Chapter Thirty-Eight The Descent

Earlier in the day, I thought I had been in Purgatory. It was hot enough to be Hell, and I was too conflicted, had too many unanswered questions to ever make it the peaceful sanctuary that was heaven. I was still suffering by myself, and I knew it was only going to get worse. I was waiting around for my life to end, for the world to crash around me, and to get judged by the devil for my deeds. I thought that Hell would have been beyond Gerard’s deep green door, in the center of his apartment where I knew we would fight. My prediction had been right; we did fight there, but not for the reasons I thought. I fought him, rather than him fighting me. I didn’t make sense in my mind. He had every fucking right to be mad at me, but he refused to say anything hurtful. Well, purposely hurtful like the words I tossed at him. He still inflicted pain, but in other ways; with his thoughts and opinions on what the fuck we actually were.

I thought we were in a relationship. I thought we were supposed to care about each other. Although I knew that we were going to end eventually, I thought that at least we would maintain some kind of hope that we wouldn’t. I thought that though we were different – that we could be anything we wanted, and if we wanted to be normal, than we would be. We could have fun together, holding hands and kissing, thinking that this would and could go on forever. I didn’t care how cliché it was; I wanted it. I had never had a relationship before; I didn’t know how it was supposed to go. I had grown up on images of hallmark cards and after school specials. In my mind, I just wanted our relationship to feel some kind of normalcy.

Gerard couldn’t be normal. We couldn’t be normal. This could never fucking be normal. Fuck, I knew that. Even before he said those words, I knew that. But couldn’t I pretend? Couldn’t he just let me dream? That’s all we did before; dream. We’d sit on his bed and stare at the ceiling and dream. He would tell me about his life, the things he did, or wished that he had done, and we would create our own ending for it all. We were creating our own world too, because we couldn’t live on the outside. We were dreamers; how the fuck could you be an artist if you weren’t a dreamer? It seemed that Gerard forgot that principle and was now suddenly trying to bestow reality in every corner.

He hated corners; he liked the soft curve of a woman’s hip. What was he doing going on and on about men earlier that night? Why had he suddenly gone from opposite ends of the spectrum and was turning his back on everything? He was calling men more beautiful than woman, and he was thrusting me into a reality that I didn’t want. Those corners were sharp. They hurt when he threw them at me. He was only trying to prepare me for the world, but fuck. I needed compassion in the world. There was enough hate and disrespect and guilt out there for me to find my way through. I needed him to keep me sane, to keep my faith up, and to keep me motivated. More importantly, I needed him to keep me a dreamer. Too many years had passed in my life before him where it eluded me as to what that word actually meant. I just thought time passing meant getting older, grayer, and one step closer to death. Now he had taught me that time passing meant more dreams coming to the surface, more ideas bubbling, and more creating with him by my side. More time meant more Gerard, and I needed all that I could take of him.

But now we had woken up, and the morning mouth we usually had from our constant all night kissing, merely became a vile odor that I tried to shove deep down inside of me, forgetting the hurt that I felt.

Maybe I was still dreaming, I tried to tell myself, and everything had turned into a nightmare. Gerard was still rambling and expanding his theories, ideas, and art; it just wasn’t in the way I wanted it anymore. I wanted things to make sense again; I wanted him to tell me the answers. The only thing tangible he could conjure up was that I wasn’t gay, I hadn’t cheated on him, and I was only an experience. Those weren’t answers – at least ones that made sense. My thinking – that he had helped shape – would not compute those things. I was taught to not believe those things when I was a dreamer. I thought they didn’t exist in the situation I was in. When had Gerard decided to change that?

I couldn’t fathom how we could be so close - fucking inside on another - and I never saw this coming. I never thought he was thinking this way, planning me around a picture he would paint when I was gone. He was writing his own book, and I was merely a chapter. He would leave me, or the society would make us, and then he would paint it, sign it, and move on. I couldn’t move on that easily. If the society flung us apart, I was going to fucking fight to stay together. Wasn’t Gerard? Didn’t we make this promise to each other, on that first night together? We promised everything. Everything included fighting, hurting, and everything horrible.

Everything included Hell, which I was convinced I was finally in.

I didn’t feel much different than I had in the morning. My skin was still covered with a thick resin, smoke condensed into human sweat from the act Gerard and I had committed before everything began to fall apart. I was still just as confused as I was in the morning, and though I had some answers to questions, they only led me around in circles. I kept thinking of more things to ask him, more things I needed clarification on, but there was no way in fucking Hell I was going back into his apartment to get more. It had been hard enough to leave when I did; I must have stayed in the center of the room for hours until I finally gave up and was gone.

