User:The Koromo/Backwater (in progress)

It was the blistering sting of late June in the year ‘ninety-eight when a group of three took the trip that would smash their lives apart.

They didn’t know it of course – they’d left New England down a stretch of highway ‘till they saw the “WELCOME TO THE EMPIRE STATE” sign that lead them soon to the mountains, where they’d take off down south to the city and soon enough they’d be in Philadelphia.

Anything to be as far away from New York City as possible, driver Daniel Larsson thought, just a few minutes before he and his two younger brothers Nicholas and Zachary barreled off the road and into the side of a tree.

Dan’s window was smashed immediately, shattered under the thunderous force. He yelped as he was tossed upward towards the car roof, fabric of his seatbelt yanked forcefully, while in the back the two brothers hollered and grabbed on to the headrests for support. The car shuddered, whinnied, and fell motionless, and all of this happened in about the same time it took to say “Jack Robinson”.

Dan panted, Nicholas had his head thrown down in a ducking manner, and Zachary just cried. Dust had billowed into the car from the smashed bark of the tree, and Dan called out “Everyone okay? Zach? Zach!”

The boy in the back stopped crying, but tears dribbled down his cheeks. “Whaaaaa?”

Shit shit SHIT, Dan thought savagely and climbed over to the opposite seat until he was outside. He dashed over to the tail end of the car and gazed horrified at the dreadful spectacle.

The driver’s seat window was gone, obviously enough, and the door was beaten in brutally, the beige color skinned from the outer layer of the vehicle. The front wheel that had met the impact was completely totaled, blasted in. In spite of this, Dan had the slightest glimmer of hope in his heart until the door, presumably unable to take the pressure, unhinged itself and got crammed in between the car and the tree.

Dan fell to his knees in despair and screamed, and meanwhile Zach had resumed crying his head off in the car while Nicholas attempted to comfort him – as soon as the smaller boy heard his eldest brother screaming outside he resisted the urge to bash his own head against the headrest. For cryin’ out loud, he thought.

The two climbed out, or rather, Nicholas dragged his older brother out, and Zach sat on the roof of the car and continued bellowing. Nicholas approached Dan, who was now beating the sides of his fists into the dirt.

“So what now?”

Dan’s attention diverted and he shot a look up at his littlest bro. The distant chirp of a summer cicada only intensified the awkward silence, and Nicholas stifled a groan. “What the hell do you mean what now? We’re out here lost in the middle of goddamn nowhere! And my car’s gone, it’s gone…” More stupid sobs.

“We’re in New York, presumably the met area. We can’t be that far out.”

“My car, my CAR-”

“Holy mackerel, Dan! ''Quit! It!''”

In the background: “Whaaaaaaaaa!”

“Knock it off, Zach!” This from Dan, who shut himself up finally and collapsed despairingly onto his back. Zach choked in the last of his sobs and now his lips only quivered. Nicholas, with a well-timed ugh, collapsed on the ground and leaned back uncomfortably on a rock nearby. Try dealing with Zach and dad all day every day, and try to tell me getting a shitbrown car smashed on a tree is the worst thing ever, Nicholas thought venomously.

The fundamental difference between Zach and Dan’s childishness was that Dan had pretty much been naturally a manchild with nothing setting him back, so going by that objective conclusion Dan was far, far more difficult to deal with, knowing that he had the ability to control the garbage that spewed out of his mouth. Zach could be unbearable at times, but the psychological difference between the two cemented Dan as the clown, not Zach.

He pondered how this could have been avoided. Going to spend a vacation in Philadelphia, sure, fine. If anyone but Dan was driving, this probably wouldn’t have happened. Seconds before they crashed, he was running his mouth about the baseball fandom and blasting an appropriate radio play of “Ramblin’ Man” before he failed to notice he’d thrown himself off course and smashed smack dab in the middle of a tree. Jesus.

Silence befell for a minute or two. Only birds chirped in the thick brush, and cicadas buzzed in the warmth of early summer. Nicholas broke the silence. “So what do we do now? Just sit and wait? I don’t think that’s gonna get us anywhere.”

“A thirteen year old talking like that,” Dan said as he sat up, elbow rested on his knee. Despite his devastation he managed to muster a grin. “I don’t think that works. For now all we can do is wait, where the hell is there to go?”

“Wait for what?” the boy demanded. He sighed, rubbed his temples. “We can literally walk down this road” – he pointed behind him to the stretch of highway in between the two vast brushes of wood – “and find a town. And if your little “waiting” scheme is what we go with, then we can just sit here and hitchhike after waiting five minutes. Or hours. Or days – I know this place as little as you do. And when someone finally picks us up he sedates us and locks us up in his basement. So go ahead, kill us by sitting here, be my guest. Or we can be rational and get up.” “All this for five days of philly-fucking-cheesesteaks,” Dan moaned, hands in his face. Nicholas got up and approached Zach. “Are you okay?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m scared. I wanna see momma, Nick.”

