texas

texas sucks ass. there are drive-through liquor stores. what the fuck.

nm

new mexico kinda sucks

welcome to canadia

The Woods: Chapter 5

Chapter 5

I ran from the murder I had just committed. I wanted to keep going in the direction that I had started in. maybe there was something good out there. Something I could take advantage of. There might be something useful.

Something was. Something very good. There was a road sign. Another one.

It was getting fairly dark by this point, although I could see the sign, I couldn’t see the road. However, after going to sleep that night, I found myself at a road sign that had no road at all. Yet again, there was just a walkie-talkie attached to the sign itself. Or was there one attached to the one before this one? I can’t remember, but there was one attached to the road sign this time. I grabbed it with numb fingers, and I pressed down the talk button. “Goddamn, man, what the fuck is going on?”

“Well, it looks like you have killed one of my brothers. No matter-” he continued as I started looking around for a building- “natural selection, right?”

“I guess, man, but you really shouldn’t do that again, man.”

“Well, I think that we should do that again. You see, you keep killing people, and we can pick off all the weak ones. You just keep killing and living. We’ll keep sending them out to you.”

“No, man. I won’t do that crazy shit.”

“Oh, well suit yourself. We’re still sending them in, and you can choose then whether you want to die or not.”

He blew a goddamn airhorn into the walkie, and I covered my ear again.

I shouldn’t be surprised by any of the bad shit that guy does. He is one huge, gaping, dickhole.

Back to the road that doesn’t exist. I walked in the same direction, which gave me time to think.

This was pretty similar to one time when I was really little. I was cold, and I was walking home from one of my friend’s houses. He was a dick to me, so I threw a rock at him. His mom kicked me out. I was only 12. I was walking, when this old fucking guy offered me a drug. It smelled like shit, but it filled my lungs and make me feel like a fucking king. That drug was marijuana.

Although it wasn’t very popular where I lived, I was still able to get it. San Francisco was a big city. There was always some spic I could get the shit from.

You know how in school, they tell you not do smoke weed or cigarettes because they were gateway drugs. Well that was true, for me at least. One or two joints a day turned into 6 or 7. That turned into my friends giving me harder shit. When crack hit the scene, and I was already homeless in Denver, I was able to get it. Sure it was expensive, but I could get my hands on it. It wasn’t too hard.

I encountered two men, each stupid, and unable to kill me. Each too stupid to be quiet. Each to stupid to know what underestimation was. At least 12 stab wounds one them total.

More and more. Men after men. At one point I came to another sign. “Okay, man, you have to stop this shit.”

“I guess I do, you’ve killed the reserves. If a cop came, we wouldn’t be able to take him on. You bested us. We can’t take you on.”

“Where do I go, man?”

“Just about a mile forward, you’ll hit a road. You can find us there.”

Sure enough I did. But they weren’t there to pick me up. They were there to kill me. A large gun was perched atop the jeep sitting in front of me. A man was behind the gun, and he was wearing a marathon t-shirt. There were two men sitting inside of the jeep. They were wearing jean jackets, and plaid pants. There was one man sitting outside the car with his hands on his head.

I took a bit of a run. Backward. Then to the left. If these men came from anywhere, they came from a highway. And sure enough, there was one. Another two miles out. There was a nice, large highway, with plenty of cars. One had to pick me up.

I started hitchhiking back to Denver. It was decently hard, but I got to see the sunrise. I contacted the police, and told them everything. The murders. The cult. Being thrown in the woods. They threw me in jail, which was fine, because I had nowhere else to be. The cult was taken down.

And I guess that’s it.

The Woods: Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I started looking back over to my leg. It was mostly numb, so I thought it would be the best time for me to look at the wound. As I took of the cloth, I also took off some of the scab that had grown onto the strip itself. It hurt a little bit, but it didn’t bleed. That was a good sign, I guess.

I started touching it with my bare hand. My fingers burned from the cold, and seemed to get warmed from the water. With every move, they seemed to warm even more. I don’t know if this was because they were numbing, or if it was because the water was legitimately warmer than the outside and air. I like to think the second.

