Think of the best tile ever, then add "...: Chapter One". That's this things title. Enjoy.

The thing with any vehicle is that you use them to get from point A to point B. If your vehicle is a machine, then odds are you’re going to have to drive it, meaning you’re gonna have to know how to steer, and park the fucker. So, say you’ve never seen a bike before in your life. How do you know you’re even supposed to drive it? How do you know that the wheels turn, and if you don’t go forward on it, you’ll tip over and have to spend ten minutes trying to get the leg your sweatpants out of the gears, only to come up looking like a grease stained, pissed off idiot? Why the hell did you get on it in the first place? You didn’t know what it was, and you just got on anyway?

Well, in many ways, my story is a lot like that.

I was driving in my car. I swear, that was mostly the only thing I was doing at the time. I had my arm out the window of this piece of shit blue Saturn sedan, my black hair swept straight back like some guy straight out of the Outsiders. Next to me, my buddy Dan was flipping through the stations on the radio, finally settling on some New York Classic Rock station. We looked like we could have been brothers, but we weren’t related. In the back seat, my sister Michelle was messing around in the cooler. It was mid-day, and we were going down Route 18 to visit a pal of mine for his summer cook-out. A hiss from the back seat told me that Michelle had opened up a beer.

“Not in the car.” I said, facing the rear view mirror with my whole face as if it’d let her hear me better.

“Yeah,” she said, sipping loudly. There was a hollow pop, and I knew that she had just pulled the bottle from her mouth. “I’d hate to get your limo all covered in beer.” Her sarcasm was palpable. I might have run over it, because the car bumped. I heard a muttered curse from the back seat, and Dan looked back and started laughing.

“Did she fucking spill the beer?” I asked. Dan started to laugh harder. “Did you fucking spill the beer?”

“Noooooo…” Michelle replied.

“Bullshit. What the fuck did I just say?”

“It’s not that bad…” the car bumped again. Another curse. By now Dan was suffocating on his laughter. “Okay, it’s still not that bad…” Michelle had started to laugh as well. I could smell the beer.

“Listen to me,” I shouted furiously at the mirror. “You put that fucking mouth of yours to work and suck every drop of beer out of those seats. You hear me? And shut up, Dan, it’s not that funny.”

Dan roared with laughter. He was clutching his stomach. “It’s fucking hilarious, dude,” he managed between gasps. His fit had become an unattractive series of hacking coughs.

“It’s not funny.” I insisted, a smile threatening to surface in the middle of my angry-face.

“It’s kind of funny, Mike.” Michelle said, taking another sip of her beer.

“You shut up and start sucking!” Dan said mockingly, barely managing the sentence before bursting in the loudest laugh you ever heard. There was a sputtering noise, and something sprayed the back of my neck.

“Did you just fucking spit that all over me?” I had to fight the urge to turn completely around. “You piece of shit…” by now both Dan and Michelle were laughing so hard, that it completely drowned out the radio.

And they continued to laugh until I eventually stopped at the gas station. I had to piss anyway. I asked the owner if he had a spot to clean the interior out, and he pointed it out to me. I pulled the car, which reeked of Hopdevil, over to the station, and thrust the spray tube thingy into Michelle’s arms. “Take out the mats, rinse them with this, and dry it with the vacuum thing.”

“Or she could just suck it dry…” Dan started to giggle again.

“That’s not even funny anymore, man.” I started towards the gas station, walking right past a white sign that probably had something written on it.

Five minutes later, I walked out of the gas station, pissed off because the bathroom in there was out of order. I looked at the sign again on my way back towards the car. It read: Bathrooms out of order. That, to me, was just such an obnoxious thing for the universe to have done that to me. I started back to my car to discover that Michelle had forgotten to take the mats out of the car before blasting them with water, and was just dousing the entire interior of my car with water.

Why the fuck does this happen to me? I thought. As though in response, a man cursed loudly as he held out his coffee. He was dressed oddly, and spoke with an accent that I couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t European, I don’t think. It was like Brooklyn and Texas at the same time. He wore a bright yellow suit jacket, over a blue t-shirt, and blue shorts that stopped mid-thigh. He was an older gent, maybe fiftyish, with white hair that went in all directions like he’d been electrocuted. He had a large forehead, and bushy eyebrows, and a long reddish nose. I could have counted his nose hairs.

“Why does everything bad happen to me?” He muttered as he pulled a small notepad out of his jacket pocket, and started reading some notes. I raised an eyebrow at him. He must have noticed. “Hot coffee is hot.” He said. “In my time, coffee is always just right.”

