It’s like a dream. Not that he remembers dreams.

Maybe there’s nothing like it. 

They’re untouchable.

Precious cargo in the back, speeding down an empty county road, adrenaline sweet in their teeth. Sonny is quiet but her shoulders are shuddering anxiously, uncontrollably. Newfag keeps stealing glances of himself in the side mirror, trying to practice his smile, trying to laugh. He’ll get there eventually.

Death metal blasts on the radio. Incomprehensible blood curdling screams, and they sputter in the wind beating against the open windows, skip whenever the truck hits a pothole. A gush of beautiful overwhelm.

They did it. They have the Catch.

Sonny bangs her palms against the steering wheel suddenly; it makes Newf jump and she laughs at him.

“Sorry,” she giggles, “Sorry, sorry! HAHA! I just–” she screams, abruptly and forcefully, “--I JUST! Can’t believe we GOT IT!”

“So sick,” Newfag nods with the faintest hint of a smile.

“Dude–haha–do you know how many times we got so close? And someone always got there first?” She shakes her head in manic disbelief. “But not this time!”

“Not this tiiiiiiime. Ha-ha.”

Sonny turns to him, eyes wide and wild, and she sacrifices her grip on the steering wheel for a shake of Newfag’s shoulders. His bad one belches a new bubble of blood down his arm. “West is gonna be so fffffuckin’—haha, he’s gonna.” Her smile falters only slightly, and she releases her hold of Newf, now rifling through her coat pocket. “Fuck. Hold on, haha, I should call him.” 

Newfag nods with understanding, as if she was asking for permission. “Oh, yeah. Sure.”

She pries open a crappy prepaid flip phone with her chin, hits a couple buttons and squeezes the phone to her ear. It rings.

“Hey…,” she can barely contain her enthusiasm, let alone keep up her Business Voice. “...we got it.”

Newfag holds his breath, tries desperately to hear the guy on the other side of the call, but his gunshot-inflicted tinnitus keeps him unincluded.

“Yeah… yeah, easy… no trouble… I mean, the guy got shot, but. He says he’s okay. No one’s tailing us…,” 

Sonny listens intensely. Nods. Every so often her eyes dart to Newfag, and with each new glance she seems more and more unhappy. Newfag tries his newfound smile. Maybe that’ll help. 

“...you’re sure it’s… okay. Okay, but. Can’t we use that? Like, if anyone asks we can just s—well, y-eah. Yeah, no, you’re right…” 

Her face has sunken significantly since she made the call. Her lips are pursed; she only listens now, the cell phone’s receiver crackles from deafening vitriol. Newfag decides to give her some privacy, angling his body to the window, occupying himself with the vast and impressive nothingness of strip mall after strip mall. Just twiddling his thumbs.

Eventually, finally, she utters a low “roger” before she clamps the phone closed. Tosses it at her feet.

Newfag glances once he deems it safe. “Uh. Everything okay?”

Sonny clenches her jaw in response. It's all she can manage for a minute or two as she gathers her thoughts. The excess electricity of their thrill begins to crackle into freezing tension. Finally, an eternity later, Sonny clicks her tongue.

“Someone’s causing quite a stir on CrowdSauce, bud,” she says flatly, simply.

“Oh.” Newfag doesn’t follow.

“Yeah,” Sonny nods. “West told me to shoot you.” Her eyes jerk to him, to gauge his reaction.

“Oh.” He inches away from the glove compartment, sinking into the dirty upholstery of the car seat. “Uh. Well, I don’t think you should.” As if his opinion carries any weight in all this. But he looks over to lock his sickly gaze with Sonny, and his sorry puppy eyes do something to her. She visibly melts, shoulders dropping, and she eventually nods in agreement.

“Yeah. I don’t think I should, either.” There’s odd, uncharacteristic sentimentality to her voice. Something quivers in her movement, unassuredness surfacing in a fleeting moment of vulnerability before she plugs her mouth with the filter of a new cigarette. “But you could really fuck up this whole operation, Newfag. So if you wanna stick to one bullet wound you have to do what I fucking say, okay?” There's urgency in her. Newfag understands, nods his swimming head hard.

