The Return from Montreal

Sometime in January

We were an hour into the thick New York state night when I began hallucinating. I hadn't done any drugs in at least three days, but I had been drinking heavily and not sleeping more than four hours at a time, and so now, here, I leaned against the cracked window of Chud's terrible smelling Hyundai SUV with a cigarette dangling from my mouth listening to the comedy station on Sirius. He is half awake in the passenger seat, and he's already driven for four hours, three and a half of them being through customs because Canada sucks.

He burps, and a tremendous wave of nuclear gas rolls out of his stomach, and now I know how the people that lived next to Chernobyl felt. I look at him, and I'd be glaring if I could open both bloodshot eyes at the same time. My kids will have three legs and four fingers because I breathed that in.

"If you do that again, I swear to Christ I will run us right into a tree and kill everyone in the car. You don't want to be responsible for that, now you do you, Chud?"

"Sorry dude." He makes a funny noise, then settles back into his disgustingness.

I am trying to focus on the road. Chris Rock is making fun of white people and some crowd made up of mostly white people is eating it up. I love Chris Rock, but hate the people that think he's funny. It's exactly the opposite with Dane Cook.

The sign ahead is green, glaring, and large; a city is coming. I want to look, but if I look it will take me four seconds to focus on the road again, and that means we may all die when I miss the lines. I t's 8:30...FUCK I looked at the clock, I may as well look at the sign because if we're going to die, it's going to happen anyway now.

Albany. 136 miles from New York City. We live about 30 miles from New York city, so that means it's 106 to where we live. If I go 60 miles an hour, it will take around two hours and we will have traveled 120 miles. Fuck, that means we overshoot home.

- Dumbass you wouldn't overshoot home

- Oh.... right.

If I do seventy, it will take less time, but the math is too complicated for me to figure out and all I know is that we may be back by 10 if I can keep going 70 but if I go 80 we may somehow end up in Atlantic City (don't argue). I look at the clock and it's 8:32. FUCK.. LOOK AT THE ROAD! NOT THE CLOCK, THE ROAD! Damnit now you can't see anymore.

Four seconds later my eyes refocus. Good. We're still on the road. I really don't want to kill all of us. Chud wouldn't care, but the two in the backseat would and I, for one, would be mortified.

Chud wakes up and burps again, and I start yelling and swerving.

"What the fuck did I tell you motherfucker? Do you want to die? Is that what you want? Because I will drive this motherfucking car right into that motherfucking tree. See that one?" I'm pointing at a big dead thing that towers over the highway. "Yea, that one."

Fuck, I looked away and now I can't see the road again.

"Sorry dude."

I light another cigarette.

This must be what acid is like, minus the green leprachaun that I am sure would be hanging out with me if I was on it. He'd be a better conversationalist then Chud.

By the time we make it home at 11 o'clock (I have no idea how this happened, because my math and ETA's were flawless), I had drove for three hours, my eyes circulating between the clock, the road markers, and the chalkboard in my head figuring out how long till we got home.

Eventually, I can't see the signs anymore and pull over, and make one of the other guys drive, telling them that if they like living they will get my exhausted ass out of the driver's seat.