Monday, April 4, 2011

Preparing For Flight (part 2)


Later, Sarah asked me if I would take her out to the cabin so she could get the tires from her dad.  She must of seen the apprehension on my face and said we would only stay long enough to get the tires and leave.  About halfway there, Sarah told me with the biggest, widest, cheese eating grin that her parents were expecting us to stay for dinner.  I wanted to reach over and strangle her.  Not only was I uneasy about meeting her dad, but we had just smoked a joint.  I’m high and going to meet a judge who happens to be the father of the girl I’m dating… I’m dead.

            When we pulled up, her dad came out and said hello to both of us.  While Sarah introduced us, I hoped neither of them noticed my shaking legs.  It was not as bad as I had thought it would be.  I had half expected him to be wearing his black robes, but he wore faded blue jeans and a plain long-sleeved shirt instead.  He had a slow southern draw and seemed like an ordinary person, not the pretentious, high-society person I had expected.

            Sarah told her father about our trip to the courthouse earlier in the day as we went inside where I met her mother, Suzanne.  Luckily for me, they were both very worried about Sarah and focused their attention on her.  It was all I could do to keep my end of the conversation up when they did speak to me.  I was extremely nervous and mostly sat in an uncomfortable silence while they talked.

            We finally left hours later.  Her parents had been nice to me, but I still felt better once we were gone.  In the car, Sarah joked with me abut how she had set me up to meet her parents.  All the joking ended abruptly while, still on the empty county road, we passed Patrick’s car heading towards the cabin.

            She was not sure if he had seen her or if he recognized the van from the day before.  Sarah told me to speed up just in case he tried to follow us and reached over and clutched my leg so hard it hurt a little bit.  It was the first time I realized she was afraid of Patrick.  He never showed up behind us and by the time we reached Sarah’s dorm building, she had calmed down.

            Sarah and I believed that through acid we could discover more about ourselves.  I thought there was “something out there,” something spiritual and acid was the door to reach it.  As often as we could, we tripped.

            We decided to make a road trip to Norman, Oklahoma to buy some.  Sarah had friends attending Oklahoma University who usually had it around.  We stopped by Jeremy’s house, a friend I had just met not long ago and asked if he wanted me to pick some up for him too.  He gave me a hundred dollars and we left.  We made one last stop in Muskogee to pick up Sarah’s friend, Heather.

            When we arrived, the guy who had the acid was not around, so we hung out with some other people Sarah knew while we waited.  Finally, at dawn, the guy with the acid showed up.  I bought around thirty hits.  I was ready to go home, but everybody else was still in a festive mood, so we decided to go to someone’s house whose parents were away for the weekend.

            At the house, we waited for some people to bring over mushrooms, but I didn’t want to wait.  I decided we might as well trip there.  I could tell everybody else in the house didn’t want to wait for the mushrooms either, so I sold them the extra hits even though it was supposed to be for Jeremy.  Between Sarah and me, we took eight and a half hits.  It turned out to be really potent and we had taken too much.

            After the drugs kicked in, I noticed Sarah had disappeared.  In my altered state, I began to look for her.  I went to the backdoor and saw it was raining.  When I stepped out, I never got wet, though.  It was not really raining.  I stood there tripping off this and happened to turn my head to the right and saw Sarah sitting on the ground next to the house shivering.  I called her name, but she didn’t answer.

            Her face was flush from the cold and I could tell she had been crying.  When I asked her how long she had been outside, she said she didn’t know.  She said she had come outside because she felt like everybody was draining her spirit, pressing against her on every side.  She felt there was a negative feeling inside the house and didn’t want to be around it.  I tried to convince her to come inside because she was freezing, but she didn’t want to.  Finally, after pleading with her for several minutes, she agreed to come in.  She seemed troubled throughout the rest of the day and into the next morning staying mostly to herself.

            We left, dropped off Heather and then we went to Sarah’s parent’s house.  Sarah wanted to take a bath, but I couldn’t stay awake any longer.  I got into her bed and fell quickly asleep.  I woke up a little later and Sarah had still not come to bed.  I found her asleep in the tub.  I woke her up and we both went back to sleep until evening.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Your story has brought back a lot of old memories. Ben and I were best friends growing up. We lived 2 doors away from each other as teens. I would enjoy reading more about him and finding out contact information.

Thank you,

Michael Scroggins

Johnny Blake said...

Benjamin Darras #R7164
Unit 30C, A-Zone, Bed 94
Parchman, MS 38738

Anonymous said...

I am a friend of the Savage family. It seems that Ben has no problem going into detail about what Sarah did, but will not about what he did. Is this true repentance? I think not...

Johnny Blake said...

Anonymous: In response to your comment, let me say this. When Ben sent me the narrative there is a description of the crimes. However, he asked me to not include it because he was unsure how the Savage family would react. So, the question remains, why describe the crime Sarah committed while leaving out the description of the crime Ben committed. The simple reason is a description of the crime against Patsy Byers has been made public already (see link: http://articles.latimes.com/1995-09-25/news/ls-49759_1_public-servant) while the description of the crime involving Mr. Savage has never been made public except in the briefest of details. It is not an attempt to hide anything, but an attempt to be respectful the the friends and family of the victim.

I know this is a difficult subject and I am trying my best to be sensitive to those involved with the story.