The cornfield stretched on for seemingly miles. Our shoes felt lumpy from all the mud and broken cornstalks we've been walking on.
Ryan was walking right by me, telling me about the tweakers he saw here, playing disc golf at five in the morning. ''I just kept walking, like, in mid conversation'' he said in a half chuckle.
The sky above us was beginning to darken, the clouds looked like sheets of layered cotton; they floated around in a dim blue haze.
In the distance, I could see two blinking towers, they stood like pillars in the dead field of past harvest. Behind us was the long stretch of road that was beginning to bleed into town.
The land development wasn't too far away. We could see the mounds of dirt and construction vehicles just on the other side of the road.
Soon, the sprawling rows of chopped down corn will be plowed over, dug up from the ground, and replaced with nursing homes, condos, and apartment buildings.
Ryan looked dazed, he recalled walking into this exact field until the sun rose; he watched the dawn and couldn't stop walking towards it. Enamored.
The street lights were starting to blink on and we headed back to the car. We drove and drove until we figured out what to do.
I found myself on the other side of town; inside of the local movie theater.
We were a group now and we huddled together, walking right past the ticket woman, the little old woman looked at us confused until I told her that we weren't here for a movie. She shrugged.
The place was busy, I mean, it was a Saturday night. No one else had anything to do either.
There was a second floor, which had a bunch of gimmicky arcade machines, that a few of us wanted to screw around on. I was dazed by the mind numbingness of it all.
The neon of the machines were blinding and flashing fast enough to give just about anyone a good seizure.
I found myself watching the people wander in and out of the front doors. They looked bored and emotionless. Some came in clutching tasteless women, groups of children, cheap dates, and a mindless gaze that looked offended if it caught yours.
I saw down from the balcony that there was a ledge littered with receipts and holes in the plaster as if someone had jumped off from here and landed through it.
I kept my eye on a particular group of middle age women because, leading them, was this pissed off guy with a shaved head and crappy plaid jacket.
He kept looking at me with a murderous gaze; though it didn't feel particularly meant for me. I did keep inching away so I wouldn't get clocked from the back of the head.
I walked in the other direction to go down a useless elevator so I could use the bathroom. It felt stuck until the doors opened and I rushed into the bathroom.
The place was desecrated and littered with hand towels and everything looked diseased. I saw a pair of shoes in a stall and couldn't escape the feeling that this place was done for. It looked like the remains of a hotel room after being used by junkies for a week. Probably was.
I walked out, clutching my stomach, and couldn't escape the disgust. My nostrils were being violated with the smell of over microwaved baked potatoes.
It turned out to be mashed potatoes.
Big difference. I could of spewed all over that cheap carpet.
Our group retreated into the bar, by the front doors, to wait for The Duke to show up. The bar was the cleanest place in the whole building. The two beautiful bartenders quietly chatted to each other as our group dumbly eyed one another.
This guy in the bar kept eyeing me over some shoulders; they were zoning in now and it'd only be a time before someone gets a pen shoved into their jugular.
By the time The Duke was walking in, we were walking out, he looked barely there. He elongated his sentences like he was drunk but he was fine. He explained that he had spent the day getting out of jail.
He maneuvered through traffic fairly well for someone who had barely slept. He had the wheel with one hand and the other trained on a cigarette. The light of the passing traffic shimmered off his thick glasses.
We followed the others to the local Walmart. It's cheap fluorescence glowed in the night.
The other group had wandered in some other part of the building until I found them all slumped together on a bench towards where we entered.
There were four of them; Ryan, Covert Ops, Jax and Alex. I sat on the bench as Jax and Covert ran off to hunt for booze.
The Duke slumped down next to me on the bench. He kept a transfixed gaze on the floor as I saw the late night Walmart people shuffle around like they were lost.
I saw the dude from the movie theater bar, he eyed me as he passed, I could see his skin moving and I noticed the microchips in his fingers. They crawled around like fleas under his flesh. This was how he was tracking us.
The funniest part was that this wasn't the worst thing to see at a Wal-Mart at night; especially when your sitting next to three other people at finger length.
Where was this going? I thought to myself. I was curious to see how crazy things could get. I didn't even know if I could get to where I was trying to get. But where was I trying to get?
That was usually the game and the game changed when I saw the figure of The Inch arise from a faceless house on this side of suburbia; bottle of laundry detergent full of booze in hand and outfit looking hijacked from Ben Affleck in Good Will Hunting.
Where are we going? I asked Covert on the phone. He was vague. There were plans, always plans, and they mostly stayed plans. He told me to meet the group at the make out park.
The make out park was an unimpressive little park in Marion but it always seemed to loop around or end up there one way or another. It's called Make Out Park since it's not odd to find someone having sex in a car here. This whole town was inescapable.
We saw the other group in the parking lot of make out park. I saw Jax handing Covert booze and knew things were going to get stupid. Ryan and I watched as they chucked empty bottles at the pavement.