The cut had bumps all over it. It wasn’t how I was used to scabs feeling. I was mostly sure it was infected.

I sat back against a tree, and blew a few strands of my hair out of my eyes. “What about the night?”

At night, this time of year, you could typically depend of it to drop below zero. That was usually fine, because I would wear about seven layers of clothes. But tonight I would have one. That would mean that I would have to find a way to survive.

I took my leg out of the water, as comfortable as it seemed. I stuck it toward an artery to help it warm up. I had to try and take as much of an advantage from the day as I could. I felt myself all over. Nothing was wet except for the foot I put in the water. That was good. Wouldn’t have to make something dry out.

I used to be a movie freak. When I was first stranded, I watched movies at this drive in, and the owner would never try and stop me. When the movie would finish, I would take my things and leave. It was a simple, easy thing to do. It would be fine the next day, too.

I remembered a fact from some stupid documentary I watched. Snow is always 32 degrees.

I was going to make an igloo.

It was starting to get late. I guess I woke up around 8:00 am. It was maybe five by this point. Getting dark. Real dark. Real fast.

I started shivering. More than I was before, at the very least. The snow was dense. I started to pick it up and stack it, trying to pack it into itself. Make the wall. Then the ceiling. Try and stay alive for one night. That was hard. My fingers became number than I have ever felt them. They felt like they were burning. But I had to keep moving. If I was going to survive.

I need to move faster. My old bones creaked as I picked up more and more snow. It was freezing my skin. I need to move faster. I started using both hands to pick it up. My feet were cold as fuck. I need to move faster. My knees were becoming weaker. The sun was down further and I wasn’t going to make it. I need to move faster. My elbows felt like they were going to lock up at any moment. I looked around for anyone who could help. A passerby. A person with the decency to take an old man into their car for just one night. A rescue team. But then again, who wants to rescue me. I need to move faster. At the rate that I was going in, I wouldn’t be able to make it.

That’s when there was a scuffle to my left.

“Who’s there?” I said, as I grabbed a tree branch off the ground.

I saw someone wearing a heavy winter jacket and ski pants. He stepped out of the woods holding a knife.

I knew he was from the cult. He stepped closer and closer as he prepared himself for a fight. Survival of the fittest. This is what he meant. This wasn’t just throwing me out in the woods to see if I would survive. They wanted to see if despite my old age, I was able to kill. To take another man’s life. I gripped the branch hard. I was going to have to do something drastic in order to survive. I was going to have to kill a man. And I was more than prepared for it too. I knew that this man was a bad person. He was worshiping murder of another man. He was worshiping the killing of anybody that didn’t believe in what he did.

We began walking in a circle facing each other. The only combat experience that I had was to beat other homeless people who threatened to take something that belonged to me. Fists. Pipes. We would fight until one of us ran away. But this was different. If I run away, he hunts me down and kills me anyways. He thought that this was a good thing to do. Anyone weaker than him should die. I guess it makes a slight amount of sense. But this isn’t a different species. He isn’t killing for survival. He isn’t killing because he needs their meat. Or their skin. Their bone to use as a weapon. He was killing because he wanted to. And what was it he wanted? He wanted another man to die by his hand. He wanted another man to die because he is weaker. Weaker than him. Weaker than someone he knows.

In my first winter in Colorado, I tried stealing from a homeless man. An old guy. He was sleeping, and I didn’t have a jacket. He had a couple that he wasn’t wearing. I tried taking them, but he was using them like a blanket. When I tried to pick one off his feet, he kicked me hard in the chest and knocked me on my back. He then proceeded to stand up, get on top of me, and punch me in the face. Repeatedly. I was knocked senseless. What was I supposed to do? He had me by the front of my shirt, and he was beating the shit out of me. I named it “old man power.” Essentially, it means that this old guy that you thought would be weak, is strong as shit. For the first few seconds. Then they get tired, and they can’t fight anymore. But when this guy stopped, I didn’t try and beat the shit out of him. I just ran away. I ran the fuck away.

