Road Trip

It's 1995, and my best friend Jaime and I were fresh out of high school. We were also fresh out of things to do and bored of the small town Texas life, as is the beginning of so many other horror stories of our generation. I was the 'responsible' one, the one who attempted to hold a job, attempted not to go to work innebriated, the one who didn't pick up strange men. So it was decided that we would go on a road trip, from Amarillo to Austin, leaving at night, the wind whipping through our somewhat unwhippable hair. 

You must first understand Jaime. She was the Roadrunner to my Coyote. I chased her and she schemed. She was Amazonian in size and personality, and somehow always turned everything into a poorly lit Spanish soap opera set. One can only imagine how difficult it was to resist her bright ideas. So it was on a hot July night that we set off, unknowingly, into the most ridiculously terrifying situation we would ever encounter. 

We set off from Amarillo in my desperately untrustworthy Chevy Beretta onto the lonely roads of the Texas Plains. For a few hours, the ride was blessedly uneventful, apart from this annoying habit my car had of wanting to die everytime I increased the speed. We were a picture of blissfully ignorant youth, with our repetitive listening of Guns 'N Roses 'Patience' (where we gave grave injustice to the whistling part), and our constant harassment of truckers. Soon, I knew the novelty had worn off, and I saw the all too familiar yet unnervingly evil glint come into Jaime's eyes. We were coming through a small town just outside of Lubbock, called Plainview. I will never forget the words that killed my hopes for a nice calm night: "Pull over, I wanna coke." Ohhhhhh crap. Here it comes, I thought.