The 6:66 Express

By Nyc Brennan

Ladies and germs, boys and squirrels, hold on to your hats! The 6:66 Express is a one-way ticket headed for the skin of death’s teeth, a tour de force en route to the mirth that lies within life’s constant forking. This tale winds around the road to perdition to pay the toll across the broken bridge of redemption. Our story is the revival of a man too shallow and afraid to face life and take joy from it. Our story is a journey to face The Face of Life, a clown so not funny, you’ll remember how to laugh!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329659001

Book preview

The 6:66 Express

The 6:66 Express

by Nyc Brennan

Precision becomes

a precious decision

*

‘Filling Up’

Behind the wheel, nothing gets past me. I get past the surface. No stone is left unturned. Once it’s me passing the world by and not the other way around, I can finally see the world for what it really is. I can see that there is really nothing to see. I see how everything drips like wet paint. And the world is no longer dry. I feel like I am riding the rainbow through to Somewhere. Everything is looking up. There is nothing looking down upon the world. The sun is nowhere to be seen. I feel so light, I fancy that I just might be the sun.

If you put a gun to my head, I guess I would say that the sun is setting. Never was a morning person. Anyways, the stars dusting the sky’s zenith aren’t getting any dimmer, so the wild blue yonder seems to be giving way to the beyond. I can see how the sun must look from the heavens, so their sphere must be imminent. To boot, the sun is showing some humility. It illuminates what it must look like to all the other suns rather than itself. It no longer needs to outshine how little it shines to all others.

My eyelids seem to be sinking in synchronicity with the invisible sun. They feel like lead weights destined for the bottom of the sea. I blink and can only lift them high enough to make a sliver the likes of a crescent moon for me to see through, a sliver that grows thinner and thinner after each and every blink. But I glimpse the lights of a country gas station up ahead and lose the reason to fight them, the need to drive. I have somewhere close to pull over.

I reach the station entrance not a moment too soon. My eyes shut once I turn off the road. For a split second, I even lose my grip of the wheel, like I just threw my car into the station. But I don’t panic. I rather sense release. As the tires slow and move from the road’s pavement to the gravel of the station’s parking lot, they make the sound of passing gas. I only regret not being able to see how cool I look. That sure would be a sight for sore eyes.

I grab the wheel once I hear the click of it locking back into its forward position, and I open my eyes once more, my pick of places to stop moving before me. I settle at the pump farthest from the entrance I used, avoiding any and all sharp turns. I shift into park and coordinate a sigh of relief with the mild whiplash that ensues, what cannot be avoided. The fumes emanating from the exhaust puddles have a nice kick to them. I don’t feel so exhausted.

I honk my horn twice, peering out my side view mirror for a sign of life at the pump. As soon as I look in the mirror, I see a familiar face emerge, like he rolled out of the trunk when I wasn’t looking.

Fill her up, Phil! I holler, like I normally do.

Surely, Shirley, he replies, like he normally does. Phil has fun, I think.

He locks me in. I hear the gas patter against the empty tank, the flow getting softer and softer the more I hear it. You know the tank is full once you can barely hear it…

I look over my shoulder to see how close Phil is to full, and all of a sudden it hits me: I can’t remember where I came from, I’ve never even ever been in this car! Immediately, I figure that I have been transported to some alien’s figure, so that he could have someone to take his place and finally leave for greener pastures. The gas I have playfully been huffing all the while begins to taste toxic, like the drug the alien used to trap me within who he used to be. What of this gas that I have sucked down into the pit of my being gurgles like some prehistoric tar pit, like it is slowly but surely molding me into this form for all eternity, turning my blood black. I dare not open my mouth, for fear that it will dispel from my gut all the proof I need that I am as substantial as a cloud of dust.

But all the same, this rumbling in my belly (what sounds like my belly finally think that consuming itself will truly satisfy it) gets me to grip the wheel, for control, steers my spine upright into a column, offers up to my mind that guts that I woefully shat on throughout my trite and miserable existence- and suddenly, all is of a sudden. The panic and tension reverberating through the pit of my being is relieved, or has travelled to an organ more suitable for diffusing its danger, somewhere not so skin deep, the heart of the matter, even…This is no different than before, if not an extension of before. For all I know I could have entered my former reality just as abruptly. Everything before this could just as well have been a mysterious dream into which I all of a sudden awoke. Maybe this is me in some parallel, not-too-distant universe, maybe this is more of how it always was. There is nothing to do but take it in. I am already here, so why reject it? No looking back now. I pass some gas, so that I can huff some more. From my rear view mirror I see exhaust seem to rise from my own tail pipe. No, me, or whoever that asshole was couldn’t have