“Hate it when that happens.” I sighed. There was a pause, and for a moment I thought he’d stop talking.

“Poor girl.” He muttered. “Look at her. Blasting her car with water… Is that a typical thing nowadays?”

“That’s my car.” I said.

“Oh.” He said. “Why aren’t you cleaning it?”

“I didn’t spill beer all over it.” I replied.

“So why is she cleaning it?”

“She spilled beer in it.”

“I thought you didn’t spill beer in it?”

“I didn’t. She did.”

“Oh.” He chuckled. “Okay. Sorry, fella, my hearin’ aint so good. We speak a lot louder in my time.” He snapped his notepad shut and wandered off.

I sighed, and went around the gas station to take a piss in the back. It was getting hot out in the parking lot, as it was midday on a cloudless day.

Behind the gas station was a short stretch of woods, which would serve in a pinch for my purposes. I waddled back there and started my business. There was a sound that can only be described as pissing on a really leafy shrub. It’s a sound that everyone that’s ever pissed on a really leafy shrub knows, a unique kind of pitter-patter that all woodsmen are familiar with. About five seconds in, I heard Dan calling.

“Mike! You back there?”

“Yeah.” I replied. “Go tell everyone, why don’t you.”

Dan laughed again. “Hey, Mike.”

“What?”

“Catch!” he said it so loudly, I jumped. I turned my upper body towards him, to my right, ready to dodge whatever he had thrown. Dan laughed again; he hadn’t thrown anything.

It was not the laughter I was listening to, though. I heard something else. The sound of piss hitting a leafy shrub had disappeared. I was no longer peeing on leafy shrubs. I looked, but there was nothing there. Just the grass, and the leaves. Nonetheless, I was hitting none of those things with my stream of urine. Rather, it pattered away against some invisible barrier. I tested around the area, peeing in wide arcs. The sound changed from leafy shrub pee, to pee-on-metal.

Eventually, of course, I ran out of pee, and Dan’s laughter became all too apparent.

“What the hell, man?” he struggled to keep his composure.

“I was pissing on something…” I began, but Dan interrupted me.

“Yeah, no shit.” Dan had stopped laughing, but he was still grinning broadly. “You were pissing on everything.”

“Shut up, dude…” I took a tentative step forward, bracing my hands out in front of me.

And another.

And on the third step, my shin hit something hard, and sharp, like the corner of a metal table, or the edge of a skateboard. But I saw nothing. I reached down and felt around.

“What is it?” Dan said. He wasn’t laughing.

“I hit something.” I said, still reaching down. As surely as I had been hit, there was something there, an invisible something, long and edged. Not sharp, but rounded, like a fin.

“I heard it, dude, what is it?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I knocked on the surface. It made a hollow sound, like I was banging on an aluminum canoe. I looked up at Dan, and his eyes widened. We grinned at the same time, and he came bounding over, not caring where I had pissed, which was pretty much everywhere. I told him where to put his hand, and he obeyed. “It’s invisible…” he started. He moved his hand across the surface, running it away from where we were standing. He kept going, until he exclaimed again. “It’s like a wing!” he said. “It’s attached to something!” He ran his hand further up, until it was over his head, where it finally rounded out. “It’s tall…” he said.

“What is it?” I asked, edging over to where Dan was.

“It’s a fucking bush, Mike.” He replied sarcastically. He shook his head. “I dunno.” He added, this time more sincerely. “What do you think?”

I shrugged. I reached out, and ran my hand up the surface. It felt smooth, slightly warm, and metallic. I dropped my hand, and as it fell, it knocked into something else, something jutting out from the invisible surface. Frantically, I felt around.

“What?” Dan sounded urgent. “What is it?” He rubbed his area of the invisible thing, but my hand hit something again. I felt around it.

There was no mistaking it. It was a handle, shaped like the handle to an old frige. “Dan.” I said. “I found a handle.” I looked at him, and he stopped fumbling around. “It’s a handle.” I repeated. He nodded slowly.

For a moment I was hesitant. After all, Michelle was over there washing my car. I’ll only be a second.

I breathed deeply. “What if it’s dangerous?” I asked Dan. In response, he looked around, ran over to a fallen log. After a moment of grunting, he broke off a club-like stick.

“You gonna open it?” he asked. He didn’t sound mocking. He sounded like he would have been fine if I had said “no, let’s just leave it.”

I breathed again, and pulled sharply on the handle. Nothing happened. I felt the handle around, and pulled again. Still nothing.

“Is it stuck?” Dan whispered.

