So it is known, this is not a self-insert. This is not an our reality crosses over with TT reality, and I meet the characters sort of thing. But even if you think it is, I hope you enjoy anyway.
I light my cigar, it is a cheap dime store bit that I picked up at a gas station not far from my former apartment. The smoke of the aromatic tobacco immediately begins to fill up my car. The night outside is dark, and even while driving with my brights on I can still barely see anything on the poorly paved country roads.
"They say if a mosquito lands on your arm, and you squeeze your arm you can make the mosquito explode. Too much blood bloats it up and it pops. I've never tried it myself." I say clenching the cigar in my yellowing teeth. It has been days since I've been able to brush my teeth.
My mysterious passenger just sits next to me, her arms crossed over the chest of her diminutive frame. I don't know if it hostility towards me or if she is cold. I turn off my air condition even though it is a warm night out. My passenger has purple hair, perhaps dyed, and there is an unusual air about her. Looking at her face hints at nobility and power, gothic intrigue straight from a Bela Lugosi movie, I mean hell, she is even wearing a cloak.
She had been hitching along the side of the road down U.S Highway 301, and I was moved by some compulsion to pick her up. The days I had spent locked in my former apartment had been lonely, days that ran into one another in a tedious blur of isolation and soft agony. Days of emptying the bottle and darker pleasures, it is probably this loneliness and a deeper sense of desperation that had lead me to pick up this mysterious stranger on this misty night.
I don't have anything anymore, not my home, health, wealth. I had been kicked out of my apartment by my callous landlord after having interrupted my suicide attempt. I had been kicked out into the night screaming, I was screaming because of the agony of resurrection. When the noose around my neck had caused me to pass out, I had such wonderful dreams, dreams of beauty and success. Dreams of ascension that I awoke from screaming, screaming at how they fled from me.
"So what is your name stranger?" I ask her.
"You know me already; I know you have not forgotten." She says, there is something terribly familiar about her voice. My thought process is all messed up right now though, and I can't really pin point it. I slow down my vehicle from the eighty miles an hour I was going and pull to the shoulder of the highway. I turn on the light inside of my car and look at her face, what I see astounds me to no end. The shock of seeing a fictional character riding in my passenger seat is just too intense.
"Holy hell!" I exclaim, "You're Raven from the Teen Titans! I must be tripping, someone must have put acid in my Kool-aide. "
"No you're sober." Raven says, "I'm really here. I'm here to hopefully help you."
"How is a talking delusion going to help me?" I ask. I pull back onto the deserted highway and begin driving again. I know that I am driving to my imprisonment, I had willingly agreed to be locked away for a couple of days. Hell I had even suggested it.
Raven reaches down between her legs and picks up a book off of the floor, "Is this your journal?" she asks.
"Don't read it." I tell her, it is a feeble command. I'm still feeling shocked all over from seeing a fictional character in my car.
"It is too dark in here to read it." She says, "I don't have to read it, I already know what it says." She sets the journal back down on the ground.
"January third, two thousand eight, I thought about dying again today. I had a terrible dream that every throat was cut, and I woke up screaming. I had to calm down so I had a drink." She says, "Unfortunately I have been unintentionally channeling your dreary entries during my meditations."
I sigh, exhaling cigar smoke, "So much for my personal thoughts." I say.
"There is no such thing as personal thoughts, trust me on that one." Raven says.
"I know, hell in this world you are a highly popular kid's show. I mean there are no secrets about you here." I say dropping tact.
"And in my world you are a bunch of inconsequential thoughts that I receive while meditating." Raven says, there is an edge of supreme irritation in her voice.
For the second time tonight I pull over to the side of the road, I turn on the light and look Raven in the eyes. Her eyes are deep purple spheres; they would be entrancing if she wasn't a delusion. She looks back at me, her stare is cold, her resolve is like iron, she has the type of personality, the type of will that is indomitable.
"I'm sorry." I say, "I'm not the only one who hurts, I'm sure you hurt to. I can't imagine having to bear the same burden as you."
I toss the stogie out the window and light another one.
"I'm not destined to destroy the world, just myself." I say.
"Very funny." She replies.
And then I start driving again. The night soars past us, the night is like a miscarriage, a notion of what it was supposed to be lies dead at my feet. And then Raven shows up, she is sitting right next to me, she is the saint of tonight. I glance at her purple hair, and dark attire, yes she definitely looks like the patron saint of miscarried nights.
"So I keep driving, and then what happens?" I say.
"I'm not sure, this is your world." Raven replies.
"Well then, I'm going to find a nice grassy spot to park at, and then you and I are going to have a drink." I say.
I drive for about fifteen more minutes and then pull over to the side, I drive recklessly into a clearing I see. When I stop I put the filter of my smoked out cigar in my cars ash tray and reach into the back seat. When I pull my hand back I am holding a half-full handle of good old Sailor Jerry spiced rum.
