All Your Fates (Currently editing/updating)

Chapter 4: "Like A Virgin" ~ Carrie Cutforth

Music Track:

Like A Virgin ~ Madonna

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David's POV

Have you ever had a really bad ice cream headache? One that makes you stop dead in your tracks on the hot sidewalk as you grit your teeth while your brain floods with the static that follows soon after the initial icy stabs of pain infect the blood vessels in your skull? Yeah?

Now imagine, in that moment, the world's flipped channels on you. One moment you're standing there, wincing, knowing full well that Heavenly Hash is running all over your hand and about to drip onto your spotless white jeans and you are powerless to stop it from happening because you've just been unmanned by a frozen dairy product. And as the pain recedes, you slowly open your eyes to: another reality. Only now instead of holding onto an ice cream cone, you wield in your hand a broken bottle of gin with glass jagged edges poised toward another human being in battle.  I'm talking of course about metaphoric bottle-battle. Or a metaphysical one.

That's what crossing over feels like: The Worst Ice Cream Headache Ever.

One moment I'm staring at clippings of a half-drawn sunflower seed pattern and the next moment: I'm standing on the freaking freeway. That's right! THE FREEWAY!

With CARS and SHIT!

Fortunately for me, the traffic is as bad in this reality as L.A.'s so that all the cars were standing at a full dead stop.

But still. This was pretty much ballz.

"BALLZ!" I screamed and threw my hands up at the hot Los Angeles sun and kicked the air like a spaz.

I had been so close! I was IN HER APARTMENT!  She NEEDED ME! I had been invited to stay the night! IN HER APARTMENT!

I cursed and kicked the air again. "Goddamn it!" I seethed.

A horn beeped, and I could feel the car behind me inch menacingly close toward the back of my knees reminding me once again I was in the middle of a freaking highway. As if I needed a reminder with the sun broiling overhead, and tar bubbles and a gas can at my feet.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, buddy," I yelled over my shoulder, "I wouldn't want to stand in your way of occupying a precious four feet behind the next car blocking you..."  The honking resumed as I mopped my brow.

Wait. Gas can?

What was I doing in the middle of the freeway anyways? I quickly checked my pockets for a set of keys, and was surprised to find myself all dressed in white cotton suit – the type euro trash villains in Humphrey Bogart movies would wear. In my back pocket was a set of keys to a: Hyundai.

BALLZ!

I was as unsuccessful in this life as my own.

I started to walk in the direction I was facing on the hunt for a sore ass Hyandai in a standstill on the road. But since all the cars on the road were in a standstill and this was North Hollywood after all (by all appearances), that chore was a like trying to find a needle in a haystack full of needles. So I kept walking, drenched in my own sweat in my colonial cotton suit, and sucking up exhaust fumes.

After walking under the scorching sun long enough to likely give me skin cancer, there it finally was at the bottom of the steep incline at the bottom of the 405. A small white Accent in the lead, parting the Red Sea of traffic by its immobility as other cars fought to drive around it. The closer I neared the car, gas can in hand, the more the stranded drivers demonstrated their displeasure at me until the congested freeway thrummed in a deafening blaze of horns and curse words. Obviously this world wasn't all slaphappy as Mayan Prophecy town. And then I got that sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach that reminded me of middle school gym class shower-time anxiety because I knew deep down that I was as much a loser in this life as I was in all the others.