Despite the frantic thoughts, I had still managed to pool together some kind of reason, and I had grabbed Gerard’s van keys as I walked out the door. I couldn’t run anywhere at that moment in time. My legs felt weak and pliable. I didn’t want to look like an idiot, trying to run but only succeed in my legs buckling and falling down into the center of the street. I couldn’t just walk either. I had no clue where to go in either circumstance, and I was not calm enough to saunter along the boulevard. I didn’t want to go home, that was for fucking sure. I was distressed and upset, and though I hadn’t been crying, I felt close to it. My face was red and flushed; claw marks from when I had cradled it in my hands and then tried to peel my skin off for something to distract me were still evident. I knew I looked like a mess; another reason to avoid the Jersey streets. It wasn’t dark yet, but the sun was slowly disappearing along the horizon. I needed another device to transport me to where I wanted to go, even if the destination hadn’t quite been figured out yet. The only option left was Gerard’s van.

I hadn’t had many more driving lessons than the one Gerard had given me during our last weekend together, but I was fairly confident I could figure it out. I had been doing pretty well during the last fifteen minutes of our time together; I hoped I could mimic and repeat those actions. If I stayed to back roads and unpopulated places, I hopefully wouldn’t take out a kid along the way. I just needed to drive. To blast music into my ears as I did and give myself the illusion that I was running away from everything when I was merely going around in circles.

My hands were shaking as I put the key in the ignition, turning it hard into the van and having the piece of junk struggle before it started. I wondered if Gerard was going to come barreling down the apartment stairs and try to stop me, but I knew he wouldn’t. He was probably still naked, and if nothing else, he would want me to have another experience by driving the car. I felt my stomach churn just thinking of that fucking word.

In spite of my disgust, I wanted him to come down and stop me. I even sat in the car, gunning the engine and making sure it made the distinct gnawing noise that his sometimes did, so he knew exactly who was trying to drive away. But he never came down, and I was just wasting gas. I felt something drop in my chest as I meticulously pulling out of the parking lot, trying not to hit the other vehicles lined up in single file. I wanted him to come down, despite my harsh words from before. He was the person I always went to when I was upset; I still needed him even if he was the person that caused it all. Just sitting in his van, fucking smelling the aura he left behind, seeing his paint supplies and random shopping bags made my chest hurt. I wanted him to be here, even if it was to only curse him out more and more. I knew he would never say a word back, unless he was trying to show me something else. I didn’t want to be shown anything anymore, unless it was just his hand in mine.

Fuck, I knew I sounded like a girl right then. I was whining and complaining over my boyfriend who had hurt me. I was running away and having a hissy fit, but still being wishy-washy and wanting him to come and save me. No man would whine about another man saving him. And I knew he would never save me. That still didn’t mean that I didn’t wanted him there though. My own saving grace to my manhood at that moment was that I really wasn’t crying, and probably too mad to do so. If I had started to bawl over this, I’m pretty sure my balls would have receded back into my body. Boys don’t cry. Men don’t cry. The whole fucking Y chromosome was there to make men not cry. It was wrong, I shouldn’t be doing it.

But fuck, I wanted to.

Even as I pulled out and away from Gerard’s apartment, and I looked up to his bay window, and I didn’t see the shadow of the man I had just had sex with, I still didn’t cry. Something inside me broke; I was pretty down sure of that, but I didn’t cry. I let out a gross sounding moan inside my throat, twisting my face into an expression of sheer pain. I saw my reflection in the rearview mirror and wanted to fucking smash it. My hair was a mess, my face just fucking pitiful. I began to wonder just what the fuck Gerard had seen in me to begin with. I was a whiny snot-nosed delinquent teenager who just wanted him for alcohol. Why did he invite me back to his house everyday? I was nothing special, and he had told himself, forbidden himself to never ever touch me in a sexual manner. It was me who had initiated it all, finally broke down that barrier. I was the one who wanted this, but I only ended up hurting him and causing him even more trouble. What the fuck did he see in me? He should have kicked me out ages ago.