“Y-eah. Of course.”

“Good.”

“I really wanna see the Catch,” he offers as further collateral.

Whatever satisfaction Sonny was nearing is instantly wiped from her face. “Yeah, man. You will.”

Newfag’s lips twitch. “Schweet.”

Sonny can only nod. “Suh-weet.”

“Did West say anything else?”

“Nothing relevant to you.”

Newfag’s lips twitch again, and he tries to pin them playfully in place. “Can it be relevant to me?”

“Ugh.” Sonny groans, rolls her eyes, manages every physical expression of annoyance. “Why the hell do you care so much about what West thinks and says and does?”

It’s a good point. Newf doesn’t know this dude. He’s got no real allegiance to him. He’s still definitely imagining Batman whenever his brain tries to conjure up an image. He shrugs his one good shoulder.

“I dunno. He seems cool.”

This gets a laugh out of Sonny. “He’s just some guy.”

“I dunno,” Newfag tries again, “he, like, sees some kinda potential in me. Or whatever.”

“No, dude,” Sonny shakes her head, disappointment heavy in her face as she looks over to give Newf pointed eye contact. “You’re a pawn in this. Same as me, same as all those guys back at the hangar. West chose us because we’re disposable. If one of us goes down, there's plenty more suckers where that came from, yanno?” She searches his face for acknowledgement. His expression stays frozen, lost in delusional neutrality, committed to his convictions. Sonny sighs hopelessly. “There’s only one reason why you were the one recruited. It's because you’re fucking dying. You're a delivery boy who’ll drop dead on the porch, and then the prize pot gets a little bigger for good ol’ West. I guarantee you, he’s counting on being the only one left standing in the end.”

Newfag finally flinches, his brow furrows and the corners of his mouth bow slightly. He turns to better face Sonny. “What about you?”

A beat. The truck zips over a patch of nasty potholes that jostles them both.

Sonny glances into the rear view. Paranoia creeping into her, suddenly worried they're being followed or else the truck might be bugged, someone’s listening somehow. The wheels in her head turn. Newf can almost see the hypotheticals spinning out. Decisions spidering across her brain as she weighs all the possible If-Then’s. He lessens his intensity. He’s just a little twerp.

“You can trust me,” he says.

Sonny’s breath snakes out the gap of her teeth in genuine relief.

“...yeah.” She nods. “Yeah. I know.” So. Might as well lay it all out. “I’m, uh. I mean I knew the risks when I took the job. This isn't the first time we’ve tried this, me and West. So. I know the risks.”

Newf cocks his head. “So you knew West, like, before all this?”

“Yyyyeah. Yeah, we. Met in college. Or. We met online, and then found out we went to the same school, ha.”

“Were you a guy still when you guys met?” Newfag asks stupidly.

“..........sure,” Sonny holds onto her patience for dear life.

Newfag watches the recollection flash across Sonny, a montage projected over her face. Her jaw clenches with discomfort. “We started Catching—or, like, attempting to Catch—a couple years ago. And the first time was, y’know, mostly just for shits and giggles. We didn’t have a plan or anything like that, we just used the tracker and drove up to Toronto and. Tried our luck. And. Failed, obviously, but I think the thrill got to West. Something got to him, because he. We. Kept trying after that. And we met more people; West made connections and grew our ffffuckin’... ‘network’ out and now here we are.” Her next breath comes out shaky. “So. I know the risks.”

Newf nods. “He wouldn't try shit with you.”

“I didn't say that,” Sonny laughs dryly.

“I mean, this is, like, your guyses whole thing. You’ve been doing this together for… years?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, so. Why would he try shit with you?” Newf rolls his eyes openly, knowing her supposed gun’s far enough out of her reach. He watches her jaw clench tighter, hears her molars squeak as they grind against one another.

“I’m telling you: guy’s a piece a shit. You gotta just trust me on that.” She gives him one final glare out of desperation. Newfag’s stomach flares with a single lick of heat. A tiny spark of annoyance, or anger, frustration—here and gone again.

