Much of Nothing

Each step you take sends a jolt of pain through you as the previous nights endeavors pound a furious assault into your aching head. The piercing sunlight isn't exactly helping matters either.

After walking three blocks, you find yourself before the entrance to the wooded area where-in lies "the park in the woods".

Some of your friends and you discovered the park in the woods when you were younger, at the age of twelve; when the entire world is there for you to discover. It was in the heart of a wooded area that covered the span of nearly two blocks. The park must have been abandoned many years ago for the wood to grow so tall all around it. Your father said the park was there and abandoned when he was young. He also said that it wasn't really a park, just a couple of monkey bars and a slide.

But it was cool all the same. Cool because it belonged to you and your friends. It was rare that anyone went out there, and it was a good place to be alone. When you were younger, you would go there to dwell on your troubles. Now you go there to smoke pot or drink beers. It's funny how things like that change as you grow older.

As you walk through the wood, you wonder at the marvel of how overgrown the path has become over the years. There are fallen trees and thick growths of unknown plant life that present themselves as obstacles in your journey, but they don't take long to go over or around, and you soon find yourself at the base of one of the monkey bar constructs, staring up at your friend Dan who sits atop the horizontal bars, smoking a cigarette.

"What's up, yo?" He says.

"It's about fucking time you got here, asshole! How long did you expect us to wait on you?!" Mikey fumes, standing on the bottom step of the metal slide. He has always been a bit high strung.

"Shut the fuck up and light that shit!" Dan demands of the hyper Mikey.

Dudley walks over to you from behind a tree, his girl friend of the moment only steps behind him. "Dude, I called you almost twenty minutes ago. What the fuck took you so long?"

"It's a fifteen minute walk!" You tell him, "You're lucky I got here so quickly."

Mikey applies a lighter to the end of an ugly looking cigarette and takes in a huge puff of smoke before handing it to Dudley, who stands to his left.

Dudley hits the joint and passes it to his girl who inhales and coughs violently while holding it out for you to take.

"Are you okay?" You ask as you take it from her fingers. She nods that she is fine, but she cannot speak through her fit of hacking.

You inhale hand it off to Dan, who hops down from the monkey bars to accept it. It tastes dry, almost entirely devoid of the flavor you usually get from fresh cannabis.

"Where the hell did you get this shit?" You ask of Mikey.

"I pinched it from a bag my dad left laying out." He tells you. "It's kind of old."

"Kind of..." You say. "This girl over here is about to cough up her tonsils."

She glares at you for a second. "I'm okay," She says, "I just haven't smoked in a while." She is handed the joint again and inhales with only minimal coughing before handing it over to you.

"Don't be so modest," Dudley tells her, "It has more to do with the low quality. The stuff is ancient."

"If you don't like it you don't have to smoke it," Mikey says.

"It's not all that bad, I suppose," Dudley admits.

It is passed around in silence until it becomes too small to hold. Only Dan is brave enough to attempt to smoke at this point, burning his fingertips as he holds it to his pursed lips. Suddenly he inhales too hard and you watch as he sucks it in, the embers sizzling out on the back of his throat. He makes the choking pained look that people make when this sort of thing happens, while everyone else laughs and points and mocks him.

"Can we go down the slide?" The girl asks. All eyes go to the rust laden slide that stands on old iron stilts.

"Have you had a tetnis shot recently?" Dudley asks her.

The slide, along with everything else in this forgotten park, is covered with rust, and is barely standing. It's an ancient ruin of childhood splendor that nature has reclaimed.

"Well what do we do now?" Dan asks. "I don't plan on hanging out here all day."

"I don't know," Dudley says, "Do you have any more weed, Mikey?"

"That's all I got." He says.

"Well that sucks." Dudley replies.

"We could go down to the old tunnels," Mikey suggests. "I could probably get beers. And Kyle said he'd be there today just hanging out. He has mushrooms, you know?"

"Sounds good to me," Dudley says. "He'll probably have more pot, too."

Dan shakes his head. "I don't know," he says, "I've seen enough of this fucking town."

"Then what do you suggest?" you ask of him.

He looks at you and does not speak at first, trying veinly to build suspense. "Why don't we just... Drive?" He asks. "We'll drive West and see where we end up."

The girl that came with Dudley steps forward a little and speaks just one word. "Profound" she says, stating it as a fact. You can't deny that it would be profound, full of the random sense of adventure one rarely obtains past childhood. Not knowing where you're headed and just going.

The tunnels though... You haven't been to the tunnels in years; they are huge passages that follow the train tracks where-in you used to drink. And the prospect of mushrooms cannot be passed up... can it?

Well... You do have chores to do. You have a sink load of dishes that your parents expect to be done before they get home, and a room to clean. Maybe you could meet them there later? But what if they're not there?

Shit. What do you do?