But, as I thought more and more about this notion, I wondered what the fuck I saw in him. He was the aging, old, and gay artist. He was cocky, arrogant, and a little overweight. He could be confusing, mean, and downright insane most days. Why the fuck did I agree to keep coming back and how the fuck did I end up naked in front of him one day? Why the fuck did any of this happen? It didn’t fucking make sense anymore, and I knew it wasn’t suppose to.

But I still wanted – needed - an answer, fuck. I needed everything.

Some questions don’t have answers, Gerard’s voice filtered through my head.

“But what if I need one, Gerard?” I said to the violent air that had filled the car. There was no one there to talk to, and even the music couldn’t drown out my thoughts. My teeth were gritted, and my hand tight on the steering wheel. “What if I need answers, if only to one fucking question?”

My voice broke at the end, and I convinced myself it was my anger combined in a horrid pit of emotions with the nervousness I was feeling with driving. I turned a sharp corner, hitting the curb and causing another grunt to escape my mouth. I was on a darker dirt road now with hardly any people. I could be as loud as I want, and so, I fucking screamed. I hit the horn and bashed the steering wheel. I wanted answers, I needed answers. Even if it was only to one question; I just needed to know one thing.

Were Gerard and I over?

The thought alone was enough to make my stomach feel like it was turning inside out and dropping out of my body completely. I felt like a fish being gutted, and images of Jasmine’s unbalanced grandfather came into my mind. I was a catfish; a smelly person a with an ugly face feeling the knife go in and out of me again and again. Gerard was her grandfather, completely unbalanced and not very nice, but still being committed to memory and reflected upon. Gerard was in my head, in my body, and wreaking havoc on my soul. I had to know if he would always be there, good or bad, or if my feelings were just in fucking vain, like everything else I did.

Gerard had never actually said a thing about us breaking up. He may have called me just an experience, but he told me that the chapter I was part of in his book was not done yet. It could be long or short, he had told me. He didn’t know the answer to length. He didn’t know a lot of answers, I began to realize. I wonder if he even knew the answer to the one that was plaguing me now.

When I thought about it logically, or as logical as my brain could be at that moment, I didn’t think we were broken up. We didn’t have much to break in the first place, as far as status outside his apartment was concerned. There was only Vivian who knew about us, so if we had broken up, she would be the only person to tell. If Gerard did tell her we were no longer together, I knew Viv wouldn’t stand to hear that. She would talk some sense into him; that’s what she was there for; that’s what she was good for. She was a mediator in things, telling Gerard what he should and shouldn’t do when he was in doubt. She had been the one who saw us for what we were – souls – from the beginning. Souls didn’t have ages to her. I knew that she would fight for us to be together again. Gerard was stubborn; he may not listen to me, but I knew he would listen to that red haired goddess. He had to. She was the only logical thing in our lives.

I felt a little better after convincing myself of that fact, but I was still far, far from better. I needed something to ease the tension I had created for myself in the small space of the empty van. I didn’t know how long I had been driving for; Gerard refused to keep time in his van too. There held no spot for any kind of time measurement in the dash, but upon closer inspection, there was a void, where Gerard had probably ripped the small clock from its rightful place. I could still tell the basics of time from the sky, and see the sun setting behind the trees on the dirt road. It was getting later and later, so I pulled off to the side of the dirt road, and prepared to let it all pass me by. I needed to have my eyes focus on something clean and pure; something that couldn’t be changed. I knew that the sunset was never predictable, much like Gerard and I, but there was some order to it. It would set at a different time every night, but it fell behind the hills within a predicted pattern. As the seasons changed, so did the sun. And it would always rise again. The colours it made through the changing of hours could paint a picture of more than just landscape. They seemed to represent thoughts in the minds of people, displaying for them, the light within the darkness of thought.

I watched as the purple tendrils began to twist around the orange rays pouring out of the still falling sun. They seemed to strangle the light that was trying to break free, if only for a few more seconds. Though the thoughts in my own head were morbid and twisted to the depiction in front of me, I could find beauty in the purple’s act of suffocation. It was putting the glowing sun out of its misery quickly - quicker than it wanted to, but it was still for its own good. The purple strangulation made everything beautiful again; it made the death seem reasonable, and better than if it had just dropped out of the sky for no reason quicker than a blink of time. The purple was a necessary element, and when the orange finally accepted that, the night sky was able to prevail, purple bowing out gracefully for something darker. And then, everything was okay again.

