Part One

Carney.

I was 20, spending the winter in depths of absolute hell, otherwise known as the east coast, near the lake of fire, staying with my mom, doing dishes at a shitty little restaurant for minimum wage and life was getting boring and difficult. I met a cute girl there and got hooked on eggs benedict by one of the cooks so it wasn’t a total loss I guess. As cute as the girl was, this was the fiery pit of absolute damn nation so she had more than a few flaws you could say. The family I was staying with never really approved of my love of girls, not that I cared, it just made things difficult sometimes when you wanted to get some alone time. Nothing ever lasts around there though, so when the weather changed, our little fling was over before it even started. Not before a few moments of acting like teenagers at friends’ houses or in cars or in the back room of the shitty restaurant. Then because I skipped so many days of work to play with her, I lost the shitty job too, such as life. It wasn’t like I was planning on staying there forever so I didn’t mourn the loss of either very much. I wasn’t even sure why her and I stopped talking to each other but I figured it was for the best.

When the weather broke and spring finally appeared in the most Northern reaches of hell, I started looking for ways to get out. Spending time with my mom was nice, the lake of fire was nice but really I was longing for the life I had left behind and decided I had to get back there somehow. For what it was worth there, having spent enough time away I forgot about all the things that irritated me about living there too. At the time I remember saying that even the darkest reaches of hell would be better than staying where I was.

After spending a few days sitting in a library that only carried Stephen King books, using a computer that was ten years out of date, I found a new job at a shitty little hotel, then emailed a few friends back in the real world and tried to line things up for my return. They told me that nothing had really changed, which didn’t really shock me but they told me that they missed me, which did sort of shock me.

You never know what you will come across in the rooms of cheap, shitty hotels, I could never get over how people would just fuck anywhere, fuck anything and use anything in the process, I liked debauchery as much or maybe even more than the next girl but people never fail to amaze me. Over the years I had seen more porn than anyone should ever have to see and even the poop videos or the roughest bondage films or fisting videos never had anything on these freaks. Flannel seemed to the color of choice for everyone, even the toothless whores that worked there in various capacities wore flannel and thought it to be the highest of fashion.

I was just making enough money to get home I told myself, so I made the best of it. When I was driving to work one morning, I was lighting a joint and trying to get myself high enough to want to go and deal with such a humiliating job and I went to pass a logging truck, following the car in front of me and I looked up in time to see that I wasn’t going to make it past because another truck was coming right at me. This truck was carrying vague looking crates, probably drugs or guns. In places like that those truck drivers were notoriously fearless and out for blood, any blood and all blood. The only choice I had was to spin out furiously in the parking lot of the local gas station/store/house/farm. This was one of the only stores in this part of hell and it closed when the sun went down. All the older souls were all put into one area so they couldn’t destroy anyone when they were driving or worry about young punks ruining this or that. I got to sleep there since I was just visiting and I had to get out of there in the morning, I had to stay on my guard all the time when I was there. They say that if the elder souls catch wind of us young punks they swarm and feast on the vitality, the charisma and life force of creatures they can catch so that they can feel something again, not feel all the pains that come with old age or maybe they somehow get to live longer, who knows. One way or another, they smell blood, they start lecturing and criticizing and judging, then they go in for the kill. So here I was in the parking lot of this gas station that tilted slightly to the right, in a wood paneled station wagon, smoking a joint, blasting heavy metal, trying to get my racing heart under control.

All these creatures came stumbling out of the store clutching coffees or lighting up cigarettes, all anxious to see what was going on since nothing ever happened there, ever. They sniffed the air in unison and I know it was not the joint they were sniffing, that smell was just another reason for these broken down pathetic fucks to come at me. The lectures were already starting, I could see their lips moving and I knew what they were saying without having to hear them, I could hear the same tired old clichés over the sound of the car and over the sound of the metal band coming from the speakers which was another thing that whipped the elderly into a frenzy and drove them crazy. I had to hope that since all kids like me look the same to these zombie like messes that I could go in there again in a few days and they wouldn’t remember me at all. Even if they were all still talking about that crazy punk that almost killed them all, could have hit the gas pumps and a few of them would swear that I was only an inch from them or their broken down trucks so that they could bitch louder than their friends about the effect drugs have on the youth of today, how the world is full of nothing but corruption and pain. Nothing ever changes is what they would say and that they will never understand.