All he can do is nod. So he does. And that satisfies Sonny well enough for now.

They sink further into the Sticks. The road swallows them up with gratitude, only putting up a bit of a fight as the potholes multiply. Sonny’s determined to power through, though, glancing at her watch, muttering something only for herself as she bares down a bit more on the gas. The chassis of the truck shudders in the wake of an especially gaping hole in the road.

“Didn’t anyone tell your DOT to lift their plows,” she mutters. “I’m not getting a fucking flat tonight, and I’m not being fucking late.”

Newf doesn’t know what Sonny wants him to do. Should he get out and lay himself across the potholes? He bares his teeth in a half-assed apologetic grin. “Sorry.”

The truck jumps again. When it lands, it’s with a harrowing metal thunk. Sonny sucks in through her teeth.

“That one sounded bad,” Newfag says.

And sure enough, under the roar of the radio there’s a new sound. A rhythmic sort of banging. Completely out of sync from the rest of the death metal chaos, and they both know death metal is just like that sometimes, but. This is different. It's wrong.

Sonny slows the truck, clicks down the music and tells Newfag to shut up while she listens. Fuck, did they blow a fucking tire? Did a goddamn plastic bag get caught under the chassis? Jersey’s lousy with trash, after all, fuckin’ armpit of the country. But. No. They both listen closer, and they realize together that the sound isn’t coming from underneath them but behind them. In the cargo hold. Sonny's face pales.

“Fuck.”

“What.”

“It’s awake.”

“What.”

“The Catch.” She grimaces. “Your goddamn state’s lousy fucking infrastructure woke up the Catch.”

Newfag tries to mirror her grave concern. “Fuck.”

“Fuck.”

“Fuck.”

“Fuckfuckfuck.”

“Fuck.”

“Sshhhhhhut up. Shut the fuck up.” She waves her hand; Newfag clamps his mouth shut. The two of them listen to the banging get louder, more frenzied. Sonny’s shoulders droop as she resigns herself to taking action, clicking on her blinker to turn off the next ramp, glancing at her watch just to confirm that their stop will put them behind schedule. She continues to curse out the state of New Jersey under her breath as they roll through the exit, around a bend that spits them out at the mouth of a Wawa. She pulls them into a spot far away from the entrance, shielded by a towering pile of dirty plowed snow.

She kills the engine. Takes a centering breath.

“Okay. This is okay.”

“Yeah,” Newf naively agrees.

Sonny turns to nod at him, attempting a smile to calm them both. “It’s fine, right? This is why we had you grab the K.”

Newf gives the start of a nod, until he realizes he doesn't know what she's talking about. His nod gives way to a confused, blank stare.

“The… what?”

“The—,” Sonny’s smile falters, she gives the same look right back to Newf. “Ha. The. The drugs. The drugs you picked up from the apartment.” Her eyes begin shooting around him, she starts feeling around at his feet for something she knows isn't there. “Where’s the fucking bag you picked up from the fucking sex trafficking ring at the fucking apartment, Newfag?” There's no room for confusion now. You can't get much more specific than that.

“Oh. Shit, ah… I don't. Have it.”

“Haha,” Sonny laughs, looks at him in utter disbelief, “Ha, you’re joking, right?”

“No, I… left before the guy got there.”

Sonny’s eyes widen. “This is a joke, right? You’re fucking with me?”

“I just told you–”

“Newfag,” she reaches across the console against her better judgement, she grabs Newf by a tuft of his furry hood and yanks him to her nose, “we need that shit right now. That was your literal one job.” Newf looks offended, emotionally wounded.

“West said my job is being in charge of the Catch,” he corrects. 

“UmmMmMMm, ACTUALLY,” Sonny’s voice goes high pitched, nasally, lisping in her best Newfag impression, “West put me in charge of you because you're DOA and fucking stupid. Exhibit A: you failed at your Literal One Job!!!”

