Drug Trip

He wasn’t supposed to be here. And not in the good, wedding-crasher kind of not supposed to be here way, either. Like - the universe, capital U Universe, or god or God or even just Instinct had a very specific plan for him, and it most certainly did not include him being here. He knew that because his body was screaming at him. His body said “TURN AROUND!” but his legs wouldn’t listen. Okay, wait. Maybe it was his mind screaming that, then. His legs were part of his body. But anyways - not good. Legs unresponsive, aside from one of the most aggressive tremors he’d ever witnessed. It would’ve almost been fun to watch the way his knee was trembling, if it weren’t such dire circumstances. Like he had to give a speech in front of class with no pants on and he’d forgotten all his words and someone was live-streaming the event while the world mocked him and also someone had a gun to his head saying “say the speech exactly as we discussed or I’m going to cancel your existence,” type of tremble. But there was no time to appreciate the involuntary leaps his knee was taking. There was just: panic. “James,” the voice in his head said, “not good.”

Driving in silence. Alicia never drove in silence. She would rather listen to classical music than her own thoughts. Every time she drove a car, she simply raced to get home to her Distractions - screens small and big, other people and their needs/desires/complaints/jokes, chores, etc - before the Thoughts took control and dominated the day. That was the point of life, right? Stay so distracted you don’t realize that you need to be distracted to not feel bad? Stay so distracted that you don’t have to find a purpose, you just have to finish your little chores until you get tired and you die for the night and then wake up to a new day of distractions? Who cares. Drive faster, get to the Distractions.

James felt his body lurch. Involuntary movement, again, but this time for his whole body. He was against a wall now. Then the floor. Oh - look at that. Arms are working again. He pushed himself up and rose to his feet, steadying his rebel body against the wall of the u-Haul. Well, we’re really in this now, he thought. We’re moving. He always said “we” when talking to himself. Made him feel less alone. He needed that now. Alone. In the back of u-Haul that didn’t belong to him that contained a lot of items that only scary people would possess. So, presumably, a u-Haul that belonged to a scary person. That’s where he stood, grabbing--really more pressing with his palms against the wall and the ceiling--onto whatever he could to keep from falling again.

Still silence on the radio. Radio silence. Oh! That must be where the saying comes from. Maybe. Who cares? The funny thing was she didn’t feel as sad right now as she was used to feeling. Normally she was a slow sad. Depressed, bored, aimless. What’s the point of life? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll eat something good today. But now she knew the point of life. Survive. And she wouldn’t have time to process this reality unless she made it out of this situation alive and finally took a breath without melting down, but there was something twistedly beautiful about that. Maybe all beauty is twisted...no. Bad thought. There is good that is pure. There had to be. Now drive this truck like it’s not your first time driving something this big.

Gone? Gone. No way. Did the Worst Thing really just happen? Why do bad things happen to good pe--okay. So maybe he wasn’t a good person? But what about determinism? Do any of us have any control over what we’re doing? No. Therefore--ergo, as people who philosophize (philosophers) would probably say--ergo, he wasn’t a bad person, so bad things shouldn’t happen. Oh, wait. Determinism. That’s why this happened. The “this” in “this happened” being his Uhaul full of cocaine being stolen. It was a lot of cocaine. Joseph never considered himself a “kingpin”, the term seemed so pretentious, so conceited. But, in his mind of minds, he did check all the kingpin boxes. He was not a small fry. He was feared. If only the people who feared him knew how much he feared himself...well--who knows. Maybe they were all faking it. He didn’t like killing people, but he did it, and he did it in the bad way. Not that there’s a good way of killing people, outside of euthanasia maybe(?), but he definitely killed people in bad ways. But that was just part of the whole leadership thing. It’s gotta be fear or love, and he knew nobody loved a drug lord. Drug lord. Now there’s a pretentious term. He was more of just a Guy Who Sold Drugs and Killed People who happened to also be in charge of a lot of people and decisions. A drug CEO. With a lot of blood on his hands. Metaphorically. Also literally, now, as he punched a hole in his wall, angry about the Uhaul. Time to get in a vehicle with guns and men and do the sort of things guys like him did.

-

How long was this going to last? Geeze. He’d been in the uHaul for so long, now seated in the sturdiest spot he could find, he didn’t even know how to feel. This wasn’t like a movie anymore. Movies only show the highlights, the action moments. Here he was, in the back of a Scary Person’s vehicle with immeasurable amounts of cocaine, fearing for his life. And, honestly? It was getting lowkey boring. Like, the bouncing and recovering was done. The tremor was done. He could kind of see now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he was just like...waiting to see if he was going to get killed? It felt weird, he had to laugh. Involuntary. The best kind of laugh. What a scene! He was facing imminent danger and he wished he had his phone, not even to call for help but just to pass the time! Hmm, kind of sad. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if this Scary Guy offed him. Damn. That was kind of sad. Time to cry, I guess?