Something about this asshole standing in front of me told me that he hadn’t learned much about old men. That he didn’t know how powerful the first few blows are.

He came at me, full force. One dodge, and he hit a tree. Face first. Like the stupid piece of shit that he is. I took a nice, hard swing at his head. I missed his head, but I hit his neck. He fell down to the ground. The wood snapped in half. No doubt it was because of the hit. I threw both pieces, one at a time at him. And they hit him in his back, hard. He groaned after each one. I walked to the place where he fell. The knife he was holding was sitting by his feet, and I picked it up. I walked the rest of the way up to his head. He was lying like he was trying to go to sleep. On his side. Arms out. I kicked him in the chest, and he coughed. Spit something up that I couldn’t see. It was dark though. Wouldn’t be surprised if it was blood. He lied on his back. “Come on, man. Just let me the fuck go.”

“Sure.” I said as I grabbed him by his shirt. I lifted him up, and made him stand up. Take off the pants.

He took off his heavy ski pants over his boots. I grabbed them and put them on.

“Now the jacket.”

He took of the jacket and gave it to me. I held it on my arm.

“Now the shirt.”

“Come on man. Just let me go.”

“Give me the shirt.” I pressed the knife on its side against his face. It slid down, and the tip of it nipped the bottom of his cheek, causing it to bleed.

He took off his shirt. I put it on, then the jacket.

“Take of the boots and the socks.”

He started tearing up. I started to see them drizzle down his face. He knew what was going on. He thought I was going to take his shit and throw him out into the woods. He was mostly right.

He handed them to me. I leaned in close to him. I put my mouth near his ear and whispered “you shouldn’t have tried to kill me.”

His own knife slipped into his stomach. I slipped it back out. Then back in. Then back out. I think his stomach had at least twelve new holes in it. Not pores. Not new areas for hair. Holes that looked like lines. Each went about 3 inches inside him. By the end, I pushed him to the ground, and he slid off the blade on more time. He made red snow.

When I looked down at him, it was like looking at a crime scene. It was almost like I could see the yellow tape up already. I could hear the police talking about the fact he was stabbed. “See, he was stabbed about ten times at least. We need to get the detectives in here, see.”

I walked toward where he had come from. There was a bag that looked mostly full. I guess it was just in case he had to spend a few days looking for me. I walked toward it, and opened it up. There was a gun, matches, a tarp, and a sleeping bag. The essentials.

With a gun, I could take more guys out. It would be kind of like I saw in Total Recall. Bang bang, you’re dead.

The tarp was made of plastic, good for keeping off water. If it rained, or if snow started to melt off a tree, I could hold it over me.

Sleeping bag is warm.

Matches make fire.

I started with fire. Put some stick s together. Put some dead grass in it. Boom. Fire. No hassle for the most part. I had to learn how to make fire, just so I could make it through winters. There would be paper in the city though. When you lit a fire, there would be more people that came over and held their hands over it. One winter, I got a whole bottle of whiskey. Just because I had a fire going. The guy felt like I deserved something. During the winter, whiskey, vodka, anything liquor, and fire. That was what I had going for me. I usually only had a little bit of cash. A thin little jacket. Not much at all.

I started thinking about my morals. Was murdering another person okay or not? Think about my circumstance. I was an old man who was thrown into the woods by a cult. A cult. Not just any cult either. A cult that believed that they were supposed to be the people that made natural selection happen. Like they were responsible for it.

People in wars have to kill. They have to shoot other people. Those people that they kill are people they have never seen before. They aren’t someone they have even seen before. Some of the people put up a fight, especially if they are being forced to perform hand to hand combat. They sometimes are forced to fight another person to the death, which can last anywhere from 30 seconds to a few hours. I had to fight to the death a few times too. I’ve killed young and stupid college students that had just gotten out of bars and were too drunk to fight back. Just for the $20 that they may or may not have in their wallets.

The Woods: Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I woke up cold. There was a deer to the right. A squirrel to the left. I had no idea where I was. I sat up, quickly. I was in a forest, and it was cold as fuck.

“What the fuck?”

