I idled the car for a while, the rumble of the car matching my own trembling. My hands continued to grip the wheel as I stared at the crowd spreading out into the desert.
As a child my mother sent me to church as often as possible; thought the fear of god would set me straight. She of course couldn’t go; she was into the second bottle of dime store gut poison to “take the edge off” the hangover. At the front stood this old fuck; Pastor Stevens. He beat the shit out of his wife every night. We all knew it; she was always all covered up and his knuckles were far too bruised for someone who used their hands only for prayer.
He was always preaching about Hell. I wasn’t from the best of neighbourhoods so most of the parents didn’t show; just sent their kids to be taught morals like my ma. As a result all he preached was how we’d each have our own personal Hells made for us. “We each made this bed and God will make us sleep in it.” One day one of the kids, a slick shit with a grin that’d make you lose sleep for not having punched, spoke up. He started askin’ all these questions about God and Hell and shit; seriously bothering the pastor. That guy flipped out: nearly beat the kid to death on the spot. He didn’t show to church the next week. He’d gone home that night and hit her a little too hard- then he hung himself.
My own personal hell. Well I hate people, I need crystal to bare the pain of being, I can’t stand women I can’t have, and all I wanted was a passive painless death.
So here I am; kids who won’t stop knocking on, and breaking down, your door till you answer; not a single dealer to be found for a hundred miles; no thoughts but a girl I’ll never speak to again; and the certainty of death by several hundred shards of metal in my stomach.
I didn’t need to die to reach my own personal hell.
I was already there.
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