Why’d she do it? Like, what was her plan? What is her plan? Am I just going to drive this until it runs out of gas? And then what? Just...live off the land/half a million dollars worth of drugs that she didn’t know how to sell? She couldn’t drive it back to her mom’s house, though. uHauls are honestly so hard to hide, as are a bunch of pounds of cocaine. Hold up. It’s kilos, right? Cocaine is kilos. America is so dumb sometimes. I get not wanting to just do everything the way the country you left does it, but we should’ve kept the metric system. If we wanted pounds we could have done it with money the way they do. Who cares. I’ll just go to New Jersey, she decided. New Jersey seemed like a good place to go to think about her next move. Look at that? She was looking forward to thinking. Some good had come from this adventure already! Smiling now. She looked at her reflection in the rearview mirror, smiling. She laughed. Stealing half a million pounds (money pounds) of cocaine and giggling. What would her therapist say? She could still talk to her about this, right? Because of client patient confidentiality or whatever? Just as long as she didn’t say anything about offing herself, she could confess some crimes. That’s funny, too. Damn. This is kind of fun, she admitted, thinking thoughts instead of just always avoiding them. Mental note, because I have those now: think more.

He wasn’t crying anymore. He was feeling great. Honestly, best day of his life. Did he decide to start consuming the cocaine? Fuck it, yeah. Why not? That was what he’d come in here for, anyways, right? Besides, a little powdered courage couldn’t hurt if he had to fight for his life, right? Plus - not so bored anymore. Having a great time. Need to pee, but having a great time. People pee around coke all the time, right? Because doing it in bathrooms? So, by transitive property, he could also pee on the floor now. Let’s do it. Hell of a stream. Hey, if doing coke while being inadvertently kidnapped was fun, was coke that bad? Better take a note of this thought. Oh shit - no phone.

Alright. Time to catch these guys. How? Where? Is getting other people involved worth the embarrassment? Do I blame someone else? Kill them? Leverage peoples’ fear of me to force them to not ask questions and blindly follow me? Joseph pondered his possibilities. If only there was something to help him think. Coke? No - there’s a song about doing your own drugs. Also, drugs gone. Fuck. Stressed. If he had to be honest - not a kingpin. More of a princepin. Dad was the one with all the drug success. Dad wouldn’t kill him because family and stuff, but: bad vibe at Thanksgiving if he lost dad’s drugs. Dad? Bad guy. Also, he had technically never killed anyone. More of new-era guy. Good at social media outreach/business development. Made threats, but the drug game wasn’t the same as the old days. He was kind of a regular dude, just illegally rich. But, reputation-wise? Killed a lot of people. Teardrop tattoo, even. Regardless, he needed to get those drugs back and was willing to disregard the sanctity of human life to do so.

----

New Jersey now. Felt different, somehow, getting out of the city. They pump the gas for you in New Jersey, that’s kind of cool. Speaking of which, how much did she have left? Half tank. These uhauls, man. Absolute gas guzzlers. Okay. Need to pull over and think. God, she couldn’t wait to think! What an incredible reconnection she was having with herself. How long had it been since she’d done something like this? This was the new her, though. She was going to be a bubble bath gal, a take myself on dates gal, a go to bed early with her phone off gal. Maybe even meditate! She should get into yoga, right? She pulled into a major plaza, the kind with a gym next to a pizzeria next to a Men’s Wearhouse and some Tarot card joint. How did those Tarot places afford their lease? It had to be a front for something else, right? Anyways, she’d made it out of the city. The goal was: make a plan, execute the plan, remain alive, go back to her old life but with a better attitude. The obstacle: she was in possession of a lot of drugs and somebody very dangerous was probably upset with her about it.

Speeding in a black escalade. Okay, this was the type of thing a real drug dealer does. Joseph felt a bit of pride. Sure, he’d messed up. But now he was speeding in a black escalade full of guns. And, more importantly, he was doing it with his friends. People don’t always get along with their co-workers, but Joseph had found a real community in his place of work. Bad men, but like good dudes. Ya know? “Let’s get some music going,” he said. “Is it bluetooth or do I need an aux?” It was bluetooth. He looked back to the two guys in the backseat holding guns, wearing sunglasses. So cliche, but he loved it. “What are we feeling? Something with a beat, right? Ronnie, you were playing a song last week that I really liked. Do you remember the name?” Ronnie wasn’t sure. “I’ll just do Spotify radio,” he said. “That’s usually good. Oh - Wyoming license plate! You don’t see those every day. I’m gonna try to take a picture, see if you can get closer to it.”

