The Beginning of the End, Part XIII

We drove in silence, and I became aware of a very strange sensation taking over my body. My very being seemed to be tingling, and the streetlights outside were leaving trails as we drove past them. Then I looked straight ahead at Kevin and Matt in the front seat, and began to giggle.

“What’s so funny?” Matt asked, turning to face me.

This made me laugh even more. Which made Matt start laughing. Then Kevin. The car became a funhouse, with the three of us laughing and laughing.

“Yep, I think it’s hitting us now,” Kevin commented. “But seriously, WHAT are we laughing at?”

I tried to stifle my giggles and explain what I was seeing. To my eyes, it looked like Kevin and Matt were floating in mid-air in a seated position. Possibly because in the Mustang the front seats were considerably lower than in cars today, but in any case at that moment I saw no seats at all.

“Really? We’re FLOATING?” Matt asked incredulously, then started feeling for his seat, which, of course, was still there. “No, we’re not!” he then scoffed.

Kevin snickered, and then it was quiet again. The humming the car was making as we drove seemed amplified to my overly sensitive ears. I tried to ignore it, but it was like a hummingbird had taken up residence in my brain. We finally exited the highway, and it was then that Matt decided he was hungry.

“Hey, there’s a Naugles!” he exclaimed excitedly, pointing at the fast-food restaurant.

Having grown up in the midwest, I had never heard of Naugles. And it was a pretty funny name for a fast-food joint. Naugles. Naugles. Once again, the giggles started. And my giggles sparked Matt’s giggles. Kevin was the only one showing any semblance of control.

“Ok, you two,” he said sternly, “look. We have to be cool, ok? What do you want to get, Matt?”

Matt muffled his giggles and managed to spit out “fries.”

“Ok, fries. I’ll pull up to the speaker and just order fries. Just STOP GIGGLING. We’re less than five minutes from home, and I don’t want to get busted now, ok?”

Matt and I sat like chastised children, but from my seat in the back I could make out his shoulders still shaking with laughter, although we both remained quiet. Kevin made it to the speaker, and a nasally voice greeted us. “Welcome to NAU-gles, may I help you?”

That was it. The three of us collapsed in laughter, tears streaming down our faces. I think Matt tried to yell “Fries!” to the disembodied voice, but Kevin had decided that we needed to make a fast getaway. He jumped the curb, and maneuvered the car back onto the main road, heading like a bat out of hell for home.

In retrospect, it WAS pretty funny the way that woman sounded over the intercom, and just the name ‘Naugles’ still makes me smirk. But at that particular time, it was the funniest thing in the whole world, and none of us could stop laughing. Lord only knows how Kevin managed to get us all home in one piece. But he did, and we walked into the building still gasping for breath from laughing so hard.

Once we got into the condo, I had to sit down. My head was spinning and I was sooo thirsty. Every sound any of us made was amplified in my ears tenfold. I wasn’t too sure I was enjoying this feeling. It seemed I had no control over anything anymore.

Kevin came over to the dining room table where I sat and knelt down next to me. “You ok, babe?” he asked. I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t say anything. My mouth wouldn’t move. Finally, I managed to say something: “thirsty.”

Kevin jumped up and grabbed me a beer from the fridge. Somehow I managed to open it and take a long drink. The strange thing was, I couldn’t taste it. I was conscious of the liquid going INTO my mouth and DOWN my throat, but it didn’t seem real. And it wasn’t helping my thirst. So when that one was gone, I got up and got another. And another. It was like drinking water, only even with water you could feel SOMETHING – which I just wasn’t.

While I was attempting to quench my thirst, Matt had decided to find some food. From his piercing shriek, I figured he didn’t exactly find what he wanted. Kevin and I made our way over to him in the kitchen, where he stood staring at an open container of Chinese food sitting on the counter. “Look!” he whispered. “They’re alive!”

Indeed they were. Remember “Lost Boys?” When Michael's noodles turn into worms? It doesn’t only happen for vampires. The three of us stared at the open container as the worms inside squiggled and squirmed around each other and made really gross sucking noises. Kevin managed to shut the container and toss it into the sink, and Matt started looking for something else. I had just happened to look down as Kevin turned to face me, and my eyes widened. “Kevin!” I yelped. “Your shoelaces are eating your shoes!”

Kevin looked down, but I don’t think he saw what I was seeing. What I saw were cartoon-like monster laces, chomping and biting at his shoes. I wasn’t scared, more amused, actually, but Kevin took them off and when he did, they stopped. Suddenly, Kevin took me by the hand and led me back to the dining room. “Sit down,” he said. “I’m going to surprise you!” And he scampered down the hallway to our bedroom.

I sat at the dining room table and watched it expand and contract over and over again. Matt had turned the tv on to some spaghetti western, and the drawls of the actors seemed more exaggerated than usual. The movement of the dining room table was starting to make me nauseous, but when I closed my eyes I felt even worse. Finally, Kevin approached me with a gleeful smile on his face. “Come on,” he whispered. “It’s your surprise.”

We made our way down the hallway to the bedroom, and when Kevin opened the door, I was in awe.

Kevin had placed a sheet over the lamp to make the room dimmer, and had also taken all the house plants and filled our bedroom with them. Then he had taken out all the stuffed animals I had brought with me from home and placed them all around the room. Only now they were all ALIVE. They were running around and playing and swinging from the curtain rods. One was chomping on one of the plants, and my teddy bear smiled at me. It was beautiful and scary all at once. My heart was racing in my chest, because I knew LOGICALLY this couldn’t be happening, yet it was. I started to suffocate from the fear, and turned to leave the room. I could vaguely hear Kevin calling me, and as I stood in the hallway, I got sick. All the beer that I drank but felt like I hadn’t made its presence known. I sat down next to the mess and started to cry. Kevin came over to me and held me.

“I don’t like this. I don’t like this. Make it stop, Kev, please,” I whimpered, shutting my eyes tightly and trying to ignore the jungle noises coming from our room.

He rocked me and soothed me and the next thing I knew, it was morning, and I woke up on the couch covered with a blanket. My head hurt like hell, but everything seemed to be back to normal. I made my way to the hallway, grimacing at the memory of my lurching stomach, but to my surprise found the area all cleaned up. I peeked in the bedroom, and saw Kevin sleeping on the bed, amidst a room full of plants and stuffed animals. Stuffed animals that were no longer alive, thank God.

I quietly shut the bedroom door and went back out to the couch. I was never so happy to feel so normal. The coke had never affected me the way the acid did. Never again, I vowed as I wrapped the blanket around me and laid back down. Tomorrow I had my interview at Olive Garden, and today all I wanted to do was relax. Sober. Hopefully Kevin and Matt didn’t have other plans.