Monsters
1998
Back before all this…
…it was my brother Danny and me zipping through a darkened desert night in the backseat of a car we’d never laid eyes on until earlier that day, when it skirted to the curb outside of our school and the man driving said, howdy boys.
Danny looked at the man, at me, back at the man, “You’re not supposed to be here.” He said, “We’re not supposed to talk to you, either.”
Then sirens cried out from somewhere close by.
The man in the car checked the mirror above his head, smiled, and said don’t worry, Champ. I dealt with your mother. She’s on board.
There in the car, under the mirror, a big nest of purple plastic was gently rocking back and forth as all the other people went around. The people in the other cars, they were yelling, “Get out of the road.”
They were yelling, “Asshole.”
The man leaned across the seat, popping a door open. He said we were going on an adventure, and he waved us in with one of his hands.
And the people yelled.
Cars honked.
Sirens got louder.
Danny stood there on the curb, first looking down at me, then back at the man, and then back at me. I smiled, “Adventures...” I said, “Like Indiana Jones.”
He didn’t say anything, just turned back towards the car and said, “I don’t know.”
Cars were still honking.
And people kept yelling.
And by that point, the sirens were screaming.
Then the man had both hands back on the steering wheel, squeezing it like he was driving the car already. Hard. Like he was driving really fast or something. And his smile went away. He said, get… in… the… car.
And then his smile, it came back, and he said, please.
So, we did.
Later I was staring off into the endless inky black, I said, “Bet there’s monsters out there. Werewolves. And aliens.” I said, “Maybe a few zombies that got lost, too.”
Danny wasn’t saying anything. He sat in silence with his arms crossed, staring out into the dark.
The man crushed a silvery red can and tossed it out the open window. He said, hey Champ, fish me out another frosty, will you?
The back seat was full of stuff, but not our stuff. Wasn’t even boy stuff. It was lady stuff. And toys. But not any good kind, just dumb baby toys. The white ice box thing was strapped into a baby seat, and I reached up and into the icy water, and I pulled out a matching silvery red can.
Bud something.
“You’re not supposed to litter. It’s bad for the environment.” Danny said. “Our teacher, Mrs. Hancock said so.”
I passed the cold can up and over the man’s seat, “Here.” I said.
And then something thumped the back of the car.
“See!” I said to Danny, turning to look out the back window, seeing nothing but the lights of the cars behind us. “Monsters...”
Danny was staring at the man, “You’re not supposed to drink and drive either.” He said, “It says so on the billboards all over town.”
The man turned his can upside down, then right side up. He said, I’m not drinking and driving, I’m drinking while driving. Big difference.
He tipped the can back, burped, and said, Miss Hancock’s a cunt.
I looked over at Danny, “What’s uh-kunte,” I said. But he ignored me.
Up there in front, those purple plastic necklaces were still floating under the little mirror. At the bottom of one of the big beaded ones, a purple flower had a picture in the middle of it, shaped like a circle. In the picture, there was some lady and a baby.
I remember, they were smiling really big. The lady and the baby.
Danny said, “Where are we going?”
Then there was another bump from behind us. But out the back window, there was nothing except headlights.
“Aliens…” I said, scooting away from the back of the car, balancing on the edge of my seat. Then, able to see over to the front better, I saw there was a lady's purse spilled out and spread around all over the seat.
Black and silver tubes. Lipsticks and eye paint things. Plastic cards. Tissues and a pacifier and bubble gum wrappers, but I didn’t see any candy.
One of the plastic cards, it said California across the top, which is where we lived. Me and Mom and Danny.
The California card, I remember it had a small square picture on it too. It was the same lady from the purple plastic flower.
The man reached for the radio, twisting a knob, scrolling through static, music, and more static.
“Where are you taking us?” said Danny.
The man pushed in another knob below the radio and picked up a small white box from the pile of lady’s stuff.
Relax, the man said. It’s a surprise.
The little knob popped, and the man lifted a glowing red ball to the cigarette in his mouth. Smoke piled out both sides of his lips.
The man said, we’re gonna have a great time.
I coughed and my eyes started watering. Danny leaned over to my side and rolled my window down. The cool air whipped my hair around and it felt nice, but the relief was short lived.
“No!” I said, and I rolled the window back up. “You’ll let them in.”
“Fine,” Danny said. “Have it your way.”
I wiped my eyes. “I wasn’t crying,” I said, and I leaned back into my seat again.
But then something came alive in my cushion and poked me in the back.
“Zombies!” I vaulted over into the front, blasting most of the stuff off the seat and into the bottom of the wheel well.
You two stop fucking around, said the man. We’re almost there. Then he looked down at me and smiled. He said, we just gotta make a quick stop first.