Okay, peeing in an enclosed space? Bad idea. Everything smelled like piss. Of course it smelled like piss; he filled the place with piss. Ugh. So much energy, nowhere to put it. Having a way worse time than he had been a moment ago. Why did this always happen? Whenever he was having a good time, he’d think “wow this is a good time!” and then another voice in his head would say “what’s so good about it?” and then he would think “well....I don’t really know, I guess. Just having fun, really. Living in the moment.” and then the other voice would retort sarcastically “Oh, you’re living in the moment? Then how come you’re talking to me?” and then he’d be out of the moment and back into his head and not having as good a time anymore. That’s what he was experiencing now. Plus the smell. Plus the impending doom. Plus the immediate dopamine downgrade of the cocaine growing stale in his system.Solution? More coke. Wait? Are we stopping now? He felt the truck come to a stop. Not a red light stop, either. A stop stop. Like, he could feel the truck shift into park, breathing out a sigh of relief and exhaustion. Is this the drug deal? Is this where the evil guy whose truck he had hopped into to try to steal from slides open the door to show that he has the “product” and then counts some duffle bags of money? The duffle bag money guys would not be happy about the piss-smell. Nor the rando. The piss-smell would be worse for them than it was for him, too, because it was foreign piss. And it was pretty bad for him. More coke. Plan. Guns anywhere? This feels like a place where guns would be. Not that he knew how to shoot them, but, like, you just pull the trigger, right? Close one eye to aim?

Alicia sat in silence. It had been like five minutes. Maybe ten. Should I just return this? she wondered. Put it back, leave a note? Take one bag for her troubles? She could probably sell one bag, pay off her credit card, finally put a couple bucks away. Maybe do one fun thing, like those dinners where you have to guess who the murderer is. She always thought she’d make a great detective. That was what her ex had told her. She knew he didn’t mean it as a compliment, was just calling her nosy and jealous. But she was right; he had been cheating. Which makes him a cheater and a gaslighter. Anyways - she’d do one of those dinners. Yeah. That seems reasonable, right? Who wants to waste time chasing after one bag? They’d just be happy to get the rest back. And she’d fill up the tank as a sign of good will. Well, she wouldn’t fill up the tank. One of these attendants would. That’s how it goes in New Jersey.

Mood getting worse. Spotify radio really not a vibe. The Wyoming license plate picture was super blurry, so he had to pull one off google images, and, like, at that point who cares? “Not even that crazy to see Wyoming,” one of his so-called friends in the back had said. “What with rental cars being so popular and all.” What a stupid thing to say. If he were actually a killer, that comment might have been enough to make him do a murder. Do a murder? What kind of a killer speaks like that. Ugh, he felt like a total loser. “Do you know where we’re going?” he asked the guy driving. “It’s that plaza with gym and the Tarot cards and stuff, right?” Driver said that didn’t narrow it down, they were all like that. But yes, he knew where he was going. It’s in the GPS, on the screen. Joseph didn’t appreciate the tone. Not a lot of respect toward the guy with the teardrop tattoo. Kind of messed up. “I think it’s this exit,” he said. Driver gestured toward the GPS on the screen as if to say “clearly it’s not.” Joseph, louder this time: “take this exit!” Driver started to reply negatively, Joseph reached for the steering wheel. Power mattered more to him than safety. Driver recovered, swerved a bit, caught the exit late. “Recalculating” said Siri.

James toyed with the trigger of his shotgun. It was a shotgun, right? Like the midsize guns? Shoot, cock, shoot? Whatever, it had that long thing you pull back. He’d pulled it back already. Wayyy harder than it looked in the movies. Had to press it down against his knee and leverage most of his upper body just to get the thing down. Felt like the trigger was going to take a lot of strength as well, but he couldn’t really test that without firing the thing, so he was just kind of applying a bit of pressure, trying to gauge the resistance, then getting scared he might shoot, then stopping. There was a lot going on: coke, adrenaline, a gun, impending doom. But maybe? Impending heroism. This is the type of thing he fantasized about when he was listening to loud music at the gym. This is what every young American boy grows up thinking he will do someday: kill bad guys.

How long does it take to fill a gas tank? She couldn’t believe it. This would be way quicker if she could just pump the gas herself. What kind of an outdated law was this? What? You need a degree or something to squeeze on a gas hose? Get with the times. Alicia didn’t have a law degree--or even a bachelors, if you want to get technical about it--but she knew that it took a lot to change them. Did she need to submit an amendment to the constitution or something? Can just anyone do that? Or did she need a lawyer to send it in for review or something? There was a song about this, she’d look it up later. She’d been here for at least thirty minutes now while people--whose jobs were apparently to pump gas--pumped gas at a wildly inefficient pace. What a racket. Did she need to tip these people, too? Whatever, she’d just pop into the store for a second while this guy topped her tank off, grab a Red Bull or something for the drive back. Alicia’s joints popped as she strolled into the store. The shift in perspective let the reality of her situation sink in -- she was actually in a hell of a pickle. Lifewise, she still felt positive about the mental health strides she’d made in that silent truck. But immediate-needs-wise? Not a good situation. Her anxiety was no longer an evolutionary misstep haunting her existence, but a necessary reminder her brain was sending her body to let it know it was in grave danger. Still, not a fun feeling. Oh, look at that - they just sell weed in gas stations in New Jersey now? Problem solved. “Gimme the cheap one,” she instructed the cashier. It felt kind of cool, just buying weed with a debit card. Not worrying about it. Granted, she did have a life-in-jail amount of illegal drugs in a stolen vehicle, but it was chill to not have to stress about a joint.