Newfag’s mouth pops open in silent protest; all that comes out is a little squeak before he has to clear his throat. “Well… if I knew it was that important, I woulda stuck around and got it! Like. If West asked—”

“West DID ASK! Your fucking boyfriend SPECIFICALLY ASKED YOOOOU TO DO THIS!!!!” Sonny shakes him until his glasses fly off his face, his ears pop and pop again, ringing incessantly, his eyes swim in his skull as he's manhandled. Sonny maybe hoping that with enough force she can sluice the dumb bits of brains out Newf's ears, finally have a decent conversation with the guy. The flash of another car’s headlights in the rear view breaks her rage, though, and she releases him as a van pulls up across the lot. She watches the mirror, watches the van unload a gaggle of punks out onto the lot, all of them filing into the mouth of the Wawa and out of sight.

Sonny turns to face Newfag again, forcing patience into her stare. “Okay. You wanna do right by West? Fix this.” She nods to instill confidence. “Get some NyQuil or something. Something to knock it out.”

“How are we gonna make it take NyQuil?” Newf feels blindly for his glasses.

“You can figure that out, too. You're in charge of the Catch, after all.” She unlocks his door, giving him a tough tussle of his hair before ushering him out of the truck. 

He pushes through some threshold then. His ears pop as he steps onto the pavement, and the world’s soundscape amplifies. Echoes tinny, like it’s housed inside a styrofoam cup. The vertigo forced into him from the shift has him immediately losing his balance and his knees buckle, he flops sideways and slides helplessly down the side of the truck. The framerate of his vision is choppy like a low-quality cell phone video, the whole of the parking lot breaking into mosaic pixelation. Sliding his glasses up the bridge of his nose does nothing to the resolution. He tries to recover with his cheek pressed against the cold of the window, tries to catch his breath, but Sonny taps on the window, gesturing for him to hurry along. 

The door to the Wawa chimes a tonedeaf ding-dong when Newfag hobbles in. There’s just the punks in here, four of them, plus the Wawa employee behind the counter. None of them are particularly weirded out by Newfag’s pallor or his bullet hole. They’re in the Sticks; they’ve seen weirder. Newf offers the cashier an apologetic twitch of his head, sorry for existing in your store. The guy isn’t that bothered. He’s watching Ryan Seacrest’s plastic face babble on the TV above the checkout counter.

Newfag starts down the nearest aisle like he's mindlessly browsing. Just sampling everything this fine establishment has to offer, nothing conspicuous. He fingers the Little Trees on their hooks. Tries smelling one through its plastic wrapper. He loves the smell of a Severe Nasal Fracture. He mindlessly peruses the back of a motor oil bottle, pretending to read though his vision’s shot to shit, his brain is sludge. Printed word looks like gibberish. He picks up an ice scraper for the windshield of a car and he looks between the two, the oil and the scraper, like he just can’t decide. Ultimately he puts them both back, and they clatter to the floor immediately when he walks away.

Newfag is a little dazed, can’t remember what he came in for. He turns down the refrigerator aisle. Past cases of beer. He remembers what he told Andre about his alcoholism. His addiction? Curious, he takes a moment to press his nose to the glass, really take in the booze, just to see if the sight rouses anything in him. Do you like this? He smacks his lips. Maybe tries to remember the taste of beer, or the taste of anything at all. Blood. Blood is all he’s tasting. It's surprisingly intense, too, like rolling pennies across his tongue. He doesn’t mind it. Any sensation is kind of exciting at this point.

He remembers he's in public. He thinks maybe he’s been licking the refrigerator door for the past minute, and when he pulls away his suspicions are confirmed. A condensate copy of Newf’s face, his nose and cheeks and chin and fingertips, beads down the glass. He looks over his shoulder to see if anyone caught that, and he locks eyes with a guy across the store, one of the punks, smiling back at him.

