I even thought of blowing my own brains out. 

 

I still do from time to time.

 

"Abort Christ," said Horse.

 

"What?"

 

"That's what it says," he explained, pointing out the words.

 

We smoked a bowl while watching the river sludge past; a brown, thick current through dead banks.  It resembled everything I knew about Cobain and his music; the low, eternal moan of a disgruntled earth . . . the essential struggle toward purpose. 

 

"It's so fucking surreal," I said. 

 

"What?"

 

"Everything . . . being here, I guess."

 

"How much further to Seattle."

 

"I don't know . . . a couple hundred miles."

 

"That girl you should've fucked.  Do you think she's really gonna let us crash at her place?"

 

"Tanya.  I don't know.  I guess I should have called first."

 

"It doesn't matter," he said. "I'll sleep under a fucking bridge."

 

"I haven't been to Seattle for a long time . . . not since dad left.  Mom's afraid to leave the house."

 

Horse knew the story.  How dad couldn't stand to be around us after Chloe died.  It was because he couldn't stand to watch what would inevitably deteriorate.  Now he lived somewhere down in California; San Diego I think.  He sends me a card with a check inside for my birthday every year, but I haven't heard his voice in five. 

 

"I've been there once," said Horse.  "But I was too young to remember."

 

"It's a cool place," I said.

 

Horse looked at me.  His dark eyes shimmered softly in the afternoon shadows.  There were times when he looked absolutely broken, but not long before something would tighten in him, turning his face to stone. 

 

"You okay?"

 

"Huh," he said.

 

"I don't know."

 

This place was weird to me; vivid in it's realness.  Cobain was the greatest anti-hero I knew.  Horse would argue that the title belonged to Albert Camus or Fyodor Dostoevsky.  Maybe I was shallow.  Maybe it was because Cobain came from a town the same as ours; dealt with the same jock assholes; took the same drugs and thought hard about how he was going to get the fuck out. 

 

"I'm starved," said Horse.

 

Neither of us had eaten since Seaside.  Leaving there was like being shot out of a cannon.  I explained what had gone on the night before.  Horse said he'd dreamed of death and resurrection.  'It probably won't make a difference when her dad and brother show up,' I'd explained.
 
"Just a little while longer," I said.
 
"You're the one in the fucking hurry."
 
"Just a while."

 

- - - - - - -

 

 "You ever seen a dead body?" Horse wanted to know.
 
"Just Chloe," I said.
 
We were back in the cemetery, sharing a joint.  I was getting used to the smell, the taste . . . it helped me forget things.  Horse had a twenty-two ounce Mickey's screwed between his legs.  He'd stolen it from Safeway.  He handed it to me.  I took a swig and handed it back.  "Thanks."
 
"Do you want to dig up Chloe?"
 
My father had gone away and I never really saw mom, except in the mornings before school, but only briefly.  I didn't give a fuck about school or anything else.  While other kids were joining sports teams and thinking about their first cars, Horse and I were hanging out in a graveyard escaping reality.
 
"Are you fucking out of your mind?"
 
"Who knows?  Maybe it'll make you feel better."

 

Horse had strangled a cat that afternoon on the way home from school.
 
"No way," I said.
 
"We'll, then, how about someone random?"
 
"What's the point?" My head was buzzing. 
 
"Boredom," he explained.
 
"What do you want to do with it?"
 
"Look at it," he said. "Does your mom have a camera?"
 
"I think."
 
"We can take pictures . . . show them to girls at school . . . really fuck with their heads." Horse's laughter was knife sharp, or maybe it was just the state of my head.  I couldn't tell.
 
"No one's gonna know." 
 
We only came at twilight . . . the doorway into night.  We would stay until midnight, sometimes longer, talking until our tongues grew weary; growing into one another.
 
"Maybe I just think it's stupid."
 
"Most people joke about shit like that," he explained.  "It pisses me off!"
 
Horse was only one year older than me and already he was acting like my father.
 
"If the only reason is to scare girls . . ."
 
"Bullshit!" He hissed, a fire lighting up in his dark eyes.  The moon grew pale on his face making them cavernous, but I could still make out the fire.  It was buried deep, a thing of the past; man before he had become extinct, and lifeless. 

 

Horse didn't need a reason to dig up a body.

 

"If you don't do it now, you'll never do it!  And you might stop breathing!  Just like that!" Horse snapped his fingers.
 
My heart stopped, but only long enough for me to feel what he was saying.
 
"Okay," I said.

 

- - - - - - -

 

 It wasn't until you reached Olympia that you noticed the world growing into something more confrontational.  The landscape no longer seemed so dense and desolate when a four lane Interstate was plowing through it. 
 
"You gotta speed up," Horse warned.
 
Cars raced past. I glanced at the speed-o-meter.  Forty mph.  I pressed down harder on the gas.
 