I was totally confused. It was bright, despite the overcast sky. I tried to remember what had happened the night before. They gave me absolutely no indication that they were going to do this to me. At least I slept well the night before. I stood up out of the unnaturally cold bed. It was even more cold as I stood. My new and old jackets had been stripped from me. The outer layers of my pants were gone as well. I was barefooted. There was an inch of snow on the ground.

One time I had a trip like this. Except it was much warmer. I was standing in a tropical forest, and I had a nudey mag in one hand and my dick in the other. I stood there in the middle of the forest and jacked myself off. I thought it would be a good trip, but it turned south when a cougar jumped out at me. Except it was actually a mountain lion since I had no idea what a cougar looked like. When I woke up, it was just some chick trying to have sex with me. It was strange.

I walked around aimlessly. I was confused as fuck. It was somewhere I had never been. I was standing there in the middle of a cold forest, I think near Denver.

I started walking in one direction, hoping that that would help me to find civilization faster. The faster I got there, the faster I could tell the police. I started walking away from the mountain, because I knew I would have to somehow get over it if I had ever made it there.

This gave me ample time to think. I started thinking about why I had started to live in Denver in the first place. I was stranded. Me and some of my friends were on tour with The Grateful Dead and when we stopped here, our van ran out of gas, or oil, or something. None of us knew too much about cars. But one of us knew a guy that lived in Denver, so we went to their house. They were willing to give us a home for the next few nights before we found a way to get back to San Francisco. I guess he didn’t like me though. He was eyeing me down trying to see if I was doing anything that was wrong. I tried to do everything I could right. I used coasters. I made sure the bathroom was clean after I used it. I didn’t even jerk off the whole time we were there.

He still kicked me out.

I found a sign that had a walkie talkie on it. It was staticky. I talked into it. “Hey man, is there anyone there?”

“Yeah, how’s it going John?” said Ferrero.

“Okay, but why am I out here in the cold, man?”

“Well, we’re going to play a game.”

“Yeah, well what’s it called, man.”

“Natural selection.”

He fell silent after I didn’t respond to this. I sat down next to the sign. The sign of which, of course, had a skull and crossbones on it. Natural selection.

In my life I had never been very religious. After I left the house, I started to learn more and more about the way that we had come back to being humans. I was taught everything, from evolution, to intelligent design. I decided myself that Darwin’s theory of natural selection and common ancestry made plenty of sense to me. We all came from a single ancestor who multiplied, and multiplied. This was one of the things that came to mind.

The other was the columbine shooting. The fact that in my state, saying “natural selection” could mean that you want to shoot up a school. I was pretty sure he was going to choose doing the second to me.

I finally decided to respond to him. “What do you mean by that, man?”

“Well, see, this is how this game is going to work. You’ve woken up in the forest here, and you don’t have anything. No food, no water, nothing. You have to survive.”

Survive. Survival. One of the things that humans are best at. We have overcome survival. We have gotten to the point in survival, that survival as a concept could be seen as easy. Like, all you have to do in order to survive was just eat a little, drink some water, and go for a walk with your dog every night.

That isn’t what this man meant. He didn’t mean he wanted me to just go out and find food for myself.

“Are you active in the media, John?”

“Not very.”

“Well, if you were, you might have heard of us. We’re a cult, out here. We believe that we have to keep natural selection going, otherwise the earth will become overpopulated. We can’t let the earth to become overpopulated. Now, we have taken you to play this game of natural selection for a good reason.”

“What kind of reason could you have?”

“What else? If you live, then it will be obvious that you are one step further in human evolution. Then we will pamper you. If you don’t, then it will be obvious that you weren’t fit to our agenda. You weren’t good enough to live.”

I was never the most active person. When I was younger, I stayed with my friends. We would buy liquor from an old man who didn’t give a shit anymore about his life. He didn’t care if he got caught. Once I got older, I was homeless. Me and my friends would beg and spend all the money on gas so we could get to the next LSD test. We would follow bands, hitchhike, and do your typical 70’s hippie shit. Smoke weed. Drink. Not have enough money for food.

