Chapter Four- Awake

Chapter 4

Awake

                        Sleep-deprived, Asa was laying on his bed, his new band of freakshows spread around the floor of his now darkened room. He looked to a glow cast over the scene by a small, insignificant light mounted on his laptop, fading in and out to indicate that the battery was storing a charge for later use. While staring at the small glow, he pondered the events of the night. He was stressing his brain, bending links between neurons like steel gerters of some great building in a powerful storm. Attempting to erase the events from his mind, and hopefully, erase it from recent history.

            Of course, that s**t never works.

            He eventually gave up, drifting into a half-asleep trance. As he lay there, dreams played in his mind’s eye while his grasp on the local world slowly slipped from its place at the forefront of his active conscious mind. Slowly, the subconscious world expanded its territory in his weary brain. Until, suddenly, there was a loud noise. One that actually resembled that of a large, blunt object being swung into a wooden object of a lesser mass that may have been mounted to the house itself, notarized by the reverberation of the noise within the walls around Asa.

            He instantly freaked the f**k out.

            Upon bolting upright, he saw that Odd was already in a full, if not somewhat contorted from grogginess, standing posture, reaching around the room for some light more substantial than a small indicator light, but Arlo was ahead of him, inverting the light switch that was located near his choice of spot in which to sleep. Shortly after the room was illuminated by the overhead light, a loud cracking sound came from another point in the house, resembling that of wood splintering and falling to the ground. Asa catapulted himself from the mattress, covering the distance between the bed and the door in a time that could only be described with a loud exclamation, such as the word, “DAMN!”

            From the upstairs hallway that connected Asa’s bedroom to the rest of the house, one would see a door being wrenched open with a force that may have been at the threshold of what the frame and hinges could take, followed by light spilling across the floor, stained by the jittery, rapidly altering shadows of three teenage boys scrambling out from the nearly damaged doorway towards what was probably a life-threatening situation. Not that it mattered to them, it was the second one that night. They made a start down the dim hallway before shifting their frantic fields of vision over the ledge that hung above the living room just in time to see men in dark uniforms scrambling across the faux-wood of Asa’s living room floor.

            They had big f*****g guns.

            Simultaneously, all three boys dove behind the brick ledge to avoid detection before scampering off back to Asa’s room like small mice. As soon as they crossed the threshold of his doorframe, all three boys stood up and ran for the balcony door, throwing it open and running into the cool night air. One by one, they climbed from the balcony platform, onto the rough surface of the shingles of his roof, slightly damp in the moist costal air. Promptly, they ran in the opposite direction of the balcony, towards the street, where Asa’s car was parked. The trio crossed the peak of the triangular roof, and clumsily made their way down the opposite slope, sliding and slipping the entire way before leaping from the end of the roof, landing hard on the only slightly forgiving earth of Asa’s yard. This was obviously more noticeable to the auditory senses of what the boys only knew as “the men with f*****g guns” (This title was not shared at any point during the escape, but they all invented the same moniker.) than to the ears of the boys, which were filled with the sound of rushing blood and the thoughts of expletives that, for the most part, did not actually exist. This was made clear when the front door of the house was flung open and The Men With F*****g Guns emerged in a small swarm.

            All three instantly understood the phrase, “up s**t creek without a paddle” when the first bullet whizzed past Arlo’s head, lodging itself in the small tree behind him. There was no time elapsed between the dense “THWACK” of lead pulverizing organic matter and the boys absolutely tearing for Asa’s Accord. Hot, murderous lead shredded the air around them and perforated their senses of safety until the group made it into arm’s reach of the door handles. Arlo flung the back door open, diving into the bench of the back seat without a second thought, half-gracefully shutting it behind him with his foot while Asa flung open the front passenger’s door, realizing his mistake as he dove in, feet first, angling his toes towards the driver’s foot-space, barely making it before planting his a*s in the driver’s seat, followed by a very frightened Odd, who was vocalizing said fear with a stream of swears and gibberish that resembled any explicit language he was leaving out. Before the door could be shut, Asa had dug the keys from the pocket of his skinny jeans and was starting the car, forcing the accelerator pedal to the floor of the vehicle and generating enough forward motion to cause the inertia of the open door to slam it shut. They sped away, tires squealing around corners while The Men With F*****g Guns started military-grade vehicles to follow their trail in a fashion that they hoped would end with three dead boys.

            Unfortunately for them, Asa’s grandfather, who taught him to drive, was an ex-moonshiner. Asa had been instilled the ability to drive in a manner which would most definitely escape any police that would have put him in jail. This was evident after they turned a corner to see Asa sliding past them in the opposite direction he was originally going... Through the yard of a neighbor of his. He reentered the boundaries of the street, increasing the force of rolling friction between the tires of the Accord and the ground, which in turn caused an increase in the speed of the car.

            There was no way for the small convoy to turn around to catch them.

            Or at least they hoped so.