“They’re here.” I said. “They poked me.”
And I remember staying down there for a long time. So long, I must have fallen asleep.
I woke up to the darkness being broken by lights in the distance.
I crawled up from the floor to look out the window and saw big green signs flying by that said Nevada something, and a smaller one that said Exit.
We started slowing down.
Danny was still sitting in the back, quiet. He looked at me, then went back to staring at the man.
Then the lights turned into signs that said McDonalds and ATM and Shell.
We passed by people pumping gas. And people ordering food from the windows you drive up to. We passed by some grass, where ladies were standing with dogs and men were standing with ladies.
And we kept going.
Past the people.
Past the grass.
Until the signs turned back into lights. And the lights turned back into blips. And the blips turned back into nothing.
And then it was dark again.
The car slowed down, and slowed down, and slowed down, until the man flicked the little stick by the wheel, and the car led us into a giant parking lot place.
Bigger than a million football fields.
It was that big.
“I’m hungry,” I said to nobody in particular.
“Yea, we need to eat.” said Danny.
The man didn’t say anything, just stared out into the night, and the car kept driving out into the darkness, until we started getting closer to another car that was parked all by itself in the center of the big empty lot.
It was a different type of car.
It was a truck.
A big truck.
After, said the man, then you two can eat until you puke for all I care. How’s that sound?
I crawled up, poked my head over the seat at Danny, “I’m gonna eat ten tacos. No. Eleven tacos.”
He ignored me, and just watched the other big truck getting closer and closer.
Bigger and bigger.
I could see there were two shapes inside the truck. Shadows, shaped like people. There in the dark.
Then the car stopped. The man shut off the motor. And it got quiet.
I remember that too.
I had never left the city where I lived. Never seen a darkness so dark. Never heard that kind of nothing. That kind of quiet.
Just… nothing.
You two stay put, this’ll just take a minute, said the man. He adjusted the little mirror to look back at Danny and me, and said, I mean it. He said, I’ll be right back.
Then he got out and started walking over to the shadow people. He waved at the truck, and it flashed big lights to say hi back, I guess.
I started to dig through all the crud laying around the floor, looking for Skittles or Starburst or maybe even a Snickers.
Danny sat in silence, watching. Now, one of the shadow people was standing next to the man, and the man was waving his hand back towards the car.
Towards us.
“Do you know who that man is?” Danny said, still looking out the window. “Do you even remember?”
There was no candy in all the junk, just wrappers and tissues and dumb stuff. I said, “He’s mom’s friend. He’s going to buy us tacos.”
Danny kept watching out the window and said, “He is not moms’ friend.”
I followed his gaze out into the dark, and the man and the shadow were walking towards the car.
Our car.
The two of them stopped at the back, and the trunk lid popped up, blocking me and Danny from seeing out of the rear window.
The car started shaking.
Like a baby earthquake.
Then it stopped. And the lid closed. And the two men were there again, but now they were both holding a big brown sack, each grabbing one side and lifting it together.
A big bag of trash.
Heavy trash.
Like old potatoes or pancakes or something. Maybe bowling balls or cool looking rocks for a new fort. And I remember, the big bag, it looked like it was moving.
Squirming.
And the men walked together, carrying the sack over to the truck. They stopped at the back, started to swing it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until they both let go, and the bag disappeared into the truck’s belly.
“Did you see that?” I said, giggling. “The trash. It was wiggling like an itchy dog trying to scratch itself, ha-ha.” Then I did my best itchy dog imitation, scratching my head really fast.
“You didn’t see anything,” Danny said.
I looked back at him, “But I did.” I said, “The bag, it was—”
Danny jumped halfway over the seat, grabbing me by the front of my shirt and pulling my face into his face, smashing my nose on his nose, and it hurt.
I remember it hurt.
And before that moment, I had never been afraid of my big brother.
I had never been afraid of anything before, really.
“Listen to me, dummy.” He said, letting go of my shirt, but still looking at me like the time I stole his Stretch Armstrong and accidentally stuck a nail in it and all the goo leaked out. “Listen,” he said. “You didn’t see any bag, alright? You were busy showing me your new card trick. Okay?”
“But—”
“Just trust me, big guy. I’ll explain later...”
And looking out the window, the man was coming back towards the car, a little faster that time. And then the back window disappeared again, and there was only the lid.
I nodded to Danny, he sunk back into the seat, putting his seatbelt back on. We both looked out the windows into the night, waiting in the big silence.
The lid slammed shut, and the man was back, holding another bag all by himself that time.
A smaller bag.
He tossed that one into a metal trash can and got back in the car.
Okay, he said, who’s hungry?
And I remember how that smaller bag, it didn’t move at all.
I remember that made me feel better for some reason.