Black Blessing

On February 4th, 1990, at about 8:00 p.m. in the breakdown lane of Highway One, right below Santa Cruz, California, a white Pinto was parked. Its emergency blinkers flickered quick and dim showing that the battery was about to go completely dead. A blonde-haired woman stood off the side, but didn't appear to be either fixing any problem or soliciting help to do so.

She stood about five-foot-four and wore a long black trench coat. She appeared to be wet, even though it hadn't rained lately. She looked bored, stoned, drunk, or all three. Every few minutes, she checked her watch. After several minutes, she got into the car for about two minutes and then got back out almost immediately. She drew a penis in the fog on the driver's side window.

A dark red Nissan pick-up pulled up and stopped behind the Pinto. Leaving the headlights on, the driver got out of the truck and began to walk towards the woman. He spouted questions as he walked;

"Greetings and salutations, ma’am," he began. "And what a lovely night it is. I noticed your car and its flashers and wondered if maybe you are in need of some assistance." The woman pulled a gun from the purse hanging from her shoulder and pointed it at the man. "Whassup wit dat?" he said, even though he looked pretty white.

"Listen," the woman began, "if you’re one of those highway rapists or something, I’ll kill you."

The man raised his hands to the sky, but continued to approach her. "No ma’am, nothing like that. Where’d you get that gun?"

"That’s nothing to you. Help is on the way, please leave."

He was about two feet from her now, so he stopped and peered over her shoulder so he could see the front of the car. It was covered with blood and what appeared to be brains. He made eye contact with the woman. "Doesn't look like any kind of help is going to...help, I guess." He looked down at her chest where a smiley-face name tag said, "Hi! My Name Is KAREN."

"Hi Karen," he said, pulling the pin from her chest.

She cocked the gun, and raised it to the man's face. "crap! You're Jug, aren't you?"

"Whoops! Sorry. Took the wrong thing!"

There was no magic, no movement, no cheap camera tricks. The name tag simply turned into the gun, and the gun turned into the name tag. "Jug is who I am," he said. "Simply spenched."

The door of the car opened and Karen seemed to be sucked into the car. Jug threw the gun into the ditch and walked to the front of the car to examine what was left of Pete, his friend. "And I suppose this isn't your fault," Jug said to Karen.

"GO AWAY! YOU’RE RUINING EVERYTHING!" she screamed.

"You've been possessed by an evil Spud, Karen. Now just sit still and Uncky Yug will make it aaaall better."

"NO!" she screamed as he approached. "GET AWAY FROM ME!!!" she exclaimed, giving the encroaching seer a growing challenge to approach even closer. He had never seen a car door slam shut or a window cranked faster in his long, eventless life. He looked more curious than she seemed panicked. She jumped to the passenger side with a tiny squeak as his uplifted fingertips traced prison bars over the melting phallic symbol. He turned slowly, keeping his eyes focused on Karen. He stepped off snapping his now sweat-baring face toward the front of the car.

Static filled the air, instilling an irritating absence of humidity. Karen felt the wetness steam from her garments, smelling like mold-covered bath tile.

The Pinto became increasingly heated, and the smell of burning oil and now flesh of his ill-rendered friend, filled the night air. With blood and flesh now beginning to sizzle on the white hood, Jug rammed his upper thighs against the grill, then bent at the waist just inches above the boiling flesh. His eyelids flickered, and sweat, which covered his body completely, dripped and beaded to vapor as it hit the hood. With his eyes closed tight, he threw his head and body back to an upright position, inhaling the vaporized body from the surface of the rock-dry Ford.

"shit," Karen whispered to herself. "Simply spenched?"

Just for a brief moment, Jug stood grinning at the sky, then fell, continuing the motion, flat onto his back. At the moment his body impacted on the highway, the Nissan pick-up, now blood-red, slammed into gear and skidded down the road.

"SHIT!" Karen screeched, her two closed fists double-stopped violently on the dash.

She got out of the car, stumbling over the gear shift and the dangling seat belts. Sliding her hand along the steaming vehicle, she traced herself around to the front of the car.

"Ah! Huh!?" she gasped. There, lying at the front of the car, was nothing. There was not even any sign of Pete’s remains, nor of the once haunting body of Jugbo Death.

Karen’s head spun around, and she stared at the truck as it sped down the freeway. The Nissan seemed to be empty; it seemed to be out of control. She leaned up against the front of the Pinto trying to comprehend everything that had just happened. Just then, she noticed the light.

The light was dull at first, coming from the cab of the now fish-tailing Nissan, but with time it grew so bright that looking at it was painful. It reached a point of intensity that seemed to light the entire countryside, and then the light was gone. The brakes of the Nissan slammed on causing the truck to flip up onto its nose, skip once, and then flip over, landing upright. The pick-up seemed to toll powerless for a second or two; and then the engine gunned, and the truck disappeared over a ridge.

Inside the cab sat Jug and Pete. They were totally silent for several minutes, just staring at the oncoming road. Then Pete pulled a cassette tape case off the floor and began rummaging through it. "Sting good with you?" Pete asked. Jug just nodded. Pete snapped the cassette into its slot.

"This might be a stupid question," Pete began, "but what just happened?"

"Depends on how far back you want me to go," said Jug, looking like he was a little confused himself.

"Let’s try five minutes," offered Pete.

Jug looked at this watch, then began to nod his head and move his lips as if he was doing math.

"Well, it’s a little weird," he began. "See, five minutes ago I was in Korea, in a barracks." He paused and appeared to be convincing himself that that was what had happened. He shook off his confusion. "Anyhow, a being from a place called Boremia, that’s B-o-r-e-m-i-a, took me into what I think is an undiscovered dimension for what seemed like days. But he told me a lot of shit and taught me a few tricks and advised me not to play God, although he didn’t answer me when I asked if there was a God. And then this guy, Stanley was his name, I think, gave me a mission and told me to ‘get the team together and do it.’"

"What’s the mission? Am I part of ‘the team?’" Pete asked.

Jug looked puzzled, then he began to search his pockets but came up with nothing.

"It’s written down here somewhere, I think. But it’s real important."

"What? The mission?" asked Pete.

"Yah. And you must be part of the team or I wouldn’t be here."

"What was the business with flipping the truck?" Pete wanted to know.

"Oh yah! You died a couple of minutes ago. Don’t ask me how, but you were a mess. I showed up with about three seconds to spare and had to throw your wife around a little. Sorry."

"And you saved my life?" Pete asked.

"Sort of. It’s hard to explain, actually. You were in about fifteen big pieces and several million little ones. I had to use one of the tricks Stanley taught me to put all of you back together. Then what I had to do, put into the simplest terms, was jump-start your heart and brain."

"Then I had to get us back into this truck before it became wrecked because I can’t afford a new one."

"Jeeze! You can reconstruct a chopped-up body, you should be able to fart a new truck."

"Can’t stop time, only slow it down, buddy. See, in the other dimensions, what seems like a couple of days is only a few seconds here," explained Jug.

Silence fell over the two for a moment as the tape player flipped to side B of the tape.

"Died, huh? Boy, I hate it when that happens," Pete finally said.

They both sat silent for miles of highway, occasionally thumping out the beat of "Shadows in the Rain."

"So, where are we going to be once we get where we’re going?" Pete finally queried.

"Fuck, I don’t know," belched Jug, sweeping the palm of his hand up his face and over his head. "When we get there, I’ll get back to you."

It had been a good hour and a half before they conversed again. Both contentedly stared out the windshield, humming into an occasional yawn.

"Here we go!" Jug punched out of his dry throat.

"Huh?" coughed Pete. "Go where?"

"Nowhere and everywhere at once."