Author's Note: This was written over the course of several months. When I started work on it, I had intended it to be this really cool sardonic piece regarding ontology by means of Christian theology. As the weeks progressed and I got busier, however, I ended up losing track of this idea and it shifted into a pointlessly cynical and aimless saunter though pages of otherwise meaningless text. I tried to compensate for this by outright stating the fact that the whole ordeal was pointless, but that still struck me as a cop-out. In the end, it's surprisingly little more than that; meaningless lines of text with a plot that says everything is pointless, and all the while I'm randomly transposing Christian symbolism into this sack of garbage as if to prove something. Oh well.

Turns out, I did actually rewrite the monologue at the end. It's better than it was before, but the whole story reeks of inadequacies that are too big to fix without just completely erasing the story from both this site, this computer, and my brain.

Drawl

“You know, I didn’t even know it was supposed to snow today.”

The comment is vague, and while I stare out the windshield at the obnoxious traffic that moves thirty miles an hour down a three line highway, I come to the conclusion that my cohort is continually uninformed on a relatively consistent basis—which is morbidly ironic in some ways more than others.

“They’ve been saying so for the past, like, couple days or so.” My neck hurts, and I think it’s from the way I’m sitting in the seat. Traffic crawls. Snow hits the windshield, melts from the defroster, is swiped away by the wipers.

“Who has?”

“The people. The TV. The people on TV.” I shrug. “Basically everyone.”

“You didn’t.” He leans back in the seat and closes his eyes. I want to do the same. The glare is giving me a headache—this dull throb is pounding against the back of my skull.

“I assumed you knew.”

“Well, I didn’t know.”

“And now you do.” I put my turn signal on really only to see if anyone will give me a space to merge. “Maybe if you read more, or just listened, or kind of took your head out of your hole of a world, you’d realize this.” A space opens up, but I click the signal off and stay in the lane. I think the driver flicks me off as he drives by.

“Let’s stop for food someplace. I’m hungry as hell.” I take a long look at him. He still has his eyes closed. Traffic crawls.

“What do you feel like?”

“I dunno.” He shrugs. “A soda. A taco. Tuna fish. Cream cheese. Herb dusted salmon soufflé. It all sounds good.” He sighs and opens his eyes, staring at the ceiling. The guy in front of me puts his breaks on and I need to downshift to keep from ramming into him. “I could really go for a bagel.”

Our exit is coming up, and I’m already in the right lane, but some guy in a black Toyota Avalon flies up the shoulder, almost taking off my side view mirror. “Shit!”—I’m cursing as the car rocks—“He must have been doing seventy.”

“What are you doing?” My cohort shifts in his seat to crane at my console.

“Like, eight. This is almost stop and go.” And my clutch leg is starting to ache—we’ve been like this for the past twenty minutes. “Goddamn highway.”

“Goddamn Toyota Avalon.” He shifts again and leans against the window. “But uh, I really feel like a bagel. I want a bagel.”

I nod. “Then we’ll get a bagel.”

I get into the exit lane, and as one of the stacked cars starts to merge into the same lane, he shouts at me—“Mike, watch out man!”

The breaks slam but don’t lock. The shitty CD player skips and repeats “of the damned!—of the damned!—of the damned!” before starting randomly on track three. After we are silent, “Gabe, I know how to drive.”

We are silent a little longer, and the car that cut me off starts moving finally. He sees the look I’m giving the driver of the car. “Do it,” he says. “Do it, come on.”

“No,” I say, and try to think of a reason not to. “It wouldn’t be right. Besides, He said not to abuse this shit.”

“No, He said He never wanted to see the two of us again and that He was going into retirement.” Gabe leans his elbow on the windowsill and rests his head in its palm, motioning with his other hand. “If He didn’t want us to abuse this shit, He wouldn’t have given us garbage equipment to work with. So come on, He knows whether you’d do it or not, can’t be like you’ll fuck up any master plan.”

I sigh.

“So do it.”

I imagine the car in front of us—this red Acura—skidding out of control and flying into the ditch by the side of the road, gas tank blowing up, flames engulfing the vehicle, driver being burned alive as his flesh melts off of his face, screaming because he can’t get the door open with severed hands. The vision is gone as I blink. Traffic crawls.

And I say nothing.

“Wuss.” Gabe looks back out the window, probably at his own reflection.

After awhile, we’re on this obscure back road, the red Acura still in front of us—we’re flying; forty in a twenty five zone, the effect amplified by the poor visibility and the ice on the roads. Gabe is laughing as the scenery flies past the windows, blackness quickly engulfing the outside world as the sun descends below the horizon.