Four minutes. That was how much time had been lost by Joseph’s ego-trip. A four minute ego trip. He kept his mouth shut now, turning the music up on the “2010s FIRE” playlist he’d put on. He knew it was annoying everyone, the volume. But he didn’t care. It was time to get to the plaza, get the vehicle, and get a murder under his belt. Forget about a teardrop tattoo; these guys needed to see him end a life. That was the only way he’d ever get the respect he deserved. No more Mr. Nice Guy that pretends to be a Mean Guy so that people would fear him. Time to be Mr. Bad Guy. He was going to find the Uhaul, kill the thief, and stop wearing graphic T-shirts so that people would do as he said. And maybe get off his dad’s phone bill, too. What people don’t realize about being the son of a c-suite blue-collar criminal, is that there’s a lot of pressure to perform. Maybe that was just him. His dad loved him, sure, but he’d always been all about hard work and discipline, and the American Dream. And, yeah, it was nice to make the kind of money he did while working for his dad and not necessarily having to pay the same dues as everyone else in the gang, but it was still a difficult job, and he never felt like he had the same opportunities as other people. Like, he wrote poetry for a while but he never even showed his dad what he’d written because he knew he’d just roll his eyes and tell him to do something more practical. But how practical was working the same stupid job every day until you could retire? What about passion? What about chasing your dreams, not the American one?

James wiped his sweaty fingers against his khakis and re-gripped the trigger of his shotgun, taking one last bump of coke. His body was almost entirely numb, and entirely wet. It had to be any minute now. If he made it out of here alive, it would be a shame not to have a recording. No one would ever believe this story.

Alicia ashed her joint and hopped back in the drivers’ seat. Full tank. Whew - the New Jersey weed was strong. Too strong. The kind of strong that didn’t reduce anxiety; it escalated it. Whoops. Okay - relax. She could just do one tiny little nugget of coke to balance it out. That made sense, right? She wouldn’t make a habit of it, just do one bump, get home safely, remember the lessons she’d learned, move on with her life. She’d even made a note in her phone in case she forgot.

Uhaul spotted. Joseph’s heart raced as they pulled into the parking lot. Moment of truth. Are you the guy you say you are in your head? Are you really about that life? Are you someone people shouldn’t mess with? Prove it. “Turn the music down,” he ordered. It wasn’t even music. They’d switched to a podcast. Whatever. Uhaul by the gas pump. Perfect. Forget cameras, witnesses, anything anyone had to say. Right now is about right now. It’s time to man up--okay, that term is a little outdated and gendered, but you get it. It’s time to step up. He double-fisted his handguns and started power-walking toward the car. No one in the driver’s seat. Maybe they ran. Maybe he really was feared after all. Maybe even the people who dared steal his supply were smart enough not to try to hang onto it.

James trembled. It has to be any minute now. It has to.

Alicia fumbled with the latch for a moment.

Joseph hopped into the drivers’ seat. Keys in the ignition. What was this? He’d come here for blood, and they were just...laying down? He paused for a moment. What was really going on? Not with the stolen drugs, but with him. Why was he so intent on proving how tough he could be? He stared 100 yards ahead at the black escalade full of his fake friends. A real tear drop slipped down his cheek, perfectly placing itself within the teardrop tattoo for a moment before making its way to his lap; a single speck of emotion wetting his thigh. The lesson today wasn’t about not being able to trust people who might steal his product. It was about not being able to trust the people who say they care about you. Well, screw those guys. He was going to show them. He turned the ignition and floored the Uhaul forward.

A crack of sunlight tore through the opening of the Uhaul, blinding James for a moment before the car lurched forward, launching him to the floor and rolling him onto the parking lot ground. His shotgun smashed into the roof of the vehicle as the truck flew away, bags of cocaine spilling out as it accelerated. He heard a woman scream in surprise, looking directly down at him, then at the moving truck, then back at him. Something about her genuine surprise settled him, told him she wasn’t the enemy.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here!” they screamed at each other in perfect synchronization. Well, maybe the synchronization wasn’t completely perfect. It was hard to tell over the sound of machine gun fire from the escalade into the truck, and the truck smashing into the escalade. It looked really bad, they both thought. Then they both thought something else; run. And that was what they did.