We Are Both In The Dirt Ch. 02

"We're fucked now," Montana threw his car into drive, hit the gas and merged onto the nearest on-ramp. Mira slumped down in her seat, reveled in the sense of calm that enveloped her.

"Fucked isn't the word," she said with a smile. The smile was unfounded. She wasn't happy, nothing good had happened for as long as she could remember, so at the least things were staying the course. No surprises.

"What is the word then?" Montana lifted his baseball cap from his head, peered into the rearview mirror.

"The word is, ruined. Epithets aren't always the most effective vehicles of expression even though they feel so right," Mira said. Montana didn't reply. She followed his gaze to the rearview mirror. "There's no one behind us yet, Montana, it all just fucking occurred," she said, her speech slurring slightly at the end.

"I can't believe she did that. It was my fucking gun. That fucking idiot!" Montana spat, spit sprayed against the windshield with the force of his words.

There was cause for caustic cursing, Mira supposed. She clasped her seat belt, removed a metal canister and her makeup mirror.

"Don't you fucking dare!" Montana slapped her hands causing a white cloud to billow throughout the car, obscuring her view of the road for the slightest second.

"It's snowing!" She said in a voice devoid of mirth. That was all that she had left. "$1000 down the drain," she said.

They drove in silence until they reached Allen Caravan's house. It was small, nearing dilapidation, sat back far from the road. Montana slid out of the car, stalked around to the passenger side of the car and ripped Mira from its interior. To her surprise her legs wouldn't support her, it was as if all of her joints had gone loose.

"You are a fucking psychopath, Mira," Montana said as he dragged her across the large expanse of crabgrass to Allen's front stoop. She lulled nearly unconscious on the cement slab while Montana knocked loud and police-like on Allen's door.

"Who is it?" Allen's voice, muffled.

"It's Monty and Mira, some shit just went down," Montana said.

"Hasn't it always?" Allen replied.

Their voices, to Mira, sounded like they were speaking in hushed whispers as she drifted beneath the cerulean waves of some ocean her reverie didn't care to reveal to her. Something was vibrating in her chest-her heart?

"Yo! Yo man I don't know what you guys are talking about but this one's OD'ing."

Mira heard this but didn't recognize the voice, she hadn't heard anything in a while anyway, and this voice was clearer than before. She was indoors on a couch now, face down. She smelled weed and cigarette smoke.

"No she's not, she's been like this before," Montana said.

"Well she was OD'ing then, too. I know it when I see it." Someone began to shake her, hard and deliberate.

"Mira! Mira! Mira!" Her name a chant in this unfamiliar voice. She finally opened her eyes only to find that she couldn't see. She could feel air on her eye balls but couldn't see a thing.

"I'm calling 911," the voice again.

"No the fuck you aren't, have you listened at all to what I just told y'all? I'm in deep shit, Mira's ass is, too. Allen who is this kid, anyway?"

"Montana, you've met Mint at least six times," Allen said.

"He has, but he doesn't know me," Mint said. Mira felt bile rising in her throat as she was picked up and carried out into the warm summer air. Pain sliced sudden and brutal from behind her eyes to the base of her spine, and her sight returned.

"My head!" She screamed. Now she couldn't hear and the pain was so sharp it made her ears ring. Her stomach lurched and she vomited all over the back of Mint's shirt.

"Aww shit! She just puked on him man!" Montana laughed.

"I'm calling the ambulance man, so if you gotta go, go now," Mint said.

"Montana, she does look bad. She's pale as a ghost," Allen said. Mira opened her mouth to talk, but just vomited more against Mint's back. He barely flinched. She didn't hear much for a while, and then there were lights, men in white shined lights into her eyes, and then she wasn't able to see the lights, or hear the men. It was as if the world had been snatched away from her, stolen, stuffed in some corner just out of her view. She felt still, at peace, alone.

Mira remembers all of this, as she fully accepts the fact that Mint is back in her life. She'd died that night, but clearly, she'd lived.