As I got even older, I spent most of my time just sitting around. I knew I couldn’t get a job. How would I get a life I was a drunk old man who hadn’t had a job since 1966.

Even that job wasn’t physically demanding. I would stand there, selling people burgers at a diner. Ym only job was to collect cash and set food down on the counter. I wasn’t a strong person, and I knew that if it came down to it, I wouldn’t be able to live in a hand-on-hand combat situation.

I had never shot a gun. Not even when I was supposed to the day before. I wasn’t the best in a survival situation. But I had to do it.

“If you win, you get food, water, and most anything you want for a few months. If not, we just get to keep it.”

“So, I have to live, or die”

“Good luck.”

He blew an air horn into the walkie-talkie, and I covered my ear. It was loud as fuck.

I once again looked around. I saw no roads. No other signs. Nothing. There was no place in the entire forest that was signalling human life.

The last time I was in a situation like this in the wilderness was back in the 80’s I had been stranded in Denver for a few years already and I was getting used to the cold that followed every day. At night it would usually drop below zero. The winter was cold. And I was trying to cope. I got high off of LSD. I was walking around the woods, and I was trying to find my way back out.  When I finally found a road, I was almost hit by a car. It wasn’t his fault. It was dark and I just wandered onto the road.  I was hoping that maybe the same thing could happen here. I just wander onto a road. Then this would all be over.

I assumed that the game had started. I just started wandering around. There was a hill. I thought, what do you do for water. You find a lake. I need to find a lake. I climbed the hill with ease. It wasn’t the hardest thing to do. I’d say it was only about 7 feet high at the top. Once I scaled it, I got a decent look at my surroundings, due to the cliff on the other side. First there were trees, then a lake, then, far off in the distance, there was the city of Denver. Only 50 miles away.

The lake was my best bet for being able to live. If I got there. I could drink water. I could find food. I could live.

My first obstacle would be the cliff. I had to slide my way down, otherwise I would fall, and probably not get up. This was easier said than done, though. I was barefooted. I started thinking again. What would happen once I got out of here? I would get what I wanted, and then I would just be finished with it. I wouldn’t be like that for the rest of my life. They would eventually throw me back onto the streets of  Denver. Plus, how much longer do I have to live?

I was cut short, when I hit the ground. I had fallen about 4 feet, and I hit my leg on a stick. I could feel a gash on it. I looked down at it. “Ah, fuck.”

I lied on the ground, holding the leg in both of my hands. Dirt started to seep into the cut from my hands. It felt horrible. I could feel my pulse as I put my hands farther up my leg to try and stop the bleeding as much as I could. I knew it had to stop at some point. I was hoping sooner than later. A small bit of cloth I found next to me wrapped nicely around it. Despite the fact it was dirty and most likely had a disease riddled onto it, it stayed on my leg for a decent amount of time, and it carried and soaked up any blood that came out of the wound.

I limped to the nearest tree and looked for the sun while I leaned against it, trying to get to a point where I wouldn’t have as much pain in my leg. I propped it up on some rocks. If this sent one  message to me, it was that I probably wouldn’t make it through this ordeal. I would probably die. I would probably just curl up in the cold or bleed out, and that would be it. But, I could at least try.

I stood up, and got a branch off the ground. I had to stay mobile. No matter how bad I got hurt. If I kept moving, I could make it.

I had a general sense of direction. I knew pretty much where the lake was. I could find it if I walked long enough. It was downhill, I was going the opposite direction of the mountain. I had already figured out that I couldn’t scale that shit. And it would be pointless to try now.

The lake was maybe another two kilometers from where I was. I limped, and it ended up taking about two more hours than I wanted it too. When I got there, I immediately stuck my leg in the water. It was cold. That would help me out plenty. I let it sit there while I drank the water straight out of the lake. Since I hadn’t had any water yet that day, I was grateful as fuck.

I was hungry, but I didn’t know how to make a fire. I mean, back in my day, I burned down plenty government buildings and lit plenty of crosses on fire in protest of religion, but I had never learned how to do it without a lighter, or matches at the very least. I had seen all the movies, and I knew that they would always do some stupid shit like rub two pieces of wood together, or already have wood to burn and a good way to use it.