Nicholas gave the gentlest smile he could in this situation. “You will, Zach. You’ll see momma. Not for a long long time, but you’ll see her one day. And this is just a little mishap. We’ll be on the road and in Philadelphia in no time. It’ll be fun. Then you’ll be happier when you see momma’s pictures at home when we come back, right?”

“I don’t wanna go to Pensleevaynee. I wanna go home.”

Nicholas frowned. Zach got up and walked towards his older brother. Dan shouted at the youngest in the family: “So are we going or what? Your move, great one.”

“Dick,” Nicholas mumbled under his breath. He rose his voice. “Anything we need?”

“In the trunk there’s a few things. Bag with a shovel in it and three water bottles.”

Nicholas threw the bottles sloppily into the bag and slung it over his shoulder. As his two older brothers bounded off, his stomach tightened into a small knot – but it was gone as quickly as it had come. Shaking his head rapidly, he pushed the feeling out of his mind and followed.

The sun hang deep beneath the looming canopies of the trees, swaying in the wind, the twilight casting a bloody orange gleam across the fading blue of the sky. Many of the clouds had parted, headed east, the ones remaining now simply white streaks across the sky’s glow. Soon the oncoming stars would be the only source of light to guide the three brothers on their travels. Dan in particular expressed his distaste in this.

“We’ve been walking for twenty bloody minutes,” he whined, feeling that British slang would emphasize a blond Swedish guy’s point. “It’s going to be black out here tonight, for crissakes! My legs hurt like hell and your back’s probably busted out too carrying that thing.” Nicholas was about to deny it but he felt the mild weight drag him down, buckling his knees though not enough for him to lose his posture.

“So what do you want to do, great one?” he retorted in retaliation for his eldest brother’s earlier comment. He dreaded admitting it, but Dan’s first assessment seemed to be correct – full darkness could have fallen any minute now. Even with the glow of the stars high above, they would soon be lost beneath the trees, the spark from the blocked out stars unable to guide them on their way, and only then would they be dead lost. Not willing to take the chances of continuing, he begrudgingly referred back to his brother’s request. “We can do what you said and turn back and just wait. It’s all up to you.” A tiny smirk crossed his face. “You are the oldest, after all.”

“Oh gee, I’d love that,” Dan retorted, his youngest brother’s stealth insult seemingly lost on him. “I have a better idea. Let’s go further into the forest out here, grab some wood, sit ourselves down, light a fire and dance around hoping some mutated freakazoid from the black lagoon will drop by and pick us up. Sound good to you? For me it sounds ‘bout par for the course. We’re gonna keep moving now, kiddo.”

There hadn’t been a moment in about a month before this that Nicholas wanted to punch Dan’s brain straight out of his head, but after that little rant, the urge came again.

Nicholas was about to turn back around in defiance when Zach made a gasping noise from up ahead, followed in quick succession by him toppling over and crunching down on the dirt. No tears came, only a bewildered shout.

“''Look! Over the''-“ Dan grabbed him from behind and cupped his hand over his mouth. “Shut up! You don’t want us attracting any…attention out here! Wait, what’s…?”

Zach was jabbing his finger in the direction of something. Dan let him go. Zach obeyed him and kept his voice only just slightly above normal level – about as quietly as he could speak.

“Look! There’s a light over there.”

Indeed, Nicholas had caught as he trudged up next to the both of them, there was a tiny speck of light buried in the encroaching blackness beneath the trees. He was barely able to discern the faint outline of a tiny home, a shack more or less, but it was so far away, several hundred yards, that very little else could be made out. As he quickly withdrew his attention from it he noticed a dilapidated railroad stretching through the dark underbrush, and when he noticed various thick patches of weeds growing all over it, presumably building themselves up from the dirt for years, he was confident that the railroad was now defunct. Even if it wasn’t, their luck of getting out of here easily would still be fairly thin – it wasn’t as though any train would have stopped out here in the middle of nowhere. He subsequently noticed a small road that winded down past the small hill the railroad was perched on.

“Thank god,” Dan stressed. “Hopefully these people have some running water and, y’know, contact with civilization.”

Against his will, Nicholas found himself following the other two again, but this time his mind had slowed him to a crawl. His stomach churned and an urge to turn around and run overcame him more intense than an urge like that had ever been – he clamped his teeth over his knuckles quickly to drive the sudden fear away.

He was in over his head for certain, but he followed with forced optimism and shrugged off the worry as a natural overreaction.

The three of them stood at the ledge of the tiny hill, just over the railroad. The “road” that Nicholas had noticed just a minute or two before was now revealed to be more or less a dirt path that ran sloppily through the gap that divided each thick fortress of forest. What caught their eyes the most considerably was the half-dilapidated gas station that lay to the right just outside of the next line of deep woodland.

“Oh thank god,” Dan said again. He hopped down the path and over to the station, presumably hoping for someone at the register able to tell them the directions out of here. Zach followed, and Nicholas announced that he needed to sit down for a little bit.