The smashing of the glass echoed throughout the entire park.
I looked out in the field that made up most of the park. The darkness hid mostly everything but the lines of trees and lights inside surrounding houses.
The moon glowed dimly, I started to feel the dribble of rain, and The Inch had disappeared into the field with the rest of the booze.
Part Two: The Suburban Subterranean
The deep darkness of the suburban subterranean is etched out by the streetlights that stand as silent pillars in places you aren't supposed to be.
I watched the shadows of the subterranean move along with the moonlight. I drew heavily from the slow burning cigarette and sat quietly on the huge cookie cutter porch.
It was completely silent and the road stretched into the maze of the subterranean.
Covert came out of the house, walked right past me, and jumped on a Ripstik; one of those plastic pieces of crap that looks like someone looked at a fishstick and said to themselves “that could become a skateboard’’.
More people came out of the house until we became a small group on bikes and Ripstiks out on the front lawn. We picked a direction randomly and raced off into the dark concrete labyrinth.
The pace was steady but would pick up once we knew for sure that the streets were empty, our only guide was the streetlights, moon, and a guy with insanity stamped deep into his eyes.
The path we took twisted off in random directions, deep into the rows of cookie cutters, until it became about speed.
Hills would rise among the dark rows of cookie cutters and droop down into blind corners.
I was on a bike, huffing hard, between The Inch (on a bike) and the wild eyed guy (on a Ripstik) in front; Covert followed alongside as he complained about the whole thing.
I started to race The Inch and I found myself picking up speed; the ground turning into whirly lines and the street lights into passing fragments.
The wild eyed guy was still in front, on that Ripstik, then disappeared down a hill and I got there fast enough to see him race down while a car pulled onto the same road. It's headlights were blinding but he only grooved right past it as the car jerked to the right.
We followed him down until we screeched to a halt at the bottom.
He was standing there trying to figure out where to go until he suddenly yelled out ''GO RIGHT'' and we pulled into a small cul de sac; only lit by a single streetlight in the middle of it.
I stood and rested on the little island as the group grew until there were about five of us. I ignored the others as I stared off into the empty streets. All around us were houses dimly lit by TV's, porch lights, and garage sensors.
It was only us out here inside the deep impressions of concrete and darkness.
No cars, people, or cops.
I could of pissed out in the middle of the street and the sound of it, splattering around someone's lawn or off the curb, would have been deafening.
I could feel the sweat drip down slowly. I turned and everyone was getting ready to zoom off again. We got back out on the empty road and Covert took over.
He directed us downhill, we raced past the dim lights and lifeless cop cars that were useless in their off duty.
For some reason, Covert was going to show us this sewer, and we were to follow him. We didn't know why but we did anyway. We followed him until most of us were so absorbed in our own conversations that we mostly ignored him.
We wandered turn after turn until we slowed and threw our bikes down on the sidewalk grass. Covert, determined, ran off until he moved to another block and found what he was looking for.
It was a strange sight; four or five dudes just standing around on a street corner talking away as a random kid was dredging through the nearby sewer system.
A couple of cars passed but they were too terrified to make eye contact with a group of guys sitting on a street corner at 3am. No police were called because we knew the streets better than them.
How are you supposed to have a good chase if all the streets look the same? What would their neighbors say? Their wives? Officer Shamburger cried into his wife's shoulders that night as she was quietly snoring; knowing that these moments of weakness were for her to remind him just how weak he is.
I walked past the nameless group to check up on Covert. He ran off into the sewer, he called out for me to join him, and I jumped over a little fence and stood by a small creek that flowed into it.
The moon was so bright that I could see his shadow moving around in there. I stuck out my foot and some water touched my pant leg. It was so cold that I stepped back and refused to go in. He didn't say anything. I walked back up and stood with the others until we got tired of waiting on him and left.
He caught the hint and ran to catch up.
Part Three: The Big Zucc
I had my head out the window and I could feel the rush of the wind and the rain beat softly against my face.
We had been driving pretty deep into the outskirts of town. There was nothing but the sound of Jeff Buckley in the car and the wind against my ear drums.
All around me were the empty fields of development land. The street lights made a windy path all around the edges of suburbia.
There was no one on the road.
Stop lights blinked idly at us and cops sat glazed eyed in their cruisers.
You could see the silhouettes of the houses that acted as beacons in the deep blackness. The rain made the lines in the road disappear. We circled through the endless streets of cookie cutter.
Most of the houses were completely dark except for the paranoid few that made their homes good targets of theft or were just plain stupid. You could make out the big screen TVs with mindless garbage plastered across them.
There was an endless black that even the streetlights couldn't help.
We cruised through empty streets and onto the back roads that went on and on. The road never ended; only looped back to where you started.
We didn't know where we were going but it didn't matter.
We were beating against nothing, surrounded by nothing, but somehow it felt like everything.
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