The road straightens out, and the red Acura is pinned up against a tree. There is blood spattered on the inside of the visible window.

Gabe looks at me with a wild grin.

“I didn’t do that,” I say.

“I know you didn’t.” He grins again and twists in the seat as we go by, trying to get a better look. He lets out a laugh, and I see in my rearview the door open and a body slump out, but we go around another bend and the scene is suddenly far behind us.

After we are silent for another indefinable amount of time, “Ever wonder why we’re here?”

Gabe looks at me from the reflection in the window. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“What?”

“This is a trick question—a test? Come on. We’re here because the Big Guy doesn’t feel like doing anything anymore, so we gotta clean up all of this shit.” He rolls his neck around, head bobbing against the headrest. “Why, what’d you think we were here for? Philosophical introspection?”

My defense is a shrug. “I don’t know, I just thought—hey, I was just trying to make conversation.”

Gabe rolled his eyes. “Well make better conversation. Don’t be dumbass.” He looks back out the window. “I still want my bagel.”

“Well, it’s just…” I gesticulate with my hands, but after I come up with a loss for words, I replace them on the steering wheel. “I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.”

He shrugs. “So what?” He sighs disinterested, staring out the window. “I’ve been like that for like, ever. As long as I can remember.”

“That’s ironic.”

“Yeah it is,” he says, “Most of that stuff I’m known for, you know, I totally just pulled out of my ass.” He waves his hand around. “Yeah, the Big Guy told me the basic gist of what he wanted a few times… I just uh, elaborated, filled in the blanks, made a few loopholes—improvised most of it on the spot.” He laughs. “And these guys—these guys here believed it! Still believe it! I love this town!”

“That’s sort of what I had figured all along.” The lackluster statement reminds me of my own enormous sense of redundancy. “The problem is,” I start again, “it’s that, well, you’ve been doing this kind of stuff—you’ve had this kind of ambivalent attitude all along, but you’ve still accomplished something. Still contributed to the overall goal, the Plan—”

Gabe’s laughter fills the car. “You think we have a goal?” he chokes out between gasps and fits, “You think we have a plan?”

“Well—yeah, I mean, it’s kind of stupid, and our leader’s sort of just gone off to do whatever, but still have a goal, right? Something to look forward to?” He quiets down, and we’re both silent as the statement hangs in the air. Only the engine hums.

“…But we’re all going to die, so who cares about some stupid plan?”

The realization is a brick wall. “We can die?”

He blinks. “You’re the one with the expertise in the field. Besides, the Man in Black died, so I mean…” He trails off, and I’m left in the dust. Scenery flies by.

“Well, shit.” We are silent for another long while, and my stomach feels very nauseas. “Thanks for uh, making me aware of my own mortality, there. Real uplifting.”

Gabe shrugs. “You brought it up. Where’s this bakery place, anyhow? And if it’s any consolation, we’re still famous.”

“But nobody recognizes us.”

“Moot point. We’re famous.”

I’m sighing before I can catch myself, and the road takes a quick turn. If Gabe notices, he says nothing, returning his stare out the window. It seems like he’s sighing as well.

“Look,” he says, “celebrity status and mortality aside, I sincerely doubt there was any big ‘Master Plan’ to begin with.” He looks out the windshield, looks at me. “I mean, if there was, why would He leave in the middle of things? I could understand killing off Morrison or Kerouac or shit, Elvis, but to just up and abandon your own project like the way He’s doing… It’s almost irrefutable proof that He either doesn’t know what He’s doing or that He’s stopped caring and something else has piqued his interest. You know how His attention span is.”

“But He didn’t kill off Morrison or Kerouac. Or Elvis, I don’t think, but that’s a whole other point entirely.”

“Well, yeah,” Gabe is looking at me again. I have the urge to put the turn signal on, but I don’t. The road continues straight ahead, snow buffeting against the windshield and flying off into the black void of night. “If He had, we wouldn’t be on this escapade to begin with. We’d be chilling it easy down in Malibu or the Azores.” The road is unnoticed beneath these wheels.

I’m starting to get impatient with this road. It’s taking too long to get to the end. I say nothing.

“That’s us. The fuck-up clean up committee. The trio of triumph. Milton would be proud.”

Remorse hits my gut. “Too bad there’s only the two of us this time.”

“Yeah, for now. We’ll meet up with Ray at the next roadhouse, right before the action gets started.” Gabe has returned his gaze to the window. The stereo chokes. Gabe rolls his eyes. “And man, change this shit, will you? I’m tired of listening to eighties’ power metal bullshit. Fucking Dickenson here can kiss my ass. Or Harris. Or whoever the fuck.”

