Roadtrip RP (after highschool)

[Sparks]

Jake, sitting in the back of the station wagon, looked like he was falling asleep. It was two in the morning.
Carolyn didn't blink as she watched the bending jet black horizon. The roads were longer, now. Really long.
They'd crossed the border into the US sometime earlier in the evening.
She sighed, looking over at Craig. He was staring out the window. She noticed the torn and crumpled map in his lap.
He'd failed World Geography, she heard. She hadn't asked him. She wasn't a fan of that subject, either way.
The night had torn the roads apart. Cody was still driving, even though Carolyn had offered.
"No," he'd told her, blinking hard and shaking his head vigorously. "Don't worry. We'll stop soon."
But there was no where to stop, it seemed. Only a milky inky black in every direction.
On her other side, John was silent. He must have been exhausted, because he fell asleep first.
And, apparently, he was also a light sleeper.
He was awake again, she realized with a bit of an uncomfortable shock.
How had she missed that one? Awake and not moving.
His eyes were resting on the windshield. His chest was rising. He blinked slowly. Definitely awake.
His eyes were black holes.
She folded that thought up and tossed it away.
Conversation had dimmed like lights in a power-out.
Like the one that had happened two summers ago.
Carolyn thought back for a minute.
The dark was something she'd come to terms with after coming to terms with her insomniaa while back. She could lay there for hours, thinking about things. Just lay there. No noise. Music kept her up. No vision. Just black.
She heard Lauren yawn up at the front of the car.
"You ready to stop driving?"
"Nowhere to stop."
"What the hell. We can camp out in the car. I don't care. Pretend you're touring with a band or something. I hate driving at night."
He sounded frustrated. "I'm driving, not you. I can handle it. Just go to sleep."
"God, Cody." Annoyance seeping into her voice.
Carolyn decided she needed to say something.
"It's almost two-thirty," she said quietly, her eyes dark in the shadows of the back seat.
"Fuck, everybody just stop talking," John's eyes blinked and he shifted heavily in his seat. "We'll get somewhere."
His first words of the entire ride.
Silence lasted for about five seconds as Cody looked over at Lauren, his face tired, but apologetic.
Carolyn started to say something, something that she was sure would solve the whole damn problem, but she never got that far.
She could see the headlights coming.
They were coming way too fast.

[behindTHEmask]

Cause I am a man who will fight for your honor
I'll be the hero that you're dreaming of
Gonna live forever
Knowing together that we
Did it all for the glory of love.
Those punk covers always got him.
Always.
A smile stuck to his lips like peanut butter to the top of your mouth.
It was just there.
He couldn't get rid of it.
You'll keep me standing tall
You'll help me through it all
I'm always strong when you're beside me
I have always needed you
I could never make it alone.
New Found Glory did a good job with this song.
The voice.
The sound.
Somehow, he adored it.
Yes, adored it.
He could admit to it.
He'd admit to anything.
Ashlee Simpson?
Loved her.
The only thing he'd deny is loving Rap.
He hated it.
But that was just his opinion.
White boys don't rap.
The song faded away, changing to whatever was next.
He looked out into the sky.
Black. Like the morning he woke up and his heart was broken because the girl he fell in love with ran out on him, without saying goodbye, and the next time he found her was with his best friend.
She was a whore.
Tiny dots twinkled like a childs eyes on Christmas when they creap down stairs finding out "Santa" brought them presents.
A child's heart is death to all teenage souls.

[taliesin]

Craig saw the headlights coming. Then the realization that they were coming into them shocked Craig into movement. The habit of never wearing his seatbelt certainly helped a lot now. He moved forward, past a barely awake Cody, and jerked the wheel to the side to avoid the headlights. Everybody had been startled. He swerved, and the car flipped.


Craig woke to a dawn. There was a dull pounding ache in his head. "Ugh. What the HELL was I doing last night?" He raised himself and his senses had enough of a modicum to recognize his surroundings. He was on a road. The shattered wreckages of two vehicles were lying on either side of him. He stood, then fell back down. His left leg was completely shattered, but Craig was impervious to the pain.