The only thing I heard as I peeled out of the driveway, spraying the geezers with rocks, mud and debris is one of the ladies saying that she could see where I got my attitude problem from so I laughed and flicked the last of my joint at her. You never knew what might happen in when you hung out at these deep infernos of the abyss and that was a fun way to start the day, it made it a fun place to go for vacation.

I got to my shitty job with the toothless hookers and cleaned a few rooms, hung out and spent my tips on lunch and a few drinks in the shitty bar attached to the shitty hotel. So I could wait until it got dark I went and sat by the river, smoked a joint and then went to the library. I curled up in a corner with The Stand and settled in with the only Stephen King book I could stand reading. I had to kill some time one way or another and this seemed like the best way to do it.

When I woke up it was dark out, and there was a guy sitting across from me and I could tell he was watching me more than reading the book he had in front of him. He looked clean and nice enough to me but there was a look in his eyes that led me to believe that he wouldn’t really be able to read more words in the book than at or the, he had that sloping forehead that seems like there was either some inbreeding or somewhere in his family tree a few levels of evolution might not have appeared in a timely manner or at all. When you are vacationing in hell, you take chances and try not to be picky though so I opened with “Can I help you?”  So he knew that I was not an easy target or someone to be messed with.

Guys like this though rarely have worthwhile answers and this guy’s response was typically dumb, he laughed, said “hey” laughed again and said, “You were sleeping”. I got up, stretched and said, “Yeah, you’re a quick one huh”. Like any dumb puppy, he followed as I started to walk away so I asked him again if I could help him.

We got outside and he told me his name was Dale or some other generic redneck, nobody name. Then he went off telling me all about himself, trying to be charming or something was my guess. Then he asked if I wanted to smoke a joint so I smiled and decided to play along and we walked by the river, it turned out he had pretty decent smoke too. He kept going on and on about himself and how great he was and I kept tuning him out and focusing on the scenery for what it was worth. They say that if you wait by the river long enough you will always see the bodies of you enemies float by, but around here, in the spring when everything starts to thaw, this saying is a daily fact of life. Most girls fall for stupid shit like this so Dale thought he was being really smooth when I would nod and smile at some crap he said. Really though I was busy picturing his face on all the bodies floating past. By the time we got back to my car, he seemed quite pleased with himself so I gave him a good hard look, realized he wasn’t too bad looking so I sat on the hood my wood paneled station wagon like I was a supermodel sitting trying to sell a super sports car. To this goober, I was something from another planet and this was his lucky day, so I decided to play it up. I asked him what he does for work, he said he had already told me so I told him to tell me more about it and it turned out that he was waiting to go spend the summer traveling around with the carnival, running rides and games, breaking things down and setting them up.

It was an interesting idea, travel, money, a big dumb goon to protect me if I had issues and all the fried dough and corn dogs I could eat. Most importantly though, it was my ticket out of this scenic level of the most horrible of places. After he finished telling me about how great it is being a carney, he finally asked me if I would be interested in coming along and giving it a shot, just like I knew he would, my blue eyes make everyone predictable, they open all kinds of doors for me and I know how to use them like the weapons that they are.

When I got up off the car, I narrowed my blue eyes, looked him up and down, gave him a smirk that anyone with more brains would have recognized for what it was and told him to meet me back in the same spot tomorrow and I would think about his offer. Then I got in the car and I left, I knew he would be there and I also knew that I didn’t have to work for another three days so would not and I was going to make him wait. He looked ridiculous standing there in the parking lot as I left, he didn’t have any idea what to think but I did.

The drive home was uneventful and long, the store where I almost crashed that morning was already closed and there were very few cars on the road with me. In this part of hell, at this time of night, I assumed that anyone else I encountered was drunk and joyriding, out looking for trouble. By this point in the night I had enough of a buzz to enjoy the challenge and I laughed that I was out driving them all in a woodchuck station wagon.

