Jeff strapped himself into his seat, swiveled it to the right and slid the door open.
He used his cigar to light two of the most obnoxious roman candles that I had ever seen, each contained ten balls fire that would have exploded into amazing designs if they were not distorted by Jeff's targets. I watched as they bounced off of road signs and he shot them into people's porches and in that moment I realized that these were all good kids, from respected families that had access to good lawyers and I was on the hook for everything.
I began to panic. every car that came over the horizon looked just like a cop car so I screamed “Cops!” Jeff immediately threw both of the roman candles out of the door and they landed behind us spinning in the road while shooting their payload into every direction. The car behind us took a direct shot of blue right to the windshield and he went off the road. The minivan slowed down as we all looked back to see if the car was alright.
The car was dazed like a sucker punched fighter on his way to the ring, but it didn't last for long. Rage built up inside the vehicle and it began creating a terrible cloud of dust and smoke. This was no longer a family friendly sedan with four doors and a roomy trunk, it was now a missile headed straight for us.
I heard someone scream “Go! Go! Go!”
as Ryan attempted to make the old minivan go. Jeff yelled “Get in the left lane.” Steven handed Andy a crowbar and Andy yelled “I already have one” while pulling one out from under his seat. My mind became alarmed “No vehicle comes with two crowbars, they brought an extra, they planned for this, they have done this before!”
I was in a state of panic as they searched for more weapons until Kenny tapped Andy on the shoulder and asked “Lemme get one of them firecrackers” and Andy screamed “No!” I looked at Kenny and wondered “What was his plan? He doesn't even have a window, who is he planning to shoot?”
The car got on our right side and the driver was yelling “Pull over!” Jeff pointed a mortar stand at the man in a threating manner, as if to say “Back off!” But the man was relentless and he was out for blood and I wondered why.
What was he planning to do if we did pulled over, was he an off duty cop or just some crazy vigilante who final found his purpose, but there were no answers. So I attempted to speak to the man using telepathy “Stop! You are playing with a hornets nest! They are going to kill you!” but the man continued.
Steven began shooting a roman candle at the car,
but the car's brakes were engaged to avoid taking a blast with the window down. As soon as Steven's roman candle stopped firing the car was back, so Steven quickly began firing a second candle and Jeff tossed a live mortar at the car. I heard an explosion as Jeff went to light another, but then the car swerved and hit us.
The van began sliding and Jeff dropped the lit mortar, but Ryan managed to regain control of the battered minivan. Kenny was screamed “Electric Jesus” and Jeff said “I'm gonna to fuck this guy up!” While laughing like a lunatic and lighting a mortar inside the mortar stand that was pointed directly at the car. Kenny began to smile when watching the mortar roll toward us, so I yelled “Take cover!” as I braced myself for the explosion.
The mortar's blast was deafening
and it felt like I was struck with a whip that left a burning sensation in it's wake. The van erupted in screams and I opened my eyes to find chaos. My shirt and pants were on fire, so I immediately started pouring beer all over myself and Kenny who was panicking while attempting to sweep the flames off of his chest.
Flames covered Jeff's shirt and he threw the stand containing the mortar out of the van and Steven was screaming in agony because he took a direct hit to the right side of his face. The blanket that was covering the fireworks in front of Jeff and Andy was also on fire, so Andy threw it out of the van and began stomping on the bags of fireworks while slapping the fires off of the van's ceiling.
Steven wanted vengeance
and I could hear the agony in his voice as he said “That son of a bitch!” while lighting an entire pack of roman candles and pointed them at the car. Jeff calmly poured his bottle of Coke on his fiery torso, grabbed a couple of mortars and dropped them in the stand. Then twisted the fuses, braced the bottom of the stand to his chest while lighting the fuse.
Steven's roman candles began firing like a Gatling gun and the balls of fire lit the car's front windshield up in explosions of blue and red. I covered my ears as the booming sounds of Jeff's mortars were heard and the recoil pushed him back into the seat.
The mortars hit the car's windshield
so hard that I was sure it was shattered but I couldn't see past Steven's barrage of blue and red. As we went around the left curve the blinded car continued to go straight and left the road for greener pastures. Steven's target was now lost so he pointed his roman candles at a farm house that had a front yard covered in four foot tall plants that looked like wheat.
He bombarded the the house with exploding balls fire and then I saw black smoke coming from the plants. We made a U-turn at the first intersection and then I heard Ryan yell “It's on fire!” Jeff said “Let's go tell those cops at the restaurant.”
I knew that this was a bad idea on so many levels
but for some reason they all agreed and we were on our way. I grabbed Jeff's arm and insisted “Look! We're covered in beer. We have giant burn holes in our clothes and Steven's face is all fucked up. We are driving around in a wrecked van that is filled with fireworks and you want to go report a fire. Who do you think they are going to blame?” Andy turned around and said “We gotta tell them, it's the right thing to do.”
I was in shock, I didn't even realize that they had a moral code, how could they decide to have a conscience now, I thought to myself. But I had crossed a line that they were not willing to cross and I was now the villain, screaming “The right thing to do? The right thing to do! Fuck that farm! We've gotta get the fuck out of here!” I looked over and saw that we were passing the car that they just destroyed to go play the hero at our own expense and I felt like I was in Bizarro World.
“Hide the fireworks!”
Andy demanded, so we began covering them with anything we could find. But there was no hiding them, they were everywhere, even the back window was littered with hundreds of rockets on a stick. I pleaded with Jeff “You realize that we will go to jail for years for this, right?” “Don't worry, I'll call my dad and he'll call someone to get us out, it's no big deal.” he responded.
I could see the scene unfolding in my head, “Oh and dad, can you also help get a hitchhiker out of jail too?” and I knew I was done for. I wondered how I would survive in jail, I couldn't fight because I was extremely weak due to malnourishment and I knew that the inmates would probably think that I'm pretty.
An eerie silence fell over the van as I accepted my fate.
I looked down at the floor and I noticed that Kenny had kicked the Monopoly board until it was bent in an L shape and it's guts were spilling into a puddle of beer. I wondered what stories could that old board have told and how could it have survived for half a century only to come to such a tragic ending.
Then Kenny yelled out “Electric Jesus.” I looked at Kenny's awkward smile and I finally gave into his pleas for attention by calmly asking “What is Electric Jesus?” Kenny eagerly replied “It's acid man, once you try it... you're not the same.” I thought about it for a moment and realized that there might be some truth to what he was saying.
Then Kenny said that he used to manufacture LSD and tried to explain how, but his recipe called for putting a piece of mint gum in an orange and letting it mold, so I retained some doubt. As I solemnly sat there listening to Kenny talk about eating rotten fruit, I heard sirens and then I saw a line of cop cars, an ambulance and a fire tuck pass us in the opposite lane. All of us breathed a sigh of relief and we quickly fled to Florida who became our next victim.
Links
The Death of a Hitchhiker – Part One
The Death of a Hitchhiker – Part Two
The Death of a Hitchhiker – Part Three
The Death of a Hitchhiker – Part Four
The Death of a Hitchhiker – Part Five
When a High Pressure Salesman Shakes Hands with a Lunatic in Disguise