[Sparks]

Carolyn took the morning in through her nostrils.
Her throat ached. She was choking on her own saliva.
The dark hallways she'd been running in loomed on, dimmer somehow. A light was shining through the ceiling. A remotely conscious part of her mind declared that it was the sun.
It wasn't a sunny day though.
In fact...
She opened her eyes slowly. Immediately she found herself choking up, coughing and rolling over to face the ground. Heaving her stomach. Everything came out.
After lying there for a few minutes, something else overtook her.
Full consciousness.
Opened eyes.
It looked like the morning was just beginning. Darkish along the Western horizon, lighter along the East..
She tried to calm herself. The curse words came with the pain though, and she couldn't hold them down.
"Mother fucker," she said, her teeth gritted as she took in her surroundings.
The headlights had passed them by. She was so sure that -
It didn't matter. Her head ached. A numbing pain crept up through her spine.
"Shit." The car was on four wheels, but dented into tight shapes along the roof and doors.
The understanding came to her at the same time as the lyrics from a Thursday song that she used to listen to for hours and hours. Whenever the grey emotions took her in.
Splintered piece of glass falls in the seat, gets caught...
Heart beating wildly, pounding like a freight train in her ears, she saw that Craig wasn't in his seat, and his door was opened. Wide. And all the glass was shattered.
She couldn't bring herself to wonder where he'd gone, for the horror of it.
The windshield had spewed shards all across the two in the front seat, and her lap.
She lifted her torso off the seats and turned to face John.
His eyes were shut.
His mouth hung opened a crack.
Carolyn panicked.
"Wake up!" she shouted in his ear, shaking his shoulders. "Oh, fuck, just wake up!"
He didn't move.
She took in his motionless form. The irrelevant thought that he looked innocent when he was alseep, or unconscious, took her over.
She turned her face to the back seat, where Jake was tangled with a few backpacks, and the lowered roof.
She said his name.
He didn't move either.
Desperate, she turned to face the front of the vehicle, hoping to God that some miracle had taken place. Before she got that far, her eyes picked up on the faint rusty speckled stains.
Blood.
She hadn't noticed it before, but it was spattered across the interior of the car, and her own clothes. She could barely keep down her insides. The world was spinning again.
She pulled herself together to face the her closest friend, and her closest friend's boyfriend.
Lauren and Cody.
She didn't need to see the glass digging into their flesh, or the red streaks crawling down their faces and necks, from their heads hitting the dashboard on impact, to know they were gone.
They had fallen asleep with open eyes, in the aftermath of a car crash.
Carolyn leaned back in her seat. The pain all over her body was suddenly excruciating. She didn't know if it was seeing them like that, or from the actual accident.
She didn't care.
Fuck. Fuck. Tears came to her eyes.
That was the only thing going through her mind, until she felt a jolt next to her.
John's eyes were huge. Sucking in the scene. He was processing it, eating it. Throwing it up and trying again.
She couldn't think straight. He'd just come back to life like a lightbulb getting plugged in.
Maybe he hadn't been dead.
Tears ran naked streams down her cheeks. Her neck.
She could feel them, but they weren't hot tears. Salty and slightly warm. She closed her eyes and began to shake.
"What happened?" came the voice from beside her.
Full of wonder, and fear. Something she'd never heard from John before.
She shook her head.
She looked at him and could see the blatant shock in his eyes.
He turned around and reached into the back seat, where he tested Jake's pulse.
Disbelief flooded his face.
The colour drained out.
"Carolyn?"
She was perceptive. She always had been. Good at reading faces, expressions, gestures and sensing emotions.
But she didn't know what was in John's voice now, and it sent a tremor of terror through her gut.
"We need to get out."
Broken windows, opened locks, reminders of the youth we lost...
She bit her lip, and pain began in her ribs. Everything hurt like she'd been run over.
She shook her head. The crying didn't matter. He was the only guy who had, and would ever see her like this. "I can't," she whispered.
None of it mattered. She was trying to wrap her head around the idea that three people were dead, and morning was barely setting in.

I tried so hard to look away from you. We followed white lights to the sunset, I crash my car every day the same way...