"Ladies first." I say and pass the bottle to her. Surprisingly she accepts the offering in her delicate ivory hands. She unscrews the cap and takes a whiff of it, she wrinkles her nose.
"Cheers, and bottoms up."
She tentatively puts the bottle to her lips and takes a small sip of it. After ingesting it, she screws up her face.
"Dear Azar, that is strong!" She exclaims.
"Of course now pass it over." Upon receiving the bottle I take a large gulp of it. It burns intensely on the way down and I screw up my face also. No one can drink straight Sailor without feeling the burn.
"God-damn! That is some good booze!" I say, and then hand her the bottle again. "Don't take no sissy sip this time. If you can save the world, than you can handle the handle."
She takes another sip, this one much bigger. We continue along this way until I get my buzz nice and refreshed from earlier, and I'm pretty sure that she is feeling it to.
"You ever been drunk before?" I ask.
"Nope." She says, even though she has to be feeling the alcohol her face is still staunch and stoic.
"You don't happen to be feeling horny do ya?"
"Nope."
"Ah well, one can't be blamed for trying to fuck a cartoon character. More booze?"
"No, I'm good thanks." She says.
"Okay, so let's start from square one." I say, I feel warm all over. And I think about what life is going to be like when I have to stop drinking. "I try and kill myself, I lose my home instead of my life. And then a cartoon character shows up on the side of the road."
"I wish you would stop calling me a cartoon character." Raven says.
"Okay, so ixnay on the artooncharactercay."
"Right, and I'm here to help you."
"Help me? How?"
"I don't know, but I've been getting your diary entries channeled to me for a purpose." She slurs slightly, "The question is what reason?"
"To help me."
"Well obviously."
"Even though I haven't watched your show in years."
"That is actually mildly comforting. It is the most comforting aspect of riding in a car driven by a suicidal alcoholic."
A moment of silence passes.
Two moments of silence pass.
"So now what? Do you want to kiss me?" I say.
"Nope."
"Damn, have you ever kissed anybody before?" I ask.
"Nope."
"Oh," I take another swig of the Sailor Jerry, " Well I guess you're supposed to preach to me about good, an taking care of my body and shit right now ?"
"Nope."
"Well goddamn! What is supposed to happen where are the fire-works? Where is the big life-changing epiphany?" I say, I'm beginning to feel very angry. No, angry isn't the right word. I'm becoming very frustrated. My life has hurtled into this moment where I have a delusion of a cartoon character and I'm still terribly confused as to what I should be doing.
"Are you even real?!" I yell at Raven frustrated.
"Of course I am." Raven says, she makes eye contact with me. Making eye contact with her is like making eye contact with a smoking volcano and I have to avert my gaze.
"Then why don't you make the car float?" I say, my tone is defeated. The suggestion is simply the first thing that came to my mind and I don't expect her to make good on it.
Before I can register what is happening the car is enveloped in dark energy begins to levitate in the air. "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos." Raven says almost as an after-thought.
I look dumbfounded at Raven, and then look out my window watching the ground leave behind us. I then do something I haven't done for months. I laugh, it is a hysterical laugh filled with joy. Raven joins me, her laugh is more a muted chuckle, but she is definitely laughing.
"This is so amazing!" I say.
Raven says nothing, but continues hurtling the car towards the stars. As we are ascending the sky begins to change colors, from the deep ebony of the night to a violet plum color. Then to red, to green, to a deep crimson.
"What's happening?" I ask panicked.
"I don't know." Raven says.
"Well, put the car down."
"I can't. I'm not controlling it anymore."
We continue ascending, the sky is now a crimson and black spiral. The sky's strange transformation is no longer ominous to me. And then it strikes me.
"I'm dead aren't I?" I ask Raven.
"You are, but I wasn't supposed to tell you. I was supposed to help you make peace with yourself." She says.
"But there is still so much to understand, how can a soul as heavy as mine be ascending?" I ask her.
"Let me show you something." She says gently. You places her palm on my forehead, "My power may be able to extend to your troubled Psyche." She projects her astral self from her body in the form of a giant black bird. He astral self enters me through my eyes.
And then we are inside my head.
Inside the swirling vortex of my mind, as opposed to the vortex of the physical sky Raven speaks to me. She rummages around inside my mind briefly wading through the dross of white noise that is my typical thoughts.
"Here it is." She says in my mind. What she is indicating is a safe, "Open it."
I try my hardest to mentally unlock the safe, when I think my mind will snap for the pressure of the exertion the safe swings open. I'm washed with a plethora of good memories, memories of my family, of the loves I have had.
"There you go." Raven says. "These memories will keep you warm in your twilight, and I will keep you in my memories."
"Erect a temple for my poor despondent self in your soul." I beg her, "I cannot stand the thought of being forever forgotten."
"I already have, I started when I channeled your first journal entry." She says.
And then she leaves me, alone I sort through my memories and hope that something makes sense. It is in the warmth of memories, that I address this final bitter sweet joy. I hope she keeps me in her memory.
The End.