Wisteria
A short story
1. The Kill
Floating in the sweet canoe of another drunken buzz, Benji’s world was a lazy river. He steered his hand-me-down Camry around the corner to the top of Wisteria Road like a leaf caught in a breeze. You could almost see the stars through the streetlights. You could’ve heard the titter of the earliest morning birds if Benji hadn’t been blasting Def Leppard.
Blaise, as usual, was in the passenger seat smoking a bong and complaining, between rips, about the Def Leppard. In a world that contained the sublime sounds of Sublime, why did Benji insist on playing bad 80's hair metal all the time?
Benji tuned him out. He tuned out most everything: school, Dad, work, friends. He tuned out the future. Most of all, he tuned out the past. At seventeen, he had stumbled upon a secret that would carry him for the rest of his life: if you could keep the bass loud enough, and your brain drunk enough, then nothing ever really happened at all. The world could be simple and easy. He’d found his drug and he loved it.
Benji’s world was all a lazy breeze until the car jolted abruptly. The Camry canoe hit a rock in its simple, easy river. The rock yelped. The rear tires ran over it again and rock howled like a dying dog, which was what it was. Annoyed to be pulled from his blissful reverie, Benji stopped the car…