[behindTHEmask]

He didn't sleep the night before.
Nowhere to stop--no will.
The open road kept him awake. It kept him breathing, even if he wanted to refuse.
The morning sky was streaked with pastels--blues, pinks, purples, oranges. The sight struck him hard.
Paint yoursef a picture. He muttered softly under his breath.
The music had died down. Thrity tracks later. He was too lazy to change the CD.
Too lazy to search through the cases.
Maybe he should pull over.
Drink a Red Bull, soak up the sights.
He nodded to himself, answering the question he'd asked himself mentally. There had to be a shoulder somewhere.
His eyes floated beyond the window, beyond the road, out into the open spaces. Metal caught his eyes. Squinting, he saw a vehicle.
No, no. It couldn't be. These things only happened on TV.
Matt drove closer, squinting harder.
His stomach upchurned as he noticed the area. People grew painted into the scene.
"What the fuck?" He muttered, pulling over the vehicle. Slowly, the ignition died out, and his hands ripped from their grip along the steering wheel.
His converse hit the ground silently, as his hands fell into his pocket.
He felt like he was on ER.

[taliesin]

"Shit," sighed Craig loudly. His hearing wasn't quite working-in fact, it wasn't working at all. (I know how to be deaf personally from experience.) Craig realized this and said, "Hello?!" He panicked, and started shouting and screaming. "HELLO?! HELLO?! HEY!"
He stopped, panting. "Fuck," he said needlessly. He lay there for a few moments, then turned over, and crawled to the demolished wreckage of the station wagon, and pulled himself up on the single open door. Everybody was inside-he seemed to have been thrown from the impact. "Oh, god, oh god, oh god ohgod ohgod ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod. Is anyone alive?!" he mused to himself.

[Sparks]

Standing on the stage at the end of grade 12, you don't think something like this is gonna happen.
Looking at the girl next to you, you never consider the possibility that she'll be dead within a month. Listening to a smart, handsome boy make his speech, you don't worry about losing him.
Nobody ever does.
As Carolyn drifted in and out of consciousness, these images played around in her head. It was a sequence she couldn't seem to shake. The graduation.
Then, for some reason, a fight she and her father hadn't had.
Thursday lyics.
And the headlights.
She was trapped in a time warp.
Time to let this pass, the time it takes to let go.
Time runs through our veins: It starts and stops and starts and stops again...
As consciousness began to fall on her again, the pain came back. Throbbing dimly, everywhere. She could feel the bruises. It didn't matter. Why would it?
She came to the slow realization that she was no longer supporting herself, but leaning against John's shoulder.
She was glad he was alive.
She was so fucking glad.
She turned her head to look for Craig. There was a noise outside the car, and she was sure it was him. hope flickered in her. If it was, that'd mean that he was probably better off than her.
Her turning head seemed to bring John into the world, and he breathed heavily for a moment, looking over at her suddenly.
"Are you okay?" His voice betrayed the emotions he was overtaken by.
His eyes betrayed everything else.
She turned her head back to him. "I don't know. I think I'm gonna be okay." After a moment, she said, "How about you?"
He shook his head. "Don't worry about it now. We've got to..."
They were both staring at the opened door when Craig appeared.
His expression was enough to tell them for sure that none of it had been a dream.

[behindTHEmask]

The ground crunched beneath his feet. The world around him slowed, and the dreamworld entered reality.
He was only a few feet away--maybe two.
There was a war inside him--to keep down the pain. It's easy to watch these type of events on the news, in the movies, and even in your dreams, but when it's sitting right in front of you--you can't help but be scared.
Another step slipped under him, moving him closer to the area.
He could hear faint voices echoeing at the scene. Maybe this tradgedies victims were still breathing.
Maybe the pitch black heart of a teenager was beating inside.
"Anyone.." His voice was faint, merely audible. The roof of his mouth went dry as he fished out words. ". . .there?"

[taliesin]

"Oh thank god someone's alive!" shouted Craig as he looked down upon Carolyn and John. He looked up, and saw another figure standing on the road-one he didn't recognize. It's mouth was moving, but Craig didn't understand what he was saying. The realization came to him like a tsunami upon unsuspecting civilians-he was deaf.
His mouth opened and closed like a fish, then finally said, "I'm deaf. Oh my god. I'm deaf."

[Sparks]

Everything was suddenly a blur. Craig was leaning against the bent metal of the car, repeating himself, that he was deaf, or dead; Carolyn couldn't hear right herself. The horror of the situation collapsed on them when John went rigid against her body, and everything in his face when tight like a stretched elastic.
He had a perfect view of the driver's seat from where he sat.
"Cody's dead," he said to no one in particular.
The tears on Carolyn's face had dried, but her eyes remained bloodshot.
How do you tell react to something like that? A girl she had known since she was six was dead. She couldn't position herself beneath the enormity of the matter yet.
She couldn't come up with anything to say.
Craig's expression terrified her, too.
A figure formed behind him, as if out of nowhere.
Maybe God would grant them another chance.

