Scum.
“Keep it together.”
My tires throw up gravel behind me, engine has been making that sound for sometime now, no money to get it checked out. I floor the goddamn pedal.
“You’re crackin’ up on me, you’re losing it.”
Crazy people don’t know their crazy, but me, I’m insane. I’ve got a brain never meant to survive, shoulda died in the womb, shoulda been peeled off a sole somewhere, left in a gutter. I’d go back in time and tell my ma to abort me, or I’d do it for her. Maybe if I just drive fast enough…
“Fuck you, fuck you, pull it the fuck together.”
I turn my music up so loud that my pupils start to shake, the world gets blurry and lines and traffic signs are drawn like Parkinson’s. The window falls and a hurricane tosses every damn receipt and piece of trash that I’ve ever put in that car. It sweeps through my ears and throws my mind about. Over my churning speakers I hear it jostle about loosely, flipping and flopping like a dead fish, wet against my skull.
“We’ll survive this, you know. This is temporary, you know.”
The fuck it is. It’s always been like this. It’s always been a mile-a-minute, neuroticies and insanities and you-piece-of-shits. Distractions have come and gone and all that’s left is scum.
“Slow down motherfucker, breathe.”
I stick my head out the car and let my nostrils flare and fill with cool summer storm. The world outside of here is perfect, serene, simple. If I had half of that… Even one fuckin’ percent of that calm… Shit, life would be a breeze. All that I’d want, I’d have, cause I’d be out of my way and I would just flow.
My head tilts back, my eyes close, and ahh, I breathe.
But like that, it passes. My lungs fill with exhaust, and I spit swamp water. This world may be great, but all I am is fucking sludge, puddling on it’s surface, occupying space with my nonevolving nothingness. Fucking goo, that’s me. Slime. Tar and blood and spooge. The type of shit that you step in and struggle to get off.
“Your friends, they fucking love you. Cut this shit out.”
No longer can I be convinced that people are bad; I’ve met the best and the worst and they’re all pretty great to me. Even you, you are a gorgeous person, I can see that. A sight to behold, a goddamn miracle. You are brilliant. And you deserve a world without the blackeyed uglies, without the perverts and liars and crazies fucking this up.
And I am the second-hand smoke reaching your baby’s mouth.
I am the poison seeping out of the red and black barrels.
I am the evil of a demon and the carelessness of a fool.
“Well, if you incist…”
My spitting, spewing beat-up wagon tears the night in two. Eighty, ninety, one hundred, my sweat-drenched palms let go their death grip on the steering wheel. My tires go bald and wear thin and throw their rubber about the street. My front bumper connects and chomps at the guardrail, splintering and bending it, ripping it to shreds with it’s canines.
And right before my pretty little lady wraps itself neatly around the tree, I’ll wonder if I was really all that bad.