He’s forgotten what being in public entails. That he can be perceived by others. The last time he was perceived, he feels in his gut it didn’t go over well. And it’s the judgemental perception plus the sudden sensory overload, everything so loud and real and raw, that clicks something in his brain just a notch too far. Every pore in every punk’s pasty skin and the ripe tang of gas station hot dogs and the unseasonable humidity of the air cloying at his skin, bizarre and unfitting EuroPop blasting through Ryan Seacrest’s saccharine drone. Too much. Too much. It’s suffocating.

A new wave of nausea rolls over Newfag’s back, crashes in a sickly vomitous puddle around his ankles. It’s so sudden he doesn’t have time to react, just stands and pukes down his parka. Painting his frontside with bits of macaroni and Red Bull. Looks like a kindergarten art project.

The punks are pretty elated at his display. They hoot encouragingly, laughing as if Newfag meant to do that. Some of them ask if he’s had enough to drink, which is funny considering Newfag’s possible drinking problem, so between hurls of neon orange he tries out his laugh for everyone. The punks can’t believe their luck, running into the infamous Pukefag of the Pine Barrens. The guy behind the counter is less pleased, though not visibly angry as much as disappointed.

“Dude, Jesus Christ, just go to the bathroom,” he hollers, and he gestures hurriedly to the doors in the back. Newfag gives the punks one more spatter of bile to remember him by before he clamps his hands over his mouth, shuffling to the bathroom with strings of cheddar spittle between his fingers.

The bathroom is a two-stalled sanctuary. Far on the outskirts, liminal as liminal gets, so Newfag can drop to his knees and empty his guts knowing he’s in a safe space. It’s amazing, how much puke his little body can force up. He swears he didn’t eat that much, not enough to warrant such a deluge, but then again he can’t remember the last time he went to the bathroom otherwise. Maybe he’s been stopped up for months. The fermentation in his rotting belly grew too violent and forcibly uncorked him. When he’s between heaves he glances into the toilet bowl, sees if he can identify anything else. Fearful he might see his precious tablets flitting through the murk, surprised when he can’t see anything through the dark brown blood he’s begun hacking. His body contracts a few more times to force the last of it up, whatever it is, and then he’s spent, and he falls back against the stall wall to catch his breath.

The world carries on around him, swirling, losing color and then surging with sudden saturation. The smell of his own sick eats at him. Uncanny just how suddenly sensitive he is to it all. While his body oscillates between hot and cold, the tinny speakers overhead rejoice in the arrival of The Vengabus. The volume is so overwhelming that, in a burst of panic, he unzips his parka, peels it off, slides it far out of reach into the next stall over.

He nods like he understands. Leaning his head back, staring up into the honeycomb of the speakers as they continue their tale. Not only is the Vengabus coming but, as luck would have it, everyone is already jumping. Its pilgrimage spanning from New York all the way to San Francisco. A unifying intercity disco.

His right arm is twitching. He can see it now—obviously couldn't feel it, but now that his coat’s off he has a perfect view of his bullet hole, the way his muscles involuntarily contract around the slug, like they're trying desperately to push it out or else pull it all the way in. Get it acclimated with his circulatory system proper.

He nods again. He gets it. He understands, and boy does he sympathize. He rolls his sleeve up to get a look at the bare flesh. His crater, the crusty skin it’s grown over itself, the butt of the bullet peeking out and up to the halogens. His yellowed arm is painted over with layers upon layers of blood. And he decides, in some impulsive fit of desperation, that he’s gotta get the bullet out. Something inside him is saying so. Maybe it's the bullet.

Newfag presses his finger in and immediately cracks the surface, sending a new wash of fresh blood down his arm. He pokes the bullet, he’s pretty sure. First contact pushes it further in towards bone, and for the briefest second he feels it all, a sharp jolt of electricity shimmering out from the wound, resonating in his molars, his stomach, his asshole. He gags. Curls his toes and digs his heels into the tile. Whimpers like a dog.