For my days off, I wandered around on the beach with a flask and a notebook with my headphones on writing and smoking joints and just enjoying nature for what it was worth, this was why I came here in the first place. I didn’t bother driving anywhere because it was an hour and a half to get anywhere and the only place to go was the part of town where I worked and where I met Dale, there was also the issue of avoiding the cute girl from the restaurant. So when she called me on my last day off and asked who the ape asking around about me was, I was drunk enough to play stupid and mean it. She wasn’t buying it though and I found out that Dale wasn’t the only one watching me because she said it was the same ape that I was getting friendly with the other day. All I could do was laugh and hang up, I knew Dale was right where I wanted him and I knew that I was really close to getting the hell out of dodge. It was pretty creepy that he was trying so hard to find me but at least it was easy to make bodies disappear if it was needed but I didn’t like thinking like that.

The next morning I managed to get myself into the car and to work with no other issues than a splitting headache and an upset tummy. But when I got there, Dale was waiting. He even had flowers, when I pulled up his Neanderthal looking face lit up. I wasn’t sure if I was in any state to pull off what I was going to attempt to pull off but I knew I had to try.

I took the flowers, started going on and on about car troubles and how sorry I was and babbling about how I would forget my head if I didn’t attach it and how I needed to get his number right now before I forgot again and put him through so much trouble of stalking me and being a creep. Usually I can put on a good show but he caught me off guard and I felt like shit to begin with so I might have over played my act a bit. Since I knew we had other observers, I decided to make it good for the both of them and I gave him a big hug and kiss on the cheek in appreciation for the flowers. This was enough to make Dale’s stupid little tail wag and he told me he would wait until I got done work so we could hang out again. I put on the best smile that I could manage and said “great”.

The best part of cleaning hotel rooms is that there are lots of convenient places to throw up and to lie down and think. Needless to say I kept the puppy waiting for a lot longer than I should have, everything was moving in slow motion. It occurred to me that I must have been easy to find around here since I stick out like a sore thumb anywhere I go, I don’t own any flannel and my jeans are always clean, I buy perfume so I don’t smell like sulfur and filth like everyone else. It was what had attracted the cute girl too and I cursed myself for not staying alone, wandering the beach like I usually did. None of this would have happened if I would just keep reminding myself that people are nothing but drama, headaches and trouble instead of thinking that maybe this time will be different every single time I try to make friends or venture out in the world. It’s just easier but sometimes I forget, then situations like this happen.

Dale was waiting next to his big boat of a car when I got done work. I told him I would buy him a beer and we went and sat down in the bar together. Sometimes all that will fix a hangover is getting to the same point as fast as possible and I knew I would need all the help I could get with my performance. While I waited for the cute girl to come in, because I knew she would, I let him keep trying to impress me in his dumb little inbred ramblings, it was cute but it was cute like, it’s cute when a dog humps someone’s leg. When it’s your leg that dog is humping though it becomes sort of repulsive and disturbing. A simple statement like, “so, that’s quite a big car” gets responded with shit like, “you know what they say about guys with big cars right?” classic, brilliant, what wit, what class. I was pretty proud of myself for not puking on him right then and there. Instead I ordered another round and in a voice loud enough for the cute girl to hear I told him that I thought about this plan he had to have me run away with him and decided it seemed like a good idea, that I was excited and that I was glad I met him. Watching her face get dark and gloomy was very satisfying. It was the last time I saw or heard from her.

He exploded with joy and told me that we would leave in two days and that we would have to stop along the way to get his friend. He wanted to follow me to where I was staying, I said “great” and he seemed surprised that I survived in the middle of nowhere like I did, like all of this wasn’t the middle of nowhere. Apparently he thought of himself as a wise, charming world traveler and he tried to play the same smooth talking idiot routine on my mom so she would feel safe letting me go with him or something, I don’t really know what he was trying to prove but she and I spent a lot of time rolling our eyes at each other as he mindlessly babbled and acted the ape that the cute girl had aptly described him as.

Two days later, as planned, Dale showed up on my doorstep again with the backseat of his big boat of a car filled with all his junk and his stupid grin pasted on his face. I remember wondering to myself as I opened the door if this fool had ever gotten laid in his pathetic life, or at least done it with a real live human girl before. As much as I realized that I was a unique and strange creature in these parts, he was just a little too pathetic and excited and clumsy and proud of himself for something he thought he might have accomplished.