The Woods: Chapter 2

Chapter 2

There was nobody in the room, but I could hear people talking outside. I was mostly sure that I was inside a back room at that bar, but I didn’t totally know.

Eventually, I noticed the handcuffs on me that held my hands behind my back. When I struggled, they seemed to hurt more.

The people on the other side of the door stopped talking once they heard a few knocks on the door. One drew a gun and cocked it. The other asked “you expecting someone.”

They weren’t.

The man who cocked his gun walked over to the door slowly, and as he reached for the handle, it flung open, hurting him. The other man noticed the breach, and pulled the gun from the back of his pants. The man from the door shot him. The man who got hit by the door was shot shortly after, and was left defenseless due to him being crushed up against a door. I could hear him walking toward the room I was in. I realized he might be trying to kill me. When the door opened, it was that guy who gave me the free drinks.

“Oh man, am I glad to see you, man.”

He walked over to knock the handcuffs off me. “How the hell did you get here?”

“Man, I don’t know. I just woke up after drinking at your place man, and then you came in here.”

“Well, we need to get you out of here.”

The room outside of the one I was in had the same purple tint as the club I was in before. There were 80’s records everywhere. I could see the men bleeding out on the ground. Neither of them were dead yet. They were just shaking around freaking out. When we left the room, we left straight out the emergency exit. The alleyway was full of trash and used condoms. It wasn’t exactly a pleasure to look at. This guy seemed to know exactly where to go. I didn’t know where I was. I followed him for what seemed like forever. He kept looking around like he was crazy or something. I was getting more and more scared. The night seemed to eat me alive

When we finally stopped, we were sitting in the ditch I usually sleep in. he finally let me stop. I caught my breath. “What happened, man.”

“These guys are from my old neighborhood. They want money. Whatever they say to you, don’t believe them. I don’t owe them shit.”

“Man, why am I involved, man.”

“They think you work for me.”

“Why the hell do they think that, man.”

“You told them when you got high a few days ago. Why don’t you remember this shit man?”

“I must have blacked out, man. This is a lot to comprehend, man.”

“Well, just try. We’ll make it through this. It’ll be fine.”

He took me out somewhere else, again. I don’t know exactly where, but I assumed it was his. He had the key.

The room was filled with guns. Literally. Filled with guns. I was thinking about everything that had happened instead of this, so it took me a second to realize what was going on. It was a lot of guns.

He handed me one, a small pistol. I don’t know about guns. I don’t know how they work, where to point them. I don’t know shit. “Hey man, I can’t take this.”

“Why not?”

“Man, I don’t know how to use that man.”

“Well just point and shoot.”

“Okay man, but don’t blame me if you get a bullet in the leg, man.”

I was never the most mentally stable. Well, I was mentally stable way before the sixties. I always liked to volunteer my body to those experiments that they did for LSD. It was fun. We would drink that weird watery shit, and listen to a band while we looked at some trippy shit in front of us. You do that enough, it leaves a lasting effect on you.

I ran away with this group because of the LSD, I stole because of the LSD, I got fired from so many jobs because of the LSD, and now, at the age of 74, I’m homeless, helping a sleazy nightclub owner that I don’t know very well because of the LSD.

“Alright, these guys are relentless, and you just need to shoot first and ask questions later. If they’re holding a gun, shoot.”

“Okay man, I just hope I don’t die man.”

The men showed up quickly. Twenty of them were outside the door before you could say a word. He didn't talk. I guess he thought I was going to die or some shit. Or maybe he was going to die. Or both.

“Ferrero, we know you’re in there. Just come out and we’ll let you go.”

“Fuck you, man. You know that that deal going south wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do shit wrong.”

“You don’t get it, Ferrero. We know that. You can Just come out. You ain’t in trouble anymore.”

“Hey, fuck you, man.”

Ferrero shot three bullets from his cover next to the door of the apartment. I could hear them hit cars, break glass, and cause havoc for the people that were only about 30 feet away. Ferrero wasn’t slow to reloading, and put another clip into his gun with haste.