“I'm. Ghhk—workin’ on it.” He hisses. This time, he kind of wiggles his finger, eases its tip along the bullet’s side to pry open a pathway for itself. The slug reluctantly makes room. Newfag lets out a whine of relief, clutching his knees together as he worms himself in further, until he’s blindly fingering the tip of the bullet. He pushes it, nice and easy, into the pad of his waiting thumb, and once he's got a strong enough hold he starts coaxing it back out the way it came. He has to wiggle it through the pulp of himself, break the suction, but after a minute or two of pathetic writhing he gets it done, gets it out, and he's rewarded with bright red proof that he’s still kickin’. 

A moment to catch his breath. Vengabus comes to its ceremonious conclusion in perfect tandem. He rolls the bullet over in his sweaty, sticky palm. Kind of amazed it was just inside him. Certainly not the weirdest thing he’s had inside him, ha-ha, but still.

He doesn't really know what to do with the bullet now. Maybe just? Get rid of it? He plops it into the toilet bowl with his mess.

That’s that.

The world is quiet again. His body just a vessel again.

The stall door swings open to a waiting mirror. Newfag can’t believe how fucking ugly he looks, how sickly green his skin’s soured, how he’s somehow managed to lose more weight since he last saw himself. He tries smiling again. Oh. No. Don’t do that, Newfag.

The Wawa’s quiet when he reintroduces himself, the punks gone, the TV muted, the speakers buzzing with only idle static. Newfag takes the opportunity to gather his supplies. Everything he might need for effectively making West proud, plus a couple cans of Red Bull. Digging out that bullet got him a little fatigued. He waddles up to the register with his stuff, all of the packaging clattering against the counter. Only now does he notice the cashier’s gone, too.

Should he just leave the money? He doesn’t know how much everything costs, and the NyQuil’s behind the counter. He’s not allowed to just take it.

Maybe the guy’s out pumping someone’s gas.

He’ll just leave all his stuff here, go find some help. Come back once someone with authorization can check him out.

It’s sickeningly quiet outside. Like the exit’s been cracked off from the rest of the highway or the world altogether, just floating in the ether. It’s just as dark, too. No lights in the parking lot. Only the excess from the moon and the guts of the Wawa, all of it radiating in a weak haze off the mounds of dirty plowed snow.

“Hello?” Newfag croaks out.

“Hey,” someone says back.

Newfag turns from the entrance to find the source. Somewhere in the pitch a smile splinters into sight. “Hi,” it says again. “Hey, brother.”

“Hi,” Newfag says back.

“You alright, brother?” The dark cocks its head in concern. “You didn’t seem too good in there.”

“No, yeah, I’m good,” Newfag nods. “I’m good, just a little, uh, carsick.”

The dark lights a cigarette, and in its glow Newfag can finally see the punk’s face, gaunt, stern, until he takes a drag and his features soften, his light eyes squint in friendly familiarity.

“Where’re you coming from?” He asks.

Newfag says the first thing that comes to mind, “Fishing.” Which is stupid. It’s the dead of winter. They’re surrounded by snow. The punk’s eyes flash as the corners of his mouth curl ever upward.

“Oh, nice,” he says, ashing his cigarette. “Catch anything?”

Newfag’s throat tenses. “.........nnnnah.”

“Mmm. Too bad.” The punk decides to get a little closer, a little more personal, stepping into the light of the Wawa so the two of them can have a proper conversation. Now Newfag can see him better, all his patches and safety pins, his beard and his shaved head. Norse runes on each knuckle of his hands. The punk tilts his head the other way now. “Could you help me out with some directions?” His smile doesn’t waver. But his eyelid twitches a bit. 

Newfag laughs dryly. “I, uh. I’m not from around here, ha-ha. So I dunno how much help I’ll be.”

“That’s alright, brother. I think we’re headed to the same place.” The punk sucks down the last of his cigarette, flicks the butt, and his Doc Martens’ steel toe snuffs it out mercifully and effectively. Newfag glances at the punk’s boots. Bright red ladders laced proudly through the eyelets. 

“I like your shoelaces,” Newfag says.

The punk is looking through him, maybe past him. He gives a distracted nod somewhere far off. “Thanks, man.”

Newfag blankly smirks, “Did you steal them from the pres–”

His timely reference cut short by a bat to the back of the head.