Thanks to the good peoples who reviewed the last chapter. Chapter 3 may take a little longer, certain less than good peoples deem it necessary to devote the last two weeks of class to big projects. In the mean time, please continue to review.

--------silec

The days and weeks since Johnny's sorrowed departure had melded together into one hateful ordeal. He could no longer differentiate moments or experiences, only a massive aversion towards the trip and its entirety.

Perhaps it was not the trip itself, but the people. That which he was trying so hard to escape, mankind and their wearied dramatics, followed him wherever he went. The faster he drove his broken down wreck of a car, it seemed, the more human distractions threw themselves in harm's way to slow him down. The more he tried to muffle his body's cries for rest and sustenance, the more he would find himself the sole client at a late-night roadside fast food restaurant. He was trying his best to push the memories away. Every surrender to need and want brought on an onslaught of nostalgia. Johnny found it funny, somewhat, that while before, he had gone insane from his head emptying itself of all memory, now he was expending all his energy towards getting the faces and the feelings away. Every day, Johnny's mission lost more and more ground. Not only was he giving into his bodily urges, he was crying now, too. Sleepless nights spent driving the infinite, unlit highways were punctuated by a brutal stabbing of the car's brake and the sounds of weeping echoing throughout some barren, uncaring locale. He tried, every day, to not think, to not remember anything. But still, his mind revealed itself to him thousands of times over.

The feelings came from the most random catalysts. A new emotion resurfaced itself while Johnny sat in his car eating a drive-thru taco, cursing himself for this new failure. He sat there, trying to concentrate on something other than the foul taste in his mouth. Anything. Somehow, the fried cheese and rehydrated meat product brought Devi to his mind. For a moment, the thought of her brought a sensation of the deepest calm to Johnny. It was as if she was there beside him. He dropped the taco onto the passenger's seat beside him and slumped slightly, purely out of bliss. For a moment, he was happy.

But the moment was gone as abruptly as it had come. The stench of lard and gasoline overpowered Johnny's ecstasy, and he landed from the heavens back into a pile of shit once more. Johnny felt his heart racing. He was certain that Devi had been sitting next to him just then. He felt around the passenger's seat, just to be sure. Trying to calm himself down, he wiped the sweat from his brow and wrung his hands a few times. "No, not again..." he mumbled. "It's not real...it never is..." He kept his arms completely straight and held the steering wheel tight. "None of it is real."

Something deep within Johnny writhed, anxiously. He suddenly felt horribly nauseous. The thing inside spoke to him in a soft voice. "We are if you let us," the thing whispered. Johnny instantly bent down underneath the steering wheel, hiding from the sober gray sky, or whatever it was that had spoken to him. He was going to throw up. He could feel it. His heart raced faster, and he felt a dull pain in his chest. He needed to get away.

"I won't let you..." came a weak murmur from beneath the glove compartment. Johnny rolled up the windows, and scanned the pale horizon through slit eyes. Nervously, he fumbled with the ignition. "I can't let you," he half-yelled over the roar of the engine, then drove away as fast as possible, running over a small, furry creature in the process. Hot black streaks were left on the spot where he had parked.

Once he was a significant distance from the restaurant, he flipped to a random radio station and put the volume on the highest setting. He couldn't hold it in anymore. Opening the windows with a shaking hand, he stuck his head out the small gap and vomited into the road.

The thing had spoken to him on more than one occasion. Perhaps, Johnny theorized when the queasiness had subsided, it was his mind's need to speak to itself, and with no more vessels to occupy, it had done the next best thing. Another hypothesis he thought equally possible, was that he had gone completely insane.

This voice, this conscience, had brought numerous other entities to Johnny's mind, however none had given such a reaction as had the memory of Devi. Johnny and his memories were at war, and he was losing. There was little he could do.

Several hours of frantic driving later, Johnny had an idea. "Maybe it's time I headed home..." he wondered aloud. "I am running out of funds, and these country people don't take very kindly to theft..." Half-expecting the voice to offer its own opinion, he was surprised when he was given none.

Johnny beat the dashboard with a fist and looked at his boots. They were worn and graying from constant friction over the past few weeks. "Somebody tell me what to do."