I observed it all diligently, my body calming inside the van for however long the process took to unfold. I knew that Gerard was the purple and I was the orange. In our entire relationship, ended or not, we had always been colors dancing around each other. He had been the blue, throwing over me and making me become something other than just mere shades of a person. Blue was bold and bright and the color of dreams that fell from the same coloured sky. He was blue, but he changed many forms. A rainbow and kaleidoscopic chameleon. I remembered the night I placed my handprint on his door – his black door. It was the abyss into nothingness that I tainted with yellow. I was yellow then, like the glowing sun that helped things grow. Like the butter that was warm and kept things warm, but too little to be by itself. I needed something with me, I needed his black in the backdrop to make my handprint shine through, and so I could grow.

I was never the person or color that helped anything else grow, I realized then. It had always been Gerard who brought life into things, into nature, and into people. He had been green that day; one of the many colors of life. He had always been green for me, and other people too. He was the grass inside Vivian’s picture of her baby as the flower, too dispersed to mean anything solid, and if gotten too overbearing, could be cut away. He grew on people – you may not like him at first, you may walk all over him, but eventually, you appreciated his presence. He made everything that once used to be covered in dirt spectacular and alive again. He was the grass growing and spilling over top everything because spring was upon us. I may have been yellow, but it certainly wasn’t to heal or help things bloom into life. I was yellow to be yellow. I didn’t know what it meant exactly yet.

Comme le soliel interminable. Like the never-ending sun.

His French words came into my mind. He had written that below my hand, as if to mark or seal something. The words never made much sense, even when translated into English. Like the never-ending sun? What the fuck was that supposed to mean? I was dense to poetry, other than maybe the small bits and pieces I would right to clear out a cluttered head. And even after I had supposedly written something deep, I would go back to it weeks later and forget what the fuck I meant. I wasn’t good on deciphering and creating metaphors that were supposed to convey deeper meanings, even if that was what I was doing right at that moment with the sunset. I may have been thinking in parallel and planes I had never reached before, but I could never let them come out of my mouth. I couldn’t speak them, write them, I could only think. I could do it inside my head, do it wonderfully, but never relate it to paper. Or a wall in this case. I never knew what like the never-ending sun had meant. I had smiled and nodded when Gerard put it on his wall, because I knew it had meant something so much deeper than I could fathom at that moment. I wanted to make him happy, so I told him I loved it.

I did love it; but to truly appreciate, I had to understand. I was so perplexed at that moment, but instead of figuring out what Gerard had meant today, maybe I had to go back a few weeks, start from where my confusion first budded. The sun-never ended, but it had to start somewhere.

I began to think, pulling memories and facts together, and I discovered something. Like the never-ending sun was wrong. The sun did end. It ended every night. It set behind the Jersey skyline in this twisted array of colours. It could never be never-ending because it had to set each night. But then again, I did also rise. The sun always rose the next day, whether you were around to see it or not. And I guessed, in that way, it was never-ending. I wasn’t really sure anymore.

Stars eventually burn out, though, I called on myself suddenly. The sun was a star. I began to recall all what I thought to be useless information from my science class in grade eight. They said the sun wasn’t going to burn out for another billion years or so. We wouldn’t have to worry about it in our lifetime, which was probably why no one gave a fuck about the aerosol cans they had in each class room, destroying the ozone layer, but it would burn out. It was inevitable, kind of like our relationship, I realized.

I wasn’t sure if the quote was wrong anymore, or if it was right. The sun ended, but by the time it did, I wouldn’t be around to care. And neither would Gerard.

Finally, as I sat in the car, something began to make sense. Like the never-ending sun – it was our relationship. It had its up and downs, its rises and falls, but it didn’t end. There may be darker periods, longer than others when there was daylight savings time, or when the society buts in and tears us apart, but fuck, it just didn’t end. We didn’t just end. We burned out – we died. That would be the only time we would truly be torn apart; when both of our sparks faded into the blackness of space and time.

We were not broken up. There was just going to be some darkness for awhile until we could rise again.

My chest felt a little lighter and I was able to breathe better, without as many constant hurtful thoughts going through my mind. It was completely dark now, the ebony hue and chilly air covering me whole. I looked around at the night sky, tilting my head forward over the wheel and pressing my forehead against the cool glass. It was a new moon and the Jersey lights blocked the stars. I saw barely a twinkle form the sky, and though I was starting to feel better, it still depressed me.