After a teary farewell and my mom asking for the hundred millionth time if I was sure I wanted to do this, we hit the road. I was so thankful to be on my way and finally getting back to people I understand and people I can relate to. I spent some time going through his CD collection on the way and all I saw was country music, I groaned and asked “country music huh?” trying not to let my opinions on the matter show either way and then he started telling me about how his biggest dream is to be a county singer, I said “great”. This was when I started to have some real fears about what I might have gotten myself into. Not that I judge people by their tastes in music but in a lot of ways, it’s hard not to, especially when they not only like shitty music but someday want to become famous by doing that shitty music for a living. To say that he was a little bit country and I was a little bit rock and roll would be an understatement, we were both a whole lot of both things and when we stopped for a bathroom break and I managed not to hit him when he tried to follow me into the ladies room, or just hit him and take his car.

I asked him to sing me something he had written and I told him to treat it like his big audition and give me the best he had. He went into full on, serenading romeo mode and started what took me a while to figure out was a song. The best he had was awful, even for a country song. Not only was it a very literal take on the joke about all country songs being around guns, god, cars and women who left but his guitar was badly out of tune and so was his voice. For some reason while singing, he sounded like he was right in the middle of going through puberty again, or maybe for the first time. When we got back in the car, I insisted on switching to my music collection and I didn’t really care that he hated everything I played.

After two more hours of driving, chain smoking and big empty silences I tried to keep my focus out the window and on how happy I was to be on my way back to the real world, for what it was worth. I was thankful for that and the fact that he had brought a fat bag of that killer weed with him. He was keeping me high enough to take the edge off and make me stop thinking of jumping out of the moving vehicle as an option to get myself out of this and away from him.

We picked up his stupid friend about an hour away from where I was trying to get to and it was more than enough time to realize I had to get out of this somehow and fast, there was no way I could go and travel and work with these idiots and be a carney. If these were the cream of the crop, the ones who got asked to come back and work for this company every year I was terrified to find out what other sorts of creatures this job might attract.

We picked his friend up at his mom’s house, of course. He was a skinny, nerdy Asian kid with no chin. All he had was a backpack that was only slightly bigger than the lenses of the glasses he was wearing. Otherwise it seemed like he and Dale had been carneys together and that was how they had met.

The more Dale and his friend talked to each other the more jumping out of the car started to sound appealing. At first I thought I was being rescued from living out a life on the eastern rim of nowhere and then I found that I had really been kidnaped and taken to a worse hell that was going 50 mph down the highway to a new low that I now, couldn’t even imagine.

Suddenly the thought hit me. I think they were talking about remote control cars or some stupid boy crap, maybe it was dungeons and dragons, I don’t know, it all sounded like the teacher in the Peanuts cartoon to me. Anyway I came up with a story that I had to stop and see someone on our way. I told them that I had talked to her before I left and that she wanted to see me if we had a chance before I went and started my big adventure. I filled in the lie with some crap about it being about time to stop for something to eat anyway.

My twin sister had no idea I was coming, I wasn’t even sure I could find her shitty trailer park but I knew it was my only chance. We drove past the porn store where some of my friends worked but I had been trapped off surfing on the ring of fire for a long while and didn’t recognize any of the cars parked in the lot, so we kept going, if I had saw one someone I recognized I would have jumped out right then and there.

Lucky for me, I found my way to the where she lived and after three loops around the park I found the mini-van I had given her before I went on my trip to the other side sitting in the driveway. It was even luckier for me that her kids and drunken loser of a husband were sleeping when I tapped on the kitchen window.

She came to the door and in the span of a twenty second hug; I explained the situation, asked for help and told her she had to save me. As surprised as she was to see me she didn’t skip a beat and went along with my plan.

The boys came in like the little lost puppies that they are. The introduced themselves and Dale’s face turned red and then purple; I knew what he was thinking. Not that her and I looked much alike anymore but Dale was having fantasies about all three of us that played across his eyeballs like a movie, so her and I escaped to the kitchen and I filled her in on the whole story, told her I just needed a few days but under no circumstances should I be allowed to leave with these fools. Since all she did was hang out with her bratty kids and her loser husband, I think she was happy I could be there and provide some relief from the monotony.

