Hitcher

"Thank you." Sachin said, taking the pad and starting at the back as she requested. In order to pass the time, he started to draw. "I'm on the road because I was traveling around. I draw and write comic books, you see, and I generally travel around the world getting inspiration so I can get the monthly issue out. I believe I have got one of the best jobs ever." he said with a happy grin.

He took the cookie as well, and started munching on it. "So you're looking for your parents? How did you track them to Chicago anyway, or is that a personal question?" he asked. The Indian was a bit disappointed she grew up in a Catholic orphanage. That probably meant she was growing up to be a nun or some sort. Sachin's proud and clearly extensive knowledge of how what Catholic girls did came from television and an inherent sense that that was how stories went.

“Thank you,” Danny took the piece of the cookie that was offered to him by the young girl, only realizing now how hungry he was another thing he always forgot he needed in this world. He placed the food in his mouth and went through the mechanical motions of chewing and swallowing it with as little effort as possible. He was not sure but it appeared the girl had let down a little on her guard, only just barely though, although he could be completely wrong, nothing uncommon for him. It was still as hard as always to read humans despite his many years, on and off, around them.

“You draw?” He said looking over his shoulder to look at the boy, Danny was beginning to forget how fragile he was and how dangerous a vehicle could be. “I too was an artist but that was a long time ago,” the traveler said as he turned his eyes back on the road, correcting the vehicle so that it drove straight down the road again and was no longer drifting to the left.

(Skip me for now. I have work to do, and I don't want to slow you down.)

“That’s interesting,” Danny said. He was listening to every word she said, even looking at her most of the time, and found it all very insightful to the kind of person she was but Danny had the bad habit of sounding uninterested at the worst possible times and he could never tell when that was. The girl looked relaxed to him and that was a good sign he guessed, maybe she was feeling more comfortable around him. Things like this never happened in his dimension because he did not have the imagination to think of such scenarios. The girl was nice and Danny liked that. The boy was still a little odd to Danny but that was neither here nor there.

Taking the turn the girl said, only a little late and it only caused Danny to swerve slight, it only looked dangerous if you were outside the car and watching them or if you were in the car in the first place. Danny took this as a sign that he might need to pay more attention to the road and not making sure he made eye contact with the people talking.

Sachin's eyes brightened. "I'm not sure if you've ever seen it, but I'm currently writing a series called White Darkness." he said. "It's a bit religiously offensive," he admitted, "But it's about a few teens who get involved in a second war between Heaven and Hell through bizarre circumstances. One's an Indian atheist, one's a Bangladeshi Muslim, one's an American Christian, one's a Japanese Buddhist and to top it off we have a Chinese-American Jew." he said. "Heaven turns out to be an incredibly corrupt society still stuck in pre-Industrial Revolution times, ruled together by Michael, Uriel and Zacheriah since God went missing a few millennia back. Michael is the sane and good one in the group who genuinely cares about Heaven and the angels, Uriel is the embodiment of a religious fundamentalist who enforces God's Will a bit too far, and Zacheriah is actually the demon Mammon in disguse, and is planning on taking over Heaven, Hell and Earth, and eventually the realms of the other Gods like Vishnu, Odin and Zeus. Oh, and Michael's in a gay relationship with Gaberial, and he has to hide that or Uriel WILL kill him, even though they happen to be brothers. I haven't gone into much detail into how Hell is yet, that's in the new issue which I'm drawing right now."

Danny was watching the road, something he should have been doing more of the entire drive but had not been, but he still looked at the boy in the backseat using the rearview mirror. He spoke with such passion about his story, Danny was actually very impressed by that and a little jealous, it was obvious that he was a good writer from how much he loved and cherished it so. After a time Danny took his eyes off the boy, having forgotten his name already, which was why he was trying to listen for the boy to say it once more.

Gracie, Danny noticed, was visibly startled by the way he had taken that last turn. She had tensed for a moment before returning to her at ease state. Danny also noticed that she was very quick to relax so he would try to make sure he drove better the rest of the so he would not scare her again.

It did not take a very long time for the god to again grow bored of driving, the two passengers were interesting but that was all, the landscape was repetitive and dull. So in order to try and maintain focus on what he was doing he absent mindedly turned on the radio to see what he could listen to. The song that came on first was a blast, it was the song “Strawberry Fields Forever” one of the songs he had sung many years ago in a previous life. The images began to flow through him as he remembered everything he had gone through.

The driver also began to forget being in the car and let the foot on the gas pedal slowly get closer to the floor. They picked up speed and the car began to swerve from one side of the lane to the other.

Sachin shook his head. "Not in this story. In this one, Michael, Uriel and Lucifer are the brothers. Gaberial isn't related to them." he explained. "You can probably get this story at any comic store, or WalMart. WalMart sells a bunch of these comics." He remembered the good luck he had when WalMart decided to sell comics too. It put a lot of money in his pocket.

