[fiction] Summertime Sadness

I got my red dress on tonight
Dancing in the dark in the pale moonlight
Done my hair up real big beauty queen style
High heels off, I'm feeling alive

I think I'll miss you forever

 Like the stars miss the sun in the morning sky
Later's better than never
Even if you're gone I'm gonna drive

Nearly 80 people had been invited to the funeral.  Six hundred showed up uninvited.  Most of them were just curious if it was going to really happen.  The Road Ninja's uncontrollable apprentices held them off the sand.  They inspected Pudge's intivation and let her through.  She made her way down a path lit by Tiki torches, following the smell of beer and sweat to a throng of people in the dark.  Somewhere close by a bassist was putting a floor under everyone's conversation with slow tones wandering out of a portable speaker.  The sand made her heels impossible so Pudge took them off and held them with her fingertips.  Heels!  She was light enough to wear heels!  Christine would have been so proud--and that is the thought that made her start crying.

The invitations made no mention of location, but the most likely place was a poorly guarded secret by this point, and and orange spotlight gave it away anyway, painting a gaudy R and N onto the stratus clouds that lingered.

Tears streamed down her face as she pushed through the crowd searching for Biff.  She needed to hug him, or maybe she needed him to hug her.  All she knew was she needed a hug.  Even if it was from Snow.  Pudge imagined Christine's voice in her head berating Snow and it only made her cry harder.

The beach was quite dark.  Pudge didn't realize where she was until the flames appeared mere feet away from her.  It was Biff, with a flamethrower.  The flames shot out like angry dragons, lighting up Christine's beautiful, peaceful face before engulfing her with such heat that everyone stumbled back.  Pudge watched Biff's face over the fire.  His face was emotionless--completely blank--as if someone gave given him a drug that froze your facial muscles in place.  He stared ahead with dead eyes, looking very intently but seeing nothing.  To either side of him were Jason and Snow, flanking him like lieutenants.

Jason wondered if Biff was religious.  Did he imagine that Christine's spirit shined like one of the stars?  Or perhaps that she lingered in terrestrial bondage because her business was unfinished?  It was more likely neither, as her death had been too senseless, a sad matyrdom of stupidity alone.  Biff looked more like he didn't believe in anything at all.  Rather, everything he believed in was going up in smoke, literally, and blowing out to the ocean.

Snow shifted his eyes between Biff and the fire.  Biff wasn't moving.  Possibly not breathing.  Maybe he had actually died, unable to carry on like those redbone coonhounds in Where the Red Fern Grows.  Whatever the case, Snow was unhappy.  He had been promised a certain bill of goods.  Catharsis.  Closure.  A bittersweet memory.  But he felt none of those things.  The wound was still raw, the sand dirty, and the air cold.  And the crowd?  Lame and disrespectful.  This was no better than the travesty they could have instigated in a funeral parlor, worshipping Christine's poorly unmangled face in tuxes and black dresses and making love to "what she would have wanted."

Biff faded away from the fire.  The first few people he passed were close enough to know it was him, and touched his arm.  He evaded their platitudes until he was far enough from the light to be identified, and disappeared.

Somewhere on the other side of the crowd, Laurence Lee stood with flashlights aimed at his face, holding a drink aloft.   "Captain, Barcardi 151, Coke, Dr. Pepper, a splash of moutain dew and a black cherry.  By the power vested in me, by my own auto body shop, Wilson's Tire Garage, which is currently have a sale on free brake checks, I declare these to be the official ingredients of a new drink known as The Miller.  Who wants one?"  And people cheered and shit.

Snow followed Biff as best he could.  He filtered from group to group of wasted junkies, all their various body parts adorned with lines that were shared among strangers.  Girls lost their tops and the boys started keeping them warm any way they pleased.  Girls tripping on acid or shrooms were bent over doggy style, and some of those threw up from alcohol poisoning, but without stopping.  Friends watched, frowning while frenemies recorded for the internets.

They had certainly come a long way from a secret club where a five people drive a round a little, and then shared a joint.  A long way.

Snow very quickly located Biff when he heard the latter's engine roar to life and peel out into the street.  Snow hauled ass to the garage.  Despite a reputation to live up to, he didn't have a drop of rum in his system.  His instinct had instructed him to stay alert in case Biff tried to pull some kind of kung fu double tragedy.

Snow bounded up the stairs taking 4 at a time, as is the province with tall men who choose to be energetic.  The house lights were on in the garage, making everything unusually bright, practically blinding.  Snow squinted as he sprinted across the floor to his treasured purple roadster, Sir Pancake, and slid across the hood like a champ.  He popped inside and jammed the key into the ignition.

Click.

What?  Battery.  Gas.  Clutch.  Key.  Nothing.

"He did it to everyone," said Jason.

Snow peeked out of his car.

"He knew we would following."

"I am going to kick his white punk ass bitch...ass," stumbled Snow.  "Fucking...bitch.  I'll just hotwire something.  Do you have a--"

"I'll do ya better.  Got a sportbike in the ladies room," motioned Jason.

The reason there was a sportbike in the ladies room is actually very interesting.  You see normally--well, perhaps that detail isn't relevant to this story.

Snow found a helmet and launched onto the road with an accidental wheelie.  He rode like a beginner with a death wish, nearly clipping the pegs on every corner.  He traced a line through the hills, like a man running his finger over a girls curves.

Then Snow braked, hard, skidding to a stop with enough force to love tap the guardrail on the opposing side of the road.  Far away, in a place distant enough for the earth to barely stand out from the sea in the pale moonlight, two headlights accelerated left, towards the featureless black.  Snow shivered.

There was no holding back for the Boss 429's single occupant.  He redlined and shifted, redlined and shifted, again and again, until he was grinding into the top gear.  Snow could make out where the cliff was by the point where the headlights tilted and sailed down.  There was no sound at that distance, only the sight of the muscle car's headlights winking off for good.

"And so passes The Road Ninja," said Snow, to himself, one hand over his heart like he was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in grade school.  "Never was there a more...um....hmmm..." Snow looked around.  Then he paused for a while.  "And something about pancakes."

And then he went home.

Eventually, they all went home.