I remembered our night in the park, just looking at the stars and wishing I could reach out a touch them. Fly towards them. I would never fly now, I realized. I would never want to again. I didn’t want to be ready for the world, because Gerard would be taken out of it. Another realization hit me; Gerard was still out of my world then, and I didn’t know anything. He would be coming back, I knew that – he had to. This was just one of those fights that we needed to grow in our relationship, or some stupid foolish thing. He said fights were good; they made sure that you still wanted to be with the person. That goal had definitely been accomplished. We both still needed time to cool off from this huge affair; I couldn’t go see him just yet. In the mean time, there were other things I was comprehending. I could and would be separated from him, regardless of how ready I was. This wasn’t about flying anymore. The dove had escaped. This was about fucking living. I needed to learn how to live right now, because I wouldn’t always be able to depend on him.

I looked around suddenly, wondering where the dove had gone. It was futile to try and look for her in the night sky, but my eyes wandered there anyway, coming back with nothing substantial. I had always thought that even if she (and all doves, really) flew away, she would come back to her rightful home. Weren’t birds supposed to do that? I asked myself, thinking hard about something else other than the artist.

It was pigeons who did that, I reminded myself. Homing pigeons came back. They used them in the war to send messages back and forth. I was mistaking species and mistaking identities yet again with the majestic bird, and for once, I just wanted her to be the simple animal of a pigeon, just so she would fly back home again. If Gerard didn’t have me, he should at least have his bird.

I knew Gerard though – he would want a dove and only a dove. It didn’t matter to him if she didn’t come back, so long as she got to be what she really was. It was stupid – I would want to hold onto something that beautiful for as long as I could and I would want it to come back to me. Gerard’s ideas made some sense, however. It was like that whole ‘if you love someone, let them go’ philosophy. He would let his dove do whatever the fuck it wanted, because he knew it would choose the right fate in the end.

But what if the dove didn’t know how to choose the right fate? It may have thought it wanted out, but what if once it got there, it didn’t like it anymore? And it didn’t know how to come back home? Maybe Gerard was just as wrong about this as he was nearly everything else. Could a dove come back to its rightful home, rightful place? Or since they were the freedom bird, once given the chance, will they take it and fly with it? The dove had been cooped up in a cage for God knows how many years. And then, it had been cooped up in an apartment. Now that it could be free to see the world, who the fuck knows where it would go? It was free to actually live; who wouldn’t take that chance?

I laughed suddenly, realizing that I wouldn’t. If I was given the chance to live life on my own in that very moment, free from my parents, friends, and any other obligations so I could do what I want, I wouldn’t take it. I knew I wouldn’t, there was no hiding it. I didn’t know what I would want to do. I still hadn’t thought of even playing my guitar or painting since the last time I had seen Gerard before this. I had talked about painting to Jasmine, but every other word out of my mouth had been about Gerard. It was never about me missing the act of painting; it was me missing Gerard. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I certainly could not be left alone to do it. I still wanted Gerard; needed him. He had to show me what I wanted to do, and even after I found it, he couldn’t leave. I may have been able to tackle the lesson of being alone, but that didn’t mean I had to live by it every day. I would have much rather had Gerard be mad at me every single day of my life, living like I was in that van right then with thoughts plaguing me one after the one every single fucking day, than to be alone and figure it all out for myself.

I laughed so hard for no reason, other than figuring myself out. I was a joke; complaining about freedom, but being too afraid to take it. I laughed like I had before in his apartment, to ease the tension though nothing was funny. It may have been ironic; the fact that Gerard was teaching me about freedom I never wanted, but it wasn’t funny at all. I kept laughing though, until my side hurt and my head ached. I couldn’t believe my own thoughts. It was getting ridiculous and I was feeling more and more like a girl.

Letting out an arrogant and high pitched sigh, I leaned over to the back of the van, seeing what was stored. After rummaging around in a few shopping bags, I found exactly what I had been looking for; Gerard’s liquor. I knew that when he bought wine, he bought it in bulk, and kept most of it in his van for safe keeping until he could clear room in his apartment for it. He only had one or two bottles back there when I reached, and I grabbed whatever I saw, needing a drink more than anything at that moment in time. I struggled to get the cork and wrapper off the first one, but my frantic hands for once did me good as I heard the pop and the fizz of the liquid. I brought it too my lips and began to drink heartily, knowing that at least if the drink wasn’t the most masculine thing on the planet, I was drinking to get drunk again, to forget shit, and that was just what I needed. The man’s version of therapy; getting smashed until the problems didn’t exist, or at least until they were a blur in front of you.