"I find it hilarious that among my biggest customers are the same people calling my comic blasphemy." the Indian grinned. Then Danny's horrible driving skills revealed themselves even more, and he pressed back into his seat, watching the car go by with a blare. He started breathing again. "Damn man," he told Danny "Pay attention to the road."

Danny was snapped back to reality again, this time much more violently, having dozed off into one of his absentminded states, not a good thing that was for sure. Gracie grabbed the wheel of the car and yanked it in her direction, making them narrowly miss the truck they had almost had a head on collision with. That would have killed Danny for sure, making things interesting again for a little while, after all he only came to this world because it was far more dangerous than his own. Then Danny heard the boy in the back chastise him for his driving as well, something he definitely deserved for almost killing his two passengers.

Glancing back to the boy and also quickly looking to the girl beside him Danny apologized, “Sorry for the scare, I’ll pay more attention to the road now,” he sounded dejected and ashamed as he continued, “I’m not used to driving anymore I guess.” He then checked his speedometer to make sure he was going the speed limit, which only took a second, then added, “I think it’s been almost thirty years since I last drove a car.” The god did not know if the comment would alarm the passengers or not but he had again forgotten that people were not used to the actual presence of gods, usually it did not matter if they were from this dimension or the one in between the next.

The city was on the horizon now, or at least it looked like it could be the city to Danny. He had been driving for quite a while. And in this world anything was possible, just one of the reasons he kept coming back to it over and over again the other reason was because of the marvelous sensations he always felt.

Sachin started taking deep breaths after he shakily climbed out of the car. "Please never drive again." he told Danny. "Or if you do, never drive when I'm in the car. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to mentally remind myself to stop shaking." He took another deep breath, and sighed. "OK, that's better now."

He went to the bathroom, and then tried to buy a burger. "Look, it's very simple what I want. I. Want. A. Vegetarian. Burger. A vegetarian fucking burger. What part of that statement can you not understand!?" he asked the man at the stand, who had an uncomprehending expression, as though a vegetarian burger was simply not possible.

"A vegetarian burger." the man said.
"Yep."
"No meat at all."
"That's more or less the definition of vegetarian."
"So you don't want a beef patty."
"Buddy, please don't give me any beef. Now, let's get this issue straightened out. A vegetarian burger... is a burger without meat." he said slowly, as though talking to a small child. The man shook his head as though Sachin had ruined his day and now he wanted to have a little cry, feeling sorry for the poor people who didn't eat meat.

Sachin got his burger and french fries, and headed back to the back seat of the car, and looked a bit relieved Gracie was driving this time, and murmured a quiet "Thank God."

He strapped himself in, put the notebook and pencil to the side, and started eating.

Danny realized that he had made a very negative impression on the two people and thought for a time of simply using the door of the bathroom to leave back to his world. Before getting out of the car he watched the two people get out doing their own thing. Gracie went to get some coffee and the other boy had managed to finally get himself something to eat, appearing to have had a bit of a spat with the operator of the small place to get something to eat. It did not take too long for the both of them to be on their way back to the car and Danny did not want any more trouble so he quietly got out of the car and began to walk over to the bathroom.

Before he managed to reach the door he had a thought though, maybe Danny still had a chance to redeem himself in the eyes of the two people he was now traveling with. Though the odds of being able to do so were extremely low he still could not simply leave and not return, something just seemed to compel him to try and be seen in a better light by them or Gracie at least. Turning around to make his way back to the car having forgotten about the bathroom all together, Danny was then spoken to by the man that had just sold a burger to the other man.

“You want a burger too,” he asked with a rough voice, sounding as though he had been smoking since he was twelve.

“Alright,” Danny said with his delightfully rough voice, a nice contrast to the other man’s. He moved at a regular pace over to the man and grabbed a burger and began to walk to the car once more. Unwrapping the burger of its foil, Danny took a bite. It was greasy and not really that great, if anything Danny was unhappy that he had taken the first bite even though he was still starving. The man was offended over something though and grabbed Danny by his shirt and turned him around.

“You have to pay for that,” he said with an agitated tone, making his voice harder to understand.

“I don’t have any money,” Danny said with an even tone. The man then without warning made to hit Danny in the face but the man did not realize that he was fighting someone who had been in quite a bit of combat. Danny moved out of the way of the punch, which was very slow because the fry cook seemed to be out of breath, and delivered a blow to his stomach with his free hand. The Fry cook doubled over in pain, releasing Danny, and went to his knees. With that done Danny dropped his burger on the ground and got in the passenger’s seat of the car, ready to go.

Sachin turned back to look at the burger man, who was now jumping up and down like a leprechaun or something. To show his great wisdom and maturity, he shot the guy the bird, and got back to eating his burger and fries. After taking a swallow, and making sure his mouth wasn't full, he grinned at Dan. "Nice one." he told him. In his mind, the burger guy had what was coming to him. People who made that much fuss about a veggie burger deserved something bad.

He then ate the last of his burger, and continued to absent-mindedly eat the fries while sketching in the notebook. He drew up, in amazing detail, a demon stabbing an angel through the head with a dagger.