Peroxide (Peterick)

[pete wentz screaming in the distance]

I don't know where I'm going, but anywhere is better than here in this lonely cottage atop a mountain that no one but Gerard can find, and if Gerard is able to find me, then it's not the place I need to be.

The man's car keys bisect my fingers as they frolic around inside their prison cell and await the duty of unlocking the automobile's door so that I can run away and forget about all of the people who enjoy calling themselves friends, and the moment chugs along with an absence of acceleration that's so crucial to me. The car is too far away.

My surroundings scream at me throughout my journey to the vehicle, some ordering me to go back and apologize to Dallon for making public his secret, some ordering me to never contact my friends again, some ordering me to run the car right off the mountain, and my final decision is a mix of all three.

I peer into my bag, where a bottle of peroxide cowers away so that it'll earn my pity and its utilization, but that's not my destination. Instead, I procure a pencil and a meager scrap of paper, jotting down six simple words.

Do not try to locate me.

And with a lowly regard to it, the paper whirls to the ground, likening to a helicopter seed with both its movement and its evocation of peevishness, and I turn my back to the house so that I'm but a cloaked figure in the blankness of night.

A clicking noise signals the unlocking of Gerard's van, and with much more force than is needed, I slide open the door to find myself in the unfamiliar terrain of the driver's seat, an area I had only ogled from the back row due to Gerard's travel restrictions, but brushing away the nervousness in an ample supply, I commence my departure.

My hands yank each other from side to side, pulsing in miniature actions as the key meanders through the slot and breaks its neck trying to start the engine.

Within milliseconds, the automobile is alive with the rumbling of the motor, partially suspending the night's hollow sounds that are only neglected white noise to me, because I have many more things to worry about than the fleeting commotion of the darkness.

The authority granted by the vehicle is unnatural, more than I could've asked of anyone or anything, and half of me debates returning to the house and confessing to all my sins, but Dallon would be the first one suggested to hear it, and I'd rather not present him with ammunition as his Christmas gift. There are better things for that, including the interminable spite I reserve for him.

So with that figured out, the gears arabesque into drive, and my foot plats with the pedal until we're bombinating in total secrecy through the mountain pass as my friends have no idea I left them on Christmas Eve so that I could fulfill my cowardice.

Time is, on the first occasion in history, non-linear, just passing by with a wave and circling back around in various points on the spectrum, all conducting a hideous mess of confusion that I have no availability nor patience to sort through, but it acts as my only companion through the dull venture to wherever it is that's farthest away from the Caribou cottage, and perhaps that's worth gratitude.

My ambition was to take note of the things I reach, but the trees are all just hazes amidst an even hazier sky of midnight-dyed nitrogen that can never seem to dose my lungs with its healing, and every pebble I scrape with the wheels of the car is just another casualty spread across a battlefield in a war that has taken enough lives already to become insignificant. The only monument I see is the steady beacon of the headlights fixed in front of me, imprisoning my attention when it should be elsewhere, but no one is ever out on the streets at eleven o'clock on Christmas Eve, so I allow my mind to wander into wherever it pleases, because at least it's not into the ground when it ultimately kills itself again while embalmed in a metaphor for death, and perhaps the night is soothing.