Bad Things

I give up and stagger up and away from the toilet bowl and out of the sterile bathroom in which I've spent... how much time? Must have been about forty minutes--it's just past four according to my watch. Forty minutes wishing my now completely empty insides would stop convulsing and retching and trying to turn themselves inside out. They won't stop; they would rather punish me. It is revenge.

I'm sick but have sense, unlike senseless Pete who is lying on the lawn on top of a girl. I know Pete would get up if he could. But he can't get up--he's senseless, dead weight, pretending to be caught up in the euphoric bliss that the girl he's lying on's shrieking laughs betray. No, he can't get up, and I'm not enjoying the sight of it, because I left the toilet in the hope that I could convince Pete, our designated driver, to drive us home. Groan. Mark is also looking on to the scene, but he's laughing, ha ha ha!
"I think you should drive," I tell Mark.
"Ha ha ha," he continues.
So I bend over Pete, give him a tap on the shoulder, and ask as politely as possible for the car keys. Surprisingly, he pauses his slurred snogging and hands them to me. And then carries on where he left off. I pass the keys on to Mark and head for the nearest bush where I retch dryness out into the darkness.

We're at the shiny car that Pete borrowed from his father earlier. Pete seems fine with the idea of Mark driving. He can't speak, but he's acquiescent. Mark has the giggles. I don't. What I have is doubt over whether I want to carry on. Should I end it now? Splintered teeth and skull fragments come to mind. At least Mark is driving.

Oh, he's driving! He's driving a rally through the dark and the engine noise would be too loud for us to hear each other shouting even if Pete's death metal weren't drowning it out. Mark is still giggling.
"Slow down there son," I shout from my position on the back seat.
He's still giggling. And it's contagious, because Pete's started giggling too. I can't hear them giggle, just see them. It's as though they're trying to giggle, but all that's coming out is death metal.

Giggling stops; hand twist the steering wheel sharply to the right and screeching starts and bodies brace for impact and then comes a sickening crack and lurch up and a huge thud down and a crash.

I'm staring at the car from the outside, as is Pete, as is Mark. We're all okay. Good and fucked. Both Pete and Mark have been overcome by a sudden soberness.
"Are you okay?" I ask.
Mark is bleeding from a cut on his forehead. My mouth is bleeding. And my need to retch hasn't been cured.

Mark sits down on the curb and lets his head fall into his hands.
"It's only a matter of money," says Pete, trying to comfort him.

Only a matter of money. It's four-thirty in the morning and Pete's father's car isn't so shiny now that it's connected to someone's garden wall. What now?

We could phone someone to bail us out, but the cellphone
hasn't been invented yet so we're left, Pete and I, with the option of ringing at people's gates (not the gate belonging to the wall we crashed into of course). We ring at people's gates at four-thirty in the morning in this place so dark and dead silent, so close to the edge of the world. We are approaching hell. We ring and we wait and we go to the next gate and we ring and we wait and we go to the next gate and we ring and we wait and we're getting closer and closer to utter despair.

The grass is blue; the road is black. Two silhouettes skulk from one imposing gate to the next; one further shadow is hunched over on the curb, head dropped in hands, groaning a stream of filth from beyond the crack.