Sonder

Chapter 8

The Taurus won. Of course. Just like Neo beat Agent Smith. Just like T-1000 beat T-7000.

Rolling into their familiar parking spaces outside of Nick's. The two eject from their cars like albino howler monkeys, spinning and leaping, laughing and brandishing teeth.

"You IDIOT!" They both yell this repeatedly. This is mixed in with a bunch of vulgarity, profanity, and the recounts of their divergent drives.

"I have gotta get outta here! I kinda wish I had been hit right then! My job is crushing my soul!" Corey tears off his blue vest and stomps on it violently as the canary-colored smiley-face grins at him indifferently.

After exhausting himself with leaping and stomping, Corey lies back upon the warm hood of his car, spreading his arms wide, surrendering, exhaling to the night sky above. His are closed as he digs out bronze Marlboros and a silver zippo. After lighting his smoke; "your pictures came through".

Nick dives into Corey's car to find the pictures. In the same bag as the pictures, there are two bottles of Nyquil. "What's the Nyquil for?" Nick asks.

"Goofballin' man. Goof balling." Corey is referring to "Trip Balls" a South Park episode in Season 8 where the boys learn to abuse cough syrup to enhance their news broadcast.

This will be new to them. They both have apprehensive grimaces and disbelieving smirks. The plastic wrap crinkles and they squeeze the safety cap open. Challenging each other, they slug back throat clogging gulps of syrup. Super Troopers comes to mind. They hack and wretch and hiss and screech.

Corey cannot wait for his sentence at Walmart to end. But, what's the end of Walmart? The Navy? Isn't he just exchanging one blue uniform for another one? And... leaving Walmart will mean the end of childhood, definitely. The Navy will mark a wholly different chapter. Adulthood and the unknown. These are the thoughts Corey is beating away with the neon cough syrup. Nick is just happy to follow Corey on the journey, while he can.

The Pictures

Corey's arm is extended with the night sky behind him. The Milky Way spews from his open palm.

The boys are swinging ring to ring over a hot spring pool.

Nick is cuddling with a crocodile.

Corey is wandering around... Tatooine?

Someone's leg is on fire?

The shot is inches from their faces. Their faces are twisted and strange. 

More pictures of their overexposed faces, inches from their eyes.

These last strange pictures were taken in the Badlands. They were surrounded by stars and full of Tecate. They had drunkenly climbed some stone spire. Attempting to photograph their summit, they learned something new: The flash, so close in such darkness, it burned shapes into their retinas.

Realizing this, they proceeded to make funny faces at one another, then *FLASH* snap the camera as close to their eyes as possible, effectively searing the strange face of the other into their visual cortexes. They were invading the visual field of the other. The flashbulb image would be "stuck" in the eyes or the mind of the other for nearly a whole minute. And then they would do it all over again. They were overwhelmed by a blend of hilarity and fear. It was so strange to have the contorted face of their friend frozen behind eyelids as if they were old-time silver plates. They rushed to wind their respective disposable cameras. They grasp the base of each other's skulls, they became locked there atop the deadly plateau spinning around, snapping the flashbulbs, and kicking shins, eventually they collapsed atop the rock and lay with their arms and legs hanging over the edge. The world spun, but their friend, burned behind eyelids, stayed steady.