“You know where the CDs are.”

He rummages around inside the glove compartment and pulls out the clamshell, flips through it for a little while.

“Ah,” he exclaims. “Ah, here, this is the heavy duty. The Countess herself would have been proud of this group.” Loud music blares through the stereo, distorted by the cheap underproduction, guttural vocals reminiscent of a man being slowly eviscerated, guitars that sound more like sonic razors than stringed instruments, drums that just hammer away at the inside of my skull. This is good music.

“Kind of ironic,” I mutter.

“Oh, and music with inferred occult themes isn’t?” Gabe asks, words again bouncing off the inside of the window. “At least these guys blatantly sung about Satan and all that bullshit. None of this dance-around-the-topic Number of the Beast crap. Man that pisses me off. Men sounding like girls. Gender confusion. Glam, 80’s, whatever, bullshit.”

There is an intersection up ahead, and even through the snow I can see the red dots that scream for us to stop the car. Beneath the severely distorted guttural noise, the engine slows and degenerates from a roar to a hum, the road goes from quiet to silent, the sound of snow against the back window is almost heard. Gabe sighs.

“I think the bagel joint is right up here,” I mumble, but at the same time, Quarthon lets loose a barrage of sonic discharge over the speakers, and I’m unsure as to whether Gabe hears me. If he does, he says nothing.

It is a storefront place, the only occupied area in the whole plaza. The lights are on, and a figure is silhouetted against the fluorescent radiance. He is donned in a trench coat, collar flipped up around his neck, shivering in the cold. I can see his breath come out in torrents as I pull up and turn off the car.

“Looks like we found Rich,” Gabe says, stepping out of the car and slamming the door.

“Rich?” the figure asks.

“You know we can’t speak your name out in public.” Gabe’s reply is curt, as he steps past him and into the bakery.

I nod my hello and he shakes my hand. “It’s been awhile, Mike.”

“I hadn’t been expecting you to show up on this one,” I mutter, holding the door for him. He nods his thanks, shuffling in, breathing heavily. “Kinda figured the result was a foregone conclusion—no need for an observer, is there?”

He shrugs. “Got nothing better to do, now that the old man has up and gone senile on us.”

I nod again and sit down near the windows. Rich sits down across from me. Gabe is still at the counter, waiting for the man. My head is killing me. The bakery smells like a combination of a grandmother’s kitchen and the alley behind a greasy Chinese take-out.

The need to break the silence hits my gut. “How’s Ray doing?”

Rich shrugs, and I follow his gaze into the blackness of the back-country night, snow drifting down and swirling in the murky void. “Dunno, really,” he sighs, and I hear a small bell chime in the background. “I’m sure he’s been just as well off as you guys have been, considering the state of affairs. With the boss’s retirement, a power vacuum has opened up; who knows what’s going to happen now? As it is, all my information networks are going down the drain faster than used bathwater. So much for quality intelligence.”

The chiming bell grows in volume and repetition, and it occurs to me that the bell is actually at the counter behind me, and the ringer is none other than Gabe. “Hey,” I say. He doesn’t hear me, so I say it again; “Hey, cut that out!”

He looks over at me and shrugs. After a few more minutes, he leaps over the counter and takes a few dozen bagels, throws them all in a paper bag, and before he leaps back onto our side, he pauses at the cash register as if trying to quell some internal struggle.

Rich presses his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose, clenches his eyes shut. Outside, snow flakes phase through the reflections of ourselves in the glass.

“Look, don’t bother.”

Gabe shrugs again, and tosses himself over the counter. He lands with the whap of his rubber soles hitting the linoleum and I decide that I have to use the bathroom.

The face that stares back from its safety behind the pane of glass is worn and thin, deep bags of black and blue sagging beneath yellow-tinted whites of eyes. I’m developing a balk spot just above my left ear. I notice for the first time that this jet-black hair actually isn’t jet-black anymore; streaks of silver and grey wash through it like the deluge, and the parts still blessed with color are faded and closer to a cheap-mahogany-stain-on-that-old-dresser-in-the-corner-that’s-covered-with-dust hue than actual black or even dark brown. This thought petrifies me, but I have a job to do, so I just settle on throwing some cold water on my face and using the sleeve of my shirt to wipe the droplets off.

