Before the driver is the hitchhiker –who hasn’t responded to the driver’s protest, which causes the latter to doubt whether or not he actually screamed it- propped next to, and partially on top of, the young woman. One hand has disappeared up her dress while another pries at a black and blue breast that has flopped out.

The driver is sickened, but the taste that enters his mouth is the same metallic tingle that began his journey down the peyote hole last night. He prudently chokes it back, even though that causes it to burn even more drastically within his chest. His head burns too, though it is of the slow roasting of coals: a base of anger inflamed, if he can believe it, with betrayal. That her restrains have been undone or loosened clinches it. It shouldn’t, since the girl would not be able to do much with those mangled twigs even if she were conscious; but it smacks of spite against him. The driver knows he is being overly sensitive and irritable –probably from the drugs- but instead of fighting it, he goes with the unreasoned fury growing within and lends it his entire body on which to be nourished.

This time the driver does manage to escape the chair, though the chair kind of comes with him, and he is on top of the hitchhiker; not for long, because the hitchhiker is soon on the floor.

“What the hell are you doing?” The hitchhiker scolds like a moody teenager, and each word pounces like a separate, well-pronounced predator.

To his own surprise, the driver is sorry. Although he knows what the hitchhiker was doing, or attempting to do, was wrong; he reminds himself that he shouldn’t really care for the fates of either of them. Let them tear each other to shreds, and then fuck that way: that’s how little he wishes to care; but he does, obviously.

“C’mon, the girl can barely walk, an she’s not even moving.” This sounded lame to himself, so the driver can only imagine how much derision the hitchhiker will find in it. The latter simply gets up, brushes himself off, and sulks back to his own bed. An overgrown child indeed; though the driver doubts how much the hitchhiker actually feels himself to be reprimanded, and whether it’s not just a show to get the driver off his case. Either way, the latter figures as long as the hitchhiker has returned to his allotted bed, there’s not much more he can do, short of….