[behindTHEmask]

He repeated himself. "Is anybody there?" The words were more clear now, as he cleared his throat. Though it may be summer, he felt a chill down his spine.
Death surrounded him.
He took a few more steps, closer to the rolled over station wagon. His eyes ran over the lines of the car and debri.
It reminded him of last summer.
There was a party due to school being out. Beer, drugs, it was all there. All the illegal substances in the area were migrated into one house.
It was heaven in a bottle.
He was drunk. He knew he couldn't drive, so he didn't. His brother picked him up. Childish, yes, but he wanted to survive.
Smoke raised from the ground on his way home. He stopped in horror.
His best friends blood was spread over the pavement, painting the night into a tragedy.
He dug his hands around his pockets, echoing again. "Is anyone there?"

[Sparks]

The look on John's face at the sudden, new voice on the scene, was one that Carolyn had never seen on him before. It was more in his eyes than anything else: confusion, gratitude, fear, and shock.
We don't stand a chance in this threadbare time
(The time it takes, the time it takes to let go.)
Time to let this pass.
(The time it takes to let go.)
She was very aware of Jake still crumpled behind them, and the blow that he had suffered to the back of his head on impact.
Almost sick. So close.
She didn't turn around. Instead, as the words, "Is anyone there?" came to her ears, she heard herself shouting, "We're in here!"
"We need to get out," John said for maybe the third time, his eyes suddenly wild. "Can you move?"
"Help," Carolyn said, her voice less loud than before, as John grabbed her arm.
"I don't think I can get far."
"Get out," he said softly, staring at her. "We can't stay in here. My door won't open."
He had been pulling the handle for five minutes. She hadn't noticed.
She, with an opened mouth, nodded. Craig was out there. If she could get to him, maybe they could get away. Maybe it wouldn't take them too.
"We need help."
She was splashed with the blood of the front passengers; the blood of a girl she had known since before she knew what blood was.

[behindTHEmask]

Ryan heard the voices. It was time for him to play a guardian angel.
He kicked debri out of his way as he approached the car. This time, he could touch it. He could smell the blood of dying teenagers.
It made him sick.
He bent down, resting his elbows on his knees. Peering in, he noticed two boys and a girl. He fiddled with the door, but it wouldn't open.
"Are you guys okay?" Stupid question. The car could give you an answer, but it was a question that was always asked. It gave him more reassurence if and when they answer.
He dug through his pocket, pulling out a pocket knife. Flicking it open, he attempted to wedge it between the door and the body of the car. The attempt of opening it failed.

[taliesin]

Craig watched in puzzlement as the stranger worked. He was a bit hazy now, seeing as the endorphins had kicked in.

[Sparks]

Death.
Ripped leather.
Pretty paint by numbers of blood.
A detuned radio.
Carolyn felt dizzy.
She knew there was a plan, because they had just been talking about doing something -
Get out
Get out
Get out
But she couldn't remember it.
Beside her, John was violently slamming his right fist against the window.
Bam Bam Bang
The stranger outside with jet black hair was helping.
He was going to get them out.
Staring at the setting sun
No reason to come back again...
Tangled backpack cords hung over the seat where she sat, still stunned.
They were like nooses.
Jake's head-bang had been the cause of death.
Carolyn thought bitterly
Angrily
Hotly
And tears began to form in her eyes again.
He was eighteen.
They all were.
Except for John.
Jacob would have been strangled either way, she thought.
The backpack Lauren brought
(His own cousin killed him!)
Double Murder Suicide.
Carolyn felt her head spinning. She was nauseous.
It was getting clearer with ever passing moment.
The figure outside reminded her of someone she had tried for years and years to forget.
She hadn't noticed it before, but as he worked furiously, she was sure she recognized him.
But it wasn't him.
Because the boy she knew wasn't alive anymore.
She couldn't see Craig anymore.
She was trapped in the car and trapped in the moment.
All she could take in was the stench of dying kids, the taste of blood, the movements of John's body as he tried and tried to break the window, and the low buzzing of the radio.
The radio that had previously contained static was now filled with blood.