As I come back into reality, the door swinging shut behind me, apathy returned and settled back into its comfortable spot in the hollow of my gut, I notice Rich and Gabe staring dispassionately out the window. A gaggle of obnoxiousness clustered around the counter is adorned with tresses of dyed blonde curls and pink. The attendant, a roundish man with a greasy mustache, laughs with them as they hurriedly pick out and then change their minds about what bagels to get.

“Fucking figures,” Gabe says, seeing me in the black reflection of the glass. “As soon as I get these, the guy comes back out from wherever-the-hell and services those mannequins.”

“Let’s go,” I tell him. “I don’t like it here.”

“Agreed.”

The two of them rise. The chattering monsters screech behind us, a sound that might have been a giggle. The door swings shut behind us, and it’s cold again.

“Rich, you with us on this one?” Gabe asks.

He shakes his head. “Not this time. I was just here to provide intelligence, but shit, what the hell do I know anymore?” He slumps his shoulders and wanders off into the dark. “The old man retires and everything goes to hell,” he calls out from over his shoulder. “I guess that’s where we were headed anyhow.”

I place the key in the ignition as soon as the doors of the contraption slam shut. Quarthon’s visceral screams cry out of the speakers yet again. Gabe munches on a bagel. As we drive on, I can’t help but think that this whole mission is futile and meaningless.

The snow gets heavier as we drive through the night. It isn’t long until our destination looms before us; a quaint-looking roadside diner, neon sign in the semi-darkened window that screams into the abyss “CLOSED”, a lone fluorescent light warding off the shadows inside. Two cars are already in the parking lot when we pull in.

I could recognize Ray from anywhere. We don’t even need to tap on his windshield when we get out, but Gabe does anyway.

“About time you guys got here,” he says, getting out of his car. We slam our doors simultaneously. “Ready to do this?”

I almost suggest flipping a coin before we walk in, just to decide who gets to pull the trigger, but I know that the decision would be met with resentment.

Gabe goes in first. Ray leans against the side of the building. I pull out the .45 and check the chamber.

I can hear the only occupant from my position in the snow.

“Oh, hello. I wasn’t expecting you.”

Gabe’s voice is laced with tiredness and apathy I wish I still had. “You?” A pause punctuates his rhetoric. “I should have known.”

I step inside, and I realize right away that all of us had just been thrown to the dogs. The person I’m about to shoot has a smile on his face, tired, wrinkled, terribly familiar, because he was the one that gave us this job to begin with. I almost want to say something, like “How could you?” or “What the hell?” or even just to utter his name in desperation, like all the cool and smooth-talking protagonists do, but I find my brain unable to cooperate. I feel like this should be an epic, a conclusion to something so monstrous and gargantuan that the period at the end of the last sentence is a defining moment of clarity. That’s what I want, but all I get is that smile—that wrinkled old smile, staring back at me, at Gabe, at Ray outside. The calm eyes, that smile, he knows it all, he knows what’s coming, he wants it, and none of us understand why.

The smile is still there even after the casing ejects out of my gun and falls to the floor, rolling across the tile until coming to rest by the counter. The smile is still there as chunks of his head decorate the wall behind him. The smile is still there as his ruined body slumps down in the seat, and what’s left of his brains oozes out of the hole and splatters next to him.

It’s a cavernous and prolonged silence that follows.

As I stare down at the corpse, I can’t help but wonder; is this all there is? Senseless violence, needless death—needless existence, actually—random events chained together only by shared coincidences and insufferable illusion of choice? I can’t help but feel this dawning comprehension, this understanding, this enlightenment that overcomes me and leaves me in a morbid state of despair; we were playthings. That’s all we were—we were yanked around on chains, pitted against each other, for what? For nothing.

For no reason.

Everything happened not with the illusion of chance, but with the illusion of purpose. We created meanings just to cope with the sheer, incomprehensible magnitude of the depravity. We couldn’t accept the fact that there was no real purpose, no real truth. We couldn’t accept that everything was purely random and coincidental. Most of us couldn’t accept the fact that there was nothing hinging on our own shallow conceptions of success or failure.

We wanted our existences to mean something, so we invented arbitrary truths to satisfy the hole inside our shallow little souls.

Ray breaks the silence. “Yeah, he’s dead. Guess I wasted a trip, but it isn’t like I had anything else to do.”

“So that’s it?” I ask. I don’t know why I’m asking this.

Gabe nods, uninterested. “Yeah, looks like it.” He sighs. “Somehow,” he adds, “‘anticlimactic’ doesn’t quite describe the vibes I’m getting.”

Ray looks at me with sullen eyes. “So, now what?”

I say the only thing I can.

“How the hell should I know?”