I downed maybe half the bottle before I placed it in the passenger’s seat beside me. I coughed a few times in taking the liquid, the strong acrid taste startling me until I forced myself to get used to it. My eyes burned and my tingled, but I could feel myself getting light headed already. This was just what I needed.

I couldn’t just stay on this dirt road forever. I needed to get someplace else, even if it was just back to my house again. I had stayed out long enough, I figured. I was feeling too much like a girl again just sitting and watching the stars that didn’t mean anything. It was dark; my parents would be wondering where I was soon, and I didn’t need to get in trouble tonight. No fucking way. I turned the key in the ignition again and pulled out into the dirt and dark road.

As I drove, I kept the glass bottle tightly gripped in my hand, crushing the neck with my knuckles. The liquid ran down my face in small beads as I consumed too fast, and the chill in the air made my pores sting. I kept drinking, even when the beverage had stopped tasting good and tasted repugnant. I knew I soon wouldn’t be able to taste much of anything, and it only spurred me on even more. I knew what I was doing was wrong, bad, and completely illegal, but I didn’t care at that moment. I was on a dirt road, drinking and driving. I was not going to hit anyone or cause trouble. I just needed to get everything sorted out and together in my mind. Besides, I was already breaking so many rules with Gerard. A few more wouldn’t hurt.

I repeated my thoughts in my mind over and over again, blurring the lines between them. I was not taking freedom, and fuck, it was hilarious. It was scary – I was scared. I was scared of everything, if Gerard was leaving me or not. I didn’t know why we were together. The sun had something to do with it I was pretty sure. My head began to hurt. I rubbed my eyes as I drove and started to see passing city lights. The never-ending sun was bullshit. I liked to paint, but my hands didn’t let me. The dove had escaped like a pigeon, and wasn’t coming home. The dove could be dead for all I knew. I was not a dove. I was not a dove and I was not a dove. I didn’t want to be. It was too scary. Oh, and I was pretty sure I was in Hell.

My drunk incoherent babble continued, my lips becoming raw and rigid from the strong liquid in the bottle that was now gone. I chewed on them a lot, too. I tried to say some of my thoughts out loud, but they lost me halfway. Nothing made sense, but it started to. I thought I had been drunk, and I was, but when I said I was in Hell, the van actually began to grow hot. I felt the heat fold into the car from the open windows and engine in front of me. I wrapped my hoodie around me tighter, my breath becoming quick. I was pretty sure I saw Satan in the backseat.

Was I really in hell? Or was this merely my imagination and I was still in my lucid purgatory?

But then I saw the red flashing of lights. They throbbed and ached and blended together against the blackness of night. I really thought everything was burning. I thought the fire was around me, and the way it kept coming closer and closer that I was going to burn down too. Spontaneously combust into nothing – when I used to be everything. The red then interspersed with blue and I was too scared and confused to drive anymore. Was I drowning now too? Was that what the blue was for? Was I not breathing and now my skin was lacking oxygen, lacking everything I once knew?

Sacré bleu. Fucking hell, I was going to hell. The alcohol bubbled my thoughts, though I had not been drinking too much, and not that long. But I didn’t know time anyway, and I already felt like I was going insane before I started to consume something that only furthered the process along. This was it, I was dead, and the red lights were my gateway into Hell. Did I crash the car when I was driving? Did I commit suicide and not know it? The Hell I had created was me being overdramatic and figurative – since when had it become real? This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.

A loud knocking woke me from my inebriated thoughts. I had no idea if the car was still going or not by that point, but I pulled over and stopped. The clamor was from my half-open window, and I saw the red glow continued, only reflected off something else. I saw black hands, coated with a leather I had never seen before. They held a white pad and other foreign things I could not see, I could not decipher. The flashing was too bright and I had no idea what the fuck was going on.

“License and registration, please,” the object spoke – that was really a person. A big person, a tall person. One that was wearing a bullet proof vest and I had only seen on TV shows.

I froze. I thought it had been Satan in the backseat, but Satan didn’t wear a Jersey police officer badge. He may as well have, because as far as I was concerned, I was facing the same fate, the same judgment and persecution. It all began to click in my mind; the red and blue flashing was a police car’s sirens. I wasn’t in Hell; I was merely caught. I had never been in Hell before, even with my constant banter and the heat I couldn’t explain. I couldn’t have been in hell before because I was there right now. Or at least descending towards it.

Freedom was a scary thing, but so was being put in a cage.