“Alright then,” was the last thing I heard the men on the other side of that wall get shot. They screamed. They yelled. I heard metal scratching and clanking together. Both me and Ferrero were untouched. He grinned at me.

“What was that, man?”

“Those were my guys.”

When we looked out the door, we saw the trucks shining lights in our eyes. They were waving in the dark night, and when I exhaled, I could see my breath in the beams. They seemed to fill me with a warm feeling.

One of them got down from the back of the truck closest to us. The man was about the same height as me, so I would estimate about 5’10”. He seemed pretty happy overall. He wore a leather jacket that had a hole on the left shoulder pad. You could see his white shirt under it.

We all were breathing heavily in the car. The heater was getting hot, and all of us were as well. My toes slowly grew back feeling and I was getting happier. Both the jackets that I wore were beginning to get sweaty, which was not good, but I didn’t care. In the moment, I was unable to care. Whatever was happening was good. I didn’t care.

We stopped in front of a warehouse after what I assume was about ten minutes of time. We were just outside of the city. You could still see the lights in the air. A clock setting on the wall was reading 4:00 am. I was usually already passed out in a ditch by this time of night. It’s funny. When I was first starting LSD, my closest friends warned me that I would be sleeping in the ditches in the future if I kept on with it. They had this big old intervention. I could never get into that bullshit. I was going to do what I wanted, and I didn’t care what anybody said about it.

I was ungrateful to be outside again. The sweat on my jacket was making me cold as hell. I was walking slowly, as the snow in front of me was just about knee high. When we finally went into the warehouse, it was seemingly full of space heaters. The place was so warm, I knew I had to take my jacket off right when I walked in.

“Well, here, I’ll take that for you,” said Ferrero’s friend. He seemed nice, which seemed strange, considering I assumed he was behind the killings that I had just witnessed not ten minutes ago.

“Okay, man, but don’t get it all dirty, I just bought it today.”

“Don’t worry.”

He had one of his goons take me into the next room over, and I just plopped myself onto a chair that just seemed way too soft.

He left the room and it was silent. I had some time to think about what had happened since I had blacked out. I remembered dancing, drinking, and overall having fun. It reminded me of the old LSD tests that they did back in my twenties. We would listen to a band that would play live and dance around. It was always a lot of fun, because they had these cool little paintings where you could just stare at them all day, and it would keep changing.

I remember sex. This girl was bending over a white bed and it looked like she was having a great trip, because she was just loving my not that-big-cock. She was so fucking loud. That was another thing that I always thought about with those LSD tests.  There would always be these chicks who would be the breeders. They were high just like anybody else. And once one of your friends told you where they were, oh man, you would just be waiting around to get back in line to fuck. They didn’t care. They were getting high and having sex. Who would mind that.

I was interrupted when the door opened and another man sat down in the room. He offered his hand, and I took it. “Well, how have you been since this little debauchery?”

“Well, man, I ain’t as shaken up about it as you would think.”

“Really? Well, that’s good to hear. Usually, people aren’t too open to talking after something like that happens to them.”

“Well, man, I guess I'm just too mellow to be freaking out about anything, man.”

“Well, that’s just fine and dandy.”

We got to talking, and he explained more about what was going on with this whole “warehouses” and “excessive murder” stuff. He was a really nice man. They let me sleep in that warehouse that night. It seemed like they had everything in there. Food. water. Beds. it was a bum’s paradise. The warehouse was full of people dressed in respectable clothing. It looked like it was the fucking 1800’s in that warehouse. I finally caught up with Ferrero.

“Hey man, this is a pretty nice place. You got, like, everything here, huh?”

“Hey, yeah, it’s pretty cool. You wanna see where you’ll sleep tonight.”

“Okay, dude.”

He led me to one of the only beds that wasn’t a bunk. It was a twin size, but I was grateful to have it. It has been years since I had had a bed to myself. It was hard for me to wrap my head around it. It was comfortable too. Most people would probably not find it all that comfortable, but I had been sleeping on concrete for years.