"Holy fuck!" Horse rolled down the window.  He stuck his head out like a dog.
 
"What are you doing?"
 
Horse let out a long howl.  I grabbed him by the back of the shirt, pulling him back inside.  Horse had been around small town rednecks for so long that he had unconsciously inherited certain, albeit underdeveloped, traits.  Only, they didn't read Rimbaud and Nietzsche in their spare time.
 
My stomach hurt.  I asked Horse if he could load a bowl.
 
"Acid?"
 
"No way!  Not for a while.  Not after last night!"
 
"Pussy!  I never touched that girl!"
 
"Could you just load the bowl?"
 
"Since when did you start handing out orders."
 
"And put a tape on while your at it."
 
"Which one?"
 
"Whatever."
 
Horse put on Floater, a band from Portland.  I'd gotten heavy into them a few years ago.  Joe and Tom's band had even opened for them a couple times.
 
Horse loaded the bowl and handed it to me. "There you go your majesty."
 
He took the wheel so I could get my hit.
 
Back and forth.
 
Until there was nothing left but the vague ghost of our ashes lingering around our heads.

 

- - - - - - -

 

 Once I had gotten there I wasn't exactly certain if it was where I wanted to be.  I had the vaguest notion that I had already been there, but up ahead, where everything was vague.  A fraction of the details of my past had been unconsciously set aside for the future; dreams, thoughts that were more like recollections.
 
"It's beautiful," said Horse.  "It really fucking is."
 
Everything was underneath; the successful, the suffering, all coinciding against a perpetual backdrop of business . . . looking for anything to remove them completely, or drive them deeper . . . the city.
 
Dad had moved us out of the city because it had started making him crazy, paranoid, fearful.  Chloe was about to start pre-school.  I was going to be in high school in a couple years.  People lived in cities their entire lives without a scratch, but dad was convinced we were all going to perish. 

 

Also the idea of love; a most powerful manipulator. 

 

Eventually it would make him hate us.

 

"So where does she live, man . . ?  You think you can find it?"

 

"We'll need to get off . . . find a pay phone."

 

The exits blipped past: Mercer, James, Roanoke, 45th . . .

 

"The University District," said Horse.

 

Getting off on 45th, I pulled into a gas station. 

 

"I hope she's home," I said, closing the door. 

 

There was a pay phone on the opposite of the building.  Some natty headed fucker was using it.  He was wearing a Doors shirt.  Morrison's face loomed out the darkness of the fabric. "One minute, bro," he said.

 

"Cool."

 

Natty was covertly setting up some kind of a meeting between strangers.  I nearly asked him if he wanted buy a few hits, but I just wanted to get where we were going.  The combination of drugs and driving had weakened me.  I needed a shower and some real food. 

 

I needed sleep.  Twenty hours of it.

 

"Thanks bro."

 

I fished Tanya's number out of my wallet.  She'd given it to me when she and Joe came down to visit Tom last.  That was over a year ago.  I prayed she was home; or that she lived there at all.

 

The phone nook smelled of patchouli and ass sweat.

 

A girl answered the line.

 

"Tanya?"

 

"Tanya's at work," came the voice.

 

"So she still lives there?"

 

"Uhhh . . ." Sarcastic. "Yeah.  Who is this?"

 

"A friend . . . from Coos Bay.  Pete."

 

"I didn't mean to come off like such a bitch."

 

"It's cool."

 

 "You friends with Joe?"

 

"Tanya and I worked at Taco Bell together . . . she met Joe after."

 

"He's an asshole."

 

"I wouldn't know."

 

"She finally dumped him."

 

"When does Tanya get home?"

 

"Late," she said. 

 

"What time is it?"

 

"I don't know . . . ten . . . Tanya tends bar at The Graceland."

 

"Would it bother you too much if we came by?"

 

"We?"

 

"Horse and I."

 

"Horse?"

 

"He's cool," I said.

 

- - - - - - -

 

 Horse never brought up the idea again, maybe because I had agreed to go along with it.  The idea swelled my head.  Unfortunately, the idea wasn't enough to sustain me. 
 
Finally, after several weeks, I asked Horse why he'd changed his mind.
 
"Maybe I think it's stupid, too."
 
Horse passed me a joint.  We were sitting in my room.
 
Mom was out in the living room drinking shitty wine and watching sitcoms. 
 
I looked hard at Horse through the smoke twisting gauze-like through the frozen space between us.  It was the first time I really thought about how slight he was; physically, I mean.  I became enthralled by his skeleton.
 
"I was thinking we could do acid, instead . . . together."
 
Horse's skin was nearly translucent.  I could see his veins, too.  I was very stoned and maybe if I looked for long enough I could see his heart, knotted in the center of everything. 
 
