(substance p)

Stella.

This guy, you know, the one pointing the big-fuck gun at me, I know he is, no bullshit, going to kill me. This man with the gun, if he is not a deranged murderous psychopath, well then he’s giving one hell of a performance. It’s his eyes, the way they look in my rearview mirror, like the eyes of a severed head holding on to its last lingering brain waves. He is hot like when you open a convection oven and get that blast of air. I can feel the heat of his body from the back passenger seat.

The only thing between us that matters is the gun.
He moves his mouth, “Stella…….Stella Moore” but the words come after. As he snatches the name badge from my chest, quicker than what seems humanely possible. Between the revolver and the terrifying presence of this stranger in my parked car, I should fucking get out and run.
But I don’t.
“What do you want from with me?” I say, the words reverb throughout the car in a pathetic echo.
“Drive” he says before my words have time to hit his ears.

And as if I already know the drill I’m driving through the hospital parking lot, playing taxi driver to the criminally insane. Next stop your brutal murder, a statistic for your parents to see on the local news.

As we pull out of the parking garage I glance at him through the rearview mirror. What he’s wearing looks like a security uniform of some sort. My back seat must be soaked with all the sweat pouring out of him. His face is flushed red and covered with bumps possibly Rosacea or Keratosis Pilaris, maybe. I run two red lights studying this man in my mirror but he doesn’t notice, must be too busy sweating and planning how to dismember me.
“Where the fuck are we going?” I say, sounding more pissed off than petrified. The eyes glance my way, glossy and wild and he points to an empty parking lot just ahead at my right.
“Right there” he points with a shaking hand.

Its 4a.m. and I’m going to die.

I pull the car into the empty….where ever.

Two weeks out of Med. School and my career is over.

I put it in park.

I’m not going to miss some people.

I turn off the engine.

They’ll need dental records to identify me for sure.

I glance up at the rearview and he’s gone!

Before there’s time turn the key I feel it, the sharp pinch of a syringe jabbed deep into the left side of my neck.

This is Dr. Stella Moore, your driver and we have arrived. And then there’s nothing but darkness heavy and all around me.

I am surrounded by nothing but smooth blinding white, the cylinder shape of a tunnel that stretches forever in a sea of whiteness. I turn my head to see I am sitting at the end of this seamless tube, no where to go behind me. The chair I am bound to does not rock, the gag in my mouth taste like iron – like the copper taste of blood. And then I hear it, the faint sound of what seems like a train in the distance. Growing louder, and then I wake up.

_________________________________________________________________

Jack.

Something’s got to happen, Fuck, please let something happen.

This is a dangerous scrap of a city and the worst time of year to be limping through the heart of it. But that’s exactly what I am doing at 3am on Saturday December 15, 2019. I state the date and time because this is the night that will lay the foundation for events so bizarre and macabre it challenges everything I thought I knew about this world, life, whatever.

Somebody see me, Fuck I’m here, come get me, I’m weak and...

I am trying to appear as appetizing as possible to the soulless, voracious predators that plague this place. There are twenties pouring out of my pockets, my button-down is secured safely under my cardigan only its collar peaking through around my neck to catch a glimpse of the carnage. The pockets that hold the cash belong to a very obviously expensive pair of slacks, the shoes that carry me into the darkness shine like an opal eggplant