to feel one iota of the misery I’m feeling now. Then she wouldn’t ask me anything; she’d just come around from behind the counter and give me a hug, coo in my ear, or scratch my head fondly.

But she does keep asking, and eventually I fold: “One pack of Marlboro Reds, please.”