"I'd rather dig up a body," I said, from very far away.
 
"I said 'it's stupid'".
 
"What's acid like?"
 
"I've only tried it once," he said. "I went insane, but it wasn't like that at all.  They're the ones who are fucked up, you know?"
 
"Who?"
 
"It's what you need."
 
"I don't even know what I need," I said, feeling sorry for myself. "Why do I want to go insane?"  I squinted at him.  My head felt it was going to explode.  It hurt to think. "I feel insane already."
 
"I've been reading a book called Thus Spake Zarathustra.  By Nietzsche.  Some people think Hitler followed him, which is bullshit."
 
"How do you know . . .?"
 
"It isn't necessarily a bad thing."
 
"What?"
 
"Going insane."
 
I was too stoned, especially to be talking about Overmen, chaos and the death of God . . . tired too.  Digging up a dead body seemed simple.  Horse wanted to fill my head with ideas . . . at the crux of the moment in which I was trying to ignore them.
 
"There is nothing else," he said. "Just you and me in this room."
 
"I'm too fucking stoned."
 
"That still doesn't answer my question."
 
"Huh?"
  
"About taking acid."
 
"I don't want to see anything fucked up," I said.
 
"Fucked up?"
 
"Like my dead sister."
 
"Ghosts," he explained. "That's all they are."

 

- - - - - - -

 

 "Where'd you get a name like Horse?"
 
"Where'd you get a name like Arella."
 
"It's Hebrew," she explained.  "It means angel . . . or messenger."
 
Arella was Tanya's roommate.  She sat on a tattered couch, a clove cigarette smoldering in between her heavily ringed fingers.  There was hint of sarcasm in her tone; and one of sexuality.  Her lips looked like they were smeared in darkly congealed blood.  I imagined forcing my cock between them.  Her clothes were thin, dark, satiny.  Above this, a pale, delicate face . . . hair long-red and natural. 

 

 "Are you supposed to be a vampire?" Horse wanted to know.

 

"Are you supposed to be a jack ass?"

 

I sat down.  On the couch.  Next to Arella.

 

Horse wandered around the living room.  I could tell that he was restless.  I felt a little restless, too, like I didn't know what I was doing here. 

 

Books lined an entire wall.  Horse took one down: Crowley's Diary Of A Drug Fiend.

 

"I work at a bookstore . . . Magus."

 

"Cool," I said.

 

Horse sat on the floor and opened the book. 

 

"I have to piss," I said.

 

"It's down the hall." She pointed. "To your left."

 

To Horse: "How's the book?"

 

"It's okay," he said.

 

"What do you normally read?"

 

"Anything interesting."

 

"I don't read as much since working at a bookstore," she explained.

 

"I read all the time ..  . out of boredom.  I get bored easy."

 

- - - - - - -

 

 When Tanya came home I was half asleep, heavy and docile from the spaghetti Arella had thrown together at the last minute. 
 
"Pete?"
 
"Tanya."
 
I got off the floor and stumbled to the couch.  My stomach hurt, maybe from the spaghetti.  Horse was there, still awake.
 
"Who's this?"
 
"Horse.
 
"Howdy," he said.
 
"Hi."
 
"Ummm . . ."
 
"This is a surprise.  What have you been up to?"
 
"Driving," I explained.  "We left two days ago." 
 
"What are you guys doing up here?"
 
"Bumming," said Horse, lighting a cigarette. "You guys wanna smoke a bowl?"
 
Tanya walked past.  She smelled of cigarette smoke and spilled beer. 

 

Sitting in a rocking chair in the corner of the room: "Cool."

 

Horse offered Tanya the green hit, perhaps as an unspoken pre-requisite for letting us crash at her place for a while. 

 

"It was pretty spontaneous."
 
"Hey Tanya." It was Arella in a red, velvet robe, nearly the same shade as her lips.
 
I could see a quarter of each breast through the part.
 
"Hey."
 
"I see you met our new friends."
 
Tanya handed the pipe to me.  I handed it to Arella. "I have to get to bed," she said.  "I have work in the morning."
 
"The bookstore doesn't open till eleven," said Tanya.
 
"It's three."
 
"Jesus . . . I don't go into work till six."
 
"So fuck off!" Arella handed the pipe to Horse.
 
And back around.
 
I waited till we were stoned.  "I was wondering if we could crash here for a little while."
 
"You got more of this?"
 
"We also brought some acid," said Horse. "Three sheets.  I'm gonna sell some of it . . . money for food.  You know?"
 
"I don't care," she said. "As long as it's cool with Arella."
 
Arella had already gone back to bed.
 
"I asked her earlier," I said. "She seemed cool."
 
"It's fine with me, then."
 
"Cool," I said.
 
Horse said it last, sealing us in forever: "Cool."