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"Did you ride the Bullet?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Did you ride the Bullet; it's a line from the Stephen King story 'Riding the Bullet'."
"You don't say."
"Ha ha, real funny, Marty. No really, great story."
"That's great, Mark."
I turned away from the man sitting in the driver's seat and blew a plume of Camel smoke out into the night wind. Mark was always going off into these little binges with literature and horror shorts.
"Mark, man where the hell are we going?"
"Do you know what it's like to see something that doesn't make any sense?"
"No. Now, where are we going?"
"Marty, it's like having internal bleeding in your brain. It starts killing you the second you see it."
The car grumbled as Mark pushed the speedometer past sixty. When did we break thirty?
"Mark man, slow down, we're gonna get pulled ov-"
"Marty, shut up and appreciate the scenery."
"Man, it's pitch black outside! What the ******** are you playing at?!"
It was true, the only light for as far as the eye could see was not the moon (it was a new moon), or the streetlights (which we didn't appear to have out here in the middle of nowhere); but instead the sickly yellow lights the old Grand Am cast out onto the increasingly rugged road.
"We're just going for a drive, Marty."
"Mark, please just slow down, ya' know I don't like to go fast in this rust bucket."
"I was driving down this same road yesterday. Do you know what I found at the end?"
The road began throwing potholes at us, as if it was trying to throw us off our intended path; an omen of a sort.
"Mark, slow ******** YOU MARTY, we're riding our little version of the Bullet here! Now shut the ******** UP and enjoy the view."
I stopped arguing, I stopped moving; and I almost stopped breathing. The cigarette light slowly exstinguished as the burn reached the filter.
We didn't say anything, the time for words had been exhausted. The only sounds now were the sounds of the suspension creaking; so intense at points I was sure that the axle would snap and we would spin off into the dark oblivion we were driving through.
The headlights dimmed with each passing minute, and eventually we were riding the 'dark Bullet'. I couldn't see the hand in front of my face, I couldn't see the dashboard; and I couldn't see Mark. I had gone practically blind.
Five minutes passed in silence. I prodded Mark in the arm with my index finger, as if to ensure that he was there. What I touched was cold and waxy.
"M-Mark?"
"Marty, I was driving down this road yesterday."
"I- I know Mark."
"Would you like to know what I found at the end?"
"How long have we been driving, Mark?"
"Would you like to know what I found at the end?"
"How fast are we going?"
"Would you like to know what I found at the end?"
That same sentence over and over again; coming out of a mouth I couldn't see.
"M-Mark... What di-did you find?"
"We've been driving down this road, you and I, for two and a half hours."
"Mark, that doesn't make any sense, this road would have been on the map, and we've been going in a straight line. We would have crossed over another road or a turnpike or a highway or SOMETHING!"
Mark didn't say anything.
"Mark?"
Still no answer.
We rode in silence and darkness. I began to cry softly in my jacket.
The last cigarette in my last pack of Camels. It almost seemed symbolic.
The lighter snapped open with a clink, the flame shoved painful light into my eyes.
The driver's side bucket seat was full of blood and gristle. I screamed.
I screamed like I was on fire. Glorious, rational, fire.
I felt the break down. The car stayed the course.
"I was riding down this exact road yesterday; would you like to know what I found?"
The light went out.
Author's Note A big shoutout to Stephen King for the inspiration, one of the few times I've looked at something and said to myself "I'm using this."
This b***h took me twenty minutes to write. A few rewrites and some grammar check.
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