The hiss, the sound was a hiss, like from a snake made out of free weights and chrome.
The sound never stopped because cars never stopped driving that stretch of freeway, coming out of that giant cloverleaf, accelerating.
At the dentist’s office there was an aerial shot of the cloverleaf.
Made it look like an engineering marvel.
Ricky Lipscomb liked that picture when he was a kid.
The dentist’s office was the first place he was ever high.
Ricky picked at one of the staples in his knee, tapped his breast pocket.
One last Oxy and a baby dick joint he got from Ashy Fuqua.
The headlight/taillight combo on either side of the freeway was making him a little stoned.
He swung his good leg, his right one, back and forth, lazily, didn’t want to draw too much attention, have the cops think he was gonna jump from the pedestrian overpass, throw him in the psych ward.
Ricky just wanted the joint and the last Oxy, but also he was waiting because he didn’t want the last joint and the last Oxy to be over.
In the morning he was checking into Muirfield Substance Treatment Center.
Had such a good rep that Valium Vince Morton and SuzyPig called it Curefield.
Ricky wanted to go, but he didn’t want to go, nobody wants to go.
He never wanted to eat another Oxy again, except this last one.
He had reservations at Muirfield, like it was a hotel, but it also seemed more like a fancy psych ward.
Maybe I should jump.
Closing his eyes, he let the freeway hiss take over, though he swore he could still see red streaks.
The noise was so present it felt like it could gain decibels until it exploded.
The noise now lacerated with another noise, a new noise that pulsed closer.
Looking to his right he saw an odd shadow.
“Hey, my mom is draggin’ you bloody right now. She thinks you went to The Tommy Gun.”
The noise had been Waylon’s skate board. Waylon’s mom was Ricky’s older sister, ShariBeth.
Waylon kick flipped his deck into his hand and blew a snotrocket through the chainlink fence, down on the freeway.
He noticed Ricky playing with the staples in his lower leg.
“Can I have your Yamaha while you’re in the junkie hospital?”
Ricky laughed through his nose. Right quick, before he changed his mind, he popped the last Oxy.
“You watched your dad bring it home in pieces, right?”
Waylon nodded.
“I wanna fix it. Can I rock it when I fix it?”
“That thing is beyond you fixing it.”
Ricky rubbed the baby dick joint like a genie lamp and regretted eating what he hoped was his last Oxy. Maybe.
“I’ll learn. Don’t snuff my gray matter, Uncle Pills.”
“Siddown.”
Waylon did a little spin for an imaginary audience and sat.
“They built this freeway, this Cloverleaf thing, when I was a kid.”
“Tight, Boom. I know this story. Pop Pop sold the gasket company you were gonna inherit to make room for the freeway and cheese wiped the money on a video store.”
Ricky tried to laugh but it got caught somewhere, hard.
“See that over there, southwest, where it’s dark?”
Waylon nodded again, spinning a wheel on his skate with his hand.
Ricky lit the plump little joint and hit it like it was oxygen after a drowning scare.
“That was a retreat, retirement sanctuary for old nuns.”
“Know that too,” Waylon said,“the sign is etched into the archway that’s still there.”
Ricky said.” There’s an old statue of the Virgin Mary, way in the back. Edible mushrooms grow near the base of the statue.”
“You get hi-viz in your head and dance with Jesus, Rickdog?”
Ricky pulled his legs back from the gaps in the chainlink.
“Not that kind of mushroom, Way. Don’t know what they’re called but you can eat ‘em.”
“This got a point to—“
“Yeah, Thrashy,” Ricky said, climbing up the chainlink,letting the pain from the stretched skin near the staples tickle him alive. “It does.”
“Don’t jump, Rick.”
“I’d never purposely die on this freeway, Way. I never wanted to purposely die. I wanted to die by accident a million times.”
Ricky hopped down, jets of pain shooting up the leg the Yamaha landed on. Hospital wouldn’t write him a scrip for shit, two opioid ODs already on his chart. He knew every house, every record store, every bar, every sideways freak that could materialize a handful of pills, didn’t need the hospital but was still pissed at ‘em.
It was inside out now. He liked to feel the pain, liked to remind himself that he danced in a cloud above where the pills could reach.
He was both addicted and immune, a loser zaphead staring down at a cement mirror and a Stratospheric Dope Tolerance God.
Waylon said “I’m gonna go tell mom you’re not at the bar.”
Below them, the hiss sound morphed into the agonized wailing of brakes, then metal and composite fibers commingling in a way neither engineer nor speed intended.
Ricky wanted to tell his nephew, wanted to tell the world, that freeways and statues both had living things crawling out from underneath them, things that were damaged but refused to not be alive.
Waylon Warren and Ricky Lipscomb looked down at the freeway, Waylon staring at the wrecked cars, wondering if people would emerge soon.
Ricky was watching the cars that swerved left and kept going, kept the hiss hissing and the headlights and red lights streaming.
This creature was alive, and could not be stopped.
******
Officially six years publishing stories on Substack.
Thank you, all of you, for being part of it. Much more to come.
*****
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