TheJunkiesFaust#5(FTDParish)

I stood there while they lay tangled on the bed, catching their breath, resting. I saw Bridge reach down beside the bed and grab something and give it to Buzzy. He smiled at her took a drink of the beer and gave it to her. For her to drink.

I found myself back in my car, starting it, turning on the lights, putting it into reverse, turning around and going down the driveway.

I drove to Hindostan Falls and left the car in the parking lot by the boat ramp, hopped the cable and walked down the steep trail that led to the bottom of the falls.

The Falls really weren't much of a fall, about 5 feet vertically when the water was low enough to swim. We used to go swimming there all the time. The fall wasn't much but there was a place right at the near bank where the water flowed down a series of steps. Over time the water had smoothed all the rough edges, so what you ended up with was a water slide.

Of course there were no swimming signs everywhere but we were really some rebels weren't we. There were dangerous currents, deep channels and whirl pools, but those were farther down river an eighth of a mile around the flat rock. The big current from the slide dumped you off well before anything dangerous....if you wanted.

I surfed the current, that's what we called it, surfing the current. There was a big rock right down at the bottom of the slide and if you went in under the current from the side, you could pop up right in the slide water and if you were coordinated enough and strong enough, you could brace your feet against the rock, lean back into the current and just lay there suspended as the current flowed around you....surfing the current.

So there I was surfing the current and thinking about everything that happened that night, drinking the vodka I'd grabbed at the house, I'd alraedy finished the 6 pack and let the plastic 6 pack rings flow down the river. Watching it bob on the current in the moonlight until it dissapeared in the night.

I thought about the whirl pools. Supposedly there was one that sucked stuff down into a hole under the flatrock. I wondered if any of the people who had drowned out here and had never been found had been sucked down under the flat rock. Their lungs straining against their chests as they lay wedged into the rock with all that force, all that water bearing down on them as their lungs forced their mouths to open and try to gasp air. Their throat and lungs filling with water. Their life draining away and forever trapped under the rock with the river crushing them. I thought of them.

I thought about myself getting sucked down one of those holes. Dead hands grasping me, holding me, as the river beat down on me....


I drained the last of the bottle, letting some of the strong liquor flow out of my mouth, down my neck and over my chest, to be carried away in the river. I let the bottle slip from my fingers and watched it bob down the river. The moonlight glittering off the bottle. I could see the bottle. It was starting to swirl around the edges of one of the whirl pools. I picked my feet up off the rock and felt the current grab me.... and sweep me, down stream.