She started having kids almost as soon as she started getting laid. Right after the first seed took hold, the donor/husband/tool ended up in jail for a few months and then when he got out, they promptly got married and made two more kids in rapid succession. All of this breeding took its toll on her and besides putting on double what I weighed and she should have weighed she also tried really hard to look like a proper soccer mom/wife/homemaker. She had long stringy, greasy hair and mine was always short and spikey. We both had the stunning blue eyes that stood out even on her chubby, sad looking face.

She started some mindless conversation with the boys in an attempt to get to know them but every time they tried to answer her she would interrupt them and change the subject. I knew what she was doing, I knew the game and I couldn’t keep from laughing. Since she was kind of a selfish bitch anyway she could really play off those wonderful personality traits when she wanted to. When she asked if the boys were hungry they started listing all the stuff they were in the mood for and she started looking through the cabinets in the kitchen.

While we were holding a louder than needed conversation about how she was planning on leaving her husband soon and she could really use some help around the house and with the kids, she would throw out random seeming thoughts like how we would probably want something that could be eaten easily in the car, both the boys agreed that something like that would be perfect.

Dale said that we should be going soon anyway and when I told him that I had changed my mind, that I was worried about my sister and that I should really stick around for her. He started telling me again how I could make all kinds of money and that he would miss me. In the background I could hear my sister announce that she found the perfect road snacks, and Dale took that to mean that she didn’t know I was staying so he pulled the I-think-I am-falling-in-love-with-you card thinking that I was the dumbass kind of girl to fall for that.

He even managed a few tears as he was whining and trying to convince me to go with him. His friend just sat in the corner like the goober that he was until my sister came out with gram crackers and peanut butter for them which he jumped up to dig into. My dear sister, like the presumptions mommy type that she had become started pretending to be all concerned for them and that they should get on the road before it got too much later and now that they had a snack, they should be about ready to go. She actually gave Dale a hug while she bustled them out the door with their peanut butter and crackers, it was the only time those pathetic puppy dog eyes stopped pleading at me.

The door shut behind them and I watched the car pull down the street before I took a big sigh and realized that then nightmare was finally over and I had made it. I turned to my sister and we both smiled and laughed. I told her I would only need a few days to figure out other arrangements but she said that I was welcome to stay on her screened in porch for as long as I needed because she really was going to get rid of the drunken douche of a husband because she was convinced that he was secretly gay. Like any good sister, my first thought was yeah, if I spent that much time with you I would want something completely opposite too. By escaping one carnival I stuck myself with another and I stayed on that porch for way longer than I should have. I don’t really like kids and hers seemed slow or touched in the head somehow so I couldn’t find any common ground with them. If you stuck them in front of video games they would sit quietly for hours so that made “helping out” really easy to do.

I never saw those guys again or heard from the cute girl again even though I look for them any time I go to the carnival I don’t really know what I am looking for. At this point I wouldn’t even know what they look like; the memory just puts me on edge. Just because I won’t recognize them, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t recognize me. For all I know Dale might be a country singer by now, since there are no standards for that sort of shit. I never looked back and I never went on another trip to the center of evil and pain.

Moving in with my sister on her porch, after my long stint in hell with my mom taught me that if I spend enough time with anyone in my family, anywhere can feel like hell. I was just happy to be home with my friends as I turned 21 and this was when all the fun really began. Once the husband was removed from the shitty trailer we had a lot of fun. Sometimes I forgot that her kids were even there except for when I was drunk or the days where I had been up all night for one reason or another and they started running around and screaming for no reason at six in the morning. She convinced her kids that the smell of my pot smoke was special plants and that I was gardening, which wasn’t really a lie and it covered me with the one habit that would cause problems. Since all we really did was drink and hang out, the shitty trailer got shittier and shittier. There were too many guys in bands that I brought around to keep her amused and distracted. At least no more kids came from all her slutty actions at least while I was there, with any of my friends.

It was here, during this time period that I got a job at that porn store that I drove though on my way back into town. I got myself a car and then I blew the engine in it an hour after buying it, someone stole all my CD’s out of the mini-van I was stuck driving again, and then one of my oldest friends asked me to move in with him because he got busted with a bowl and some weed and couldn’t afford to pay his rent. But this, this is another story for another day. The adventure had only just begun.

2/3/2012 4:22 AM