“Maybe it’s locked.” I replied, also in a whisper, like we were breaking into something. I felt around some more. I tried to turn it, both directions, even pushing it. Still, nothing happened. I was disappointed.

“Lemme try.” Dan said, and he passed me the cudgel, which I took. It was light in my hands, and very dry, traced with termite tracks. It’d break in one swing, I knew.

There was a click, and I jumped. Dan looked at me. He looked nervous, even pale. He cleared his throat. “Um, there was a button…”

“C’mon,” I said, steeling my nerves. “Let’s go.” Dan nodded. He pulled on the invisible handle, and an invisible door opened, about three feet tall and almost two feet wide. I could see the inside of a door, and it looked like an airplane emergency exit, without the big red pull-bar. It had a small round window, and black interior.

Carefully, I peered into the entrance. Inside, to the immediate left, were two chairs, like the cockpit of an airplane, facing through a windshield that was similar to that of an airplane, which had handles similar to those of a bumper car. An assortment of bulbs and switches and buttons assaulted our eyes, all of them powered off. To the right, there was another door. This whole thing looked like the cockpit of a small jet. Dan stepped in first, and I fell behind him.

Cautiously, he sat in the seat. “No way…” he felt the seat, as though to prove its existence. I followed suit, closing the door before sitting in the other seat. I was now on the right, and he on the left.

“Dude.” He said. “Push a button.”

“What?”

“Push a button.” He said, his grin broadening slowly. Before I could reply, he added “Don’t be a fucking pussy, just hit a button.” Then, as if to prove his point, he started hitting buttons. I wanted to kill him, but nothing happened.

“See?” he insisted. “C’mon, hit a button.”

Whatever, I thought. I hit a button. Instantly, a screen to my right lit up. Next to it was a keypad.

Please enter passcode:

*_ _ _ _*

I shot Dan a look. “You mother fucker…”

“Look, it’s fine. It wants a pass code…” he reached over, but I slapped his hand.

“No, we’re leaving.” I started to get up.

“Try five five five five.” He said.

I paused, and sat back down. “Really?”

“Just try it.”

“There’s no way.”

“Just. Try it.” He enunciated.

“I’m leaving.”

“Try. It. Mike.” He enunciated again, this time using his hands. “Five. Five. Five…”

“Yeah, fine, whatever.” I punched in four five.

There was a roar. Everything burst to life. A metal lap bar, like on a rollercoaster, lowered itself down to rest loosely across my abdomen. On Dan’s side, another screen lit up.

Insert Year:

______________

He put in some random numbers. Another screen popped up. The roaring got louder. Dan started to laugh. The screen read.

Are you sure?

(Ok)                           (Cancel)

“Don’t you fucking dare!” I was screaming now. “Dan, I swear to fucking god…” I tried to reach over, but I couldn’t reach because of the lap bar. He pushed my arms away.

He punched a green button, and I was wrenched back into my seat, like we were moving at a gazillion miles per hour. There was a whining sound. I had to close my eyes, because the windshield was as bright as the sun.

Suddenly, the whole cabin bucked, like we had crashed, and my diaphragm got crushed against the lap bar, and I couldn’t breathe. The sound that could only have been engines calmed down over the course of a minute, and the whining had stopped as well. I looked out the windshield. We were in a field, like a wheat field. It was overcast out, which was weird because I remember it being completely cloudless.

“Dan?” I asked. Dan was laughing, as his lap bar came up over his head. “Dan.” I snapped, hoping to get his attention. “Dan, where the fuck are we?”

“I dunno.” He looked out the window. “Looks like a field…”

I struggled against my lap bar, pulling up with all of my strength. “Dan, where the fuck are we?” I pulled harder. “What did you do? Where are we Dan?” I was panicking.

Dan reached over and pressed a button on the side of my lap bar. It flew up with the aid of my straining arms, to hit me right on the forehead. I groaned. “Mother fucker…”

“Relax, we’re okay.” Dan said. “We’re just in some field.”

“The screen said insert year.” I remembered aloud. “What did you put in?” I was hyperventilating.

“What?” He looked like he wasn’t paying attention.

“It asked for a year, what did you put in?” My voice had risen. Dan turned to me, and faltered.

“Oh,” he said. His expression fell. “I dunno, I just button mashed.”

“Dan, what fucking year did you put in?” I was yelling.

“I don’t fucking know!” We were screaming at each other. I was getting a headache from where the lap bar had hit my forehead. And we didn’t know where we were.

Dan wiped his face. “Mike?”

“Yeah?”

“Where are we?”

Good fucking question.