Off to Pittsburgh it was for me, I had always meant to make a trip up, not because it was a destination with in arms reach, one of those quick escapes from the drab mediocrity of regular life that one needs to keep their sanity and from murdering their wife, kids, and family dog, but I had always heard that it was a brighter version of Cleveland lacking the undeserved pretentiousness of its people with less midnight homicides and better character, a city more looking to the future than one that hangs on past glories with vengeful spite. Everywhere always seems to be more optimistic though, to one who stares into the eyes of desperation and disappointment at every passing day, traveling throughout their once relevant city. Cleveland had begun eating itself from the inside out ever since it lost its only reason to remain current in news circulation. Besides I had grown tired of the local troughs that I have become accustomed to weekly visiting because of boredom and that nostalgic high school guilt that tells one, you are in fact the hapless loser if you stay indoors. Shit, anything beats sitting around in this forsaken, rotting carcass of a town, all it had left to offer was women shaken from domestic abuse and suicide. Could a weekend change all that? Would I come back appreciative of what I have or delve deeper into frustration with where I was birthed into this depraved, self righteous world?

I stowed away my bag filled with unrealistic banter and attire that could only become of use to a raving, drunken night prowler, hardly anything even one could sleep in, but face it, I never really planned to sleep on this excursion, when you deal with twisted fiends like myself and the company I was with you never consider that you’ll be sleeping in a three day period, as sick as that sounds. I consider myself an optimist, with hope; hope that the drugs and boozing laced with periodic late night binge eating will keep my conscious enough to no longer have need for...

Off to Pittsburgh it was for me, I had always meant to make a trip up, not because it was a destination with in arms reach, one of those quick escapes from the drab mediocrity of regular life that one needs to keep their sanity and from murdering their wife, kids, and family dog, but I had always heard that it was a brighter version of Cleveland lacking the undeserved pretentiousness of its people with less midnight homicides and better character, a city more looking to the future than one that hangs on past glories with vengeful spite. Everywhere always seems to be more optimistic though, to one who stares into the eyes of desperation and disappointment at every passing day, traveling throughout their once relevant city. Cleveland had begun eating itself from the inside out ever since it lost its only reason to remain current in news circulation. Besides I had grown tired of the local troughs that I have become accustomed to weekly visiting because of boredom and that nostalgic high school guilt that tells one, you are in fact the hapless loser if you stay indoors. Shit, anything beats sitting around in this forsaken, rotting carcass of a town, all it had left to offer was women shaken from domestic abuse and suicide. Could a weekend change all that? Would I come back appreciative of what I have or delve deeper into frustration with where I was birthed into this depraved, self righteous world?

I stowed away my bag filled with unrealistic banter and attire that could only become of use to a raving, drunken night prowler, hardly anything even one could sleep in, but face it, I never really planned to sleep on this excursion, when you deal with twisted fiends like myself and the company I was with you never consider that you’ll be sleeping in a three day period, as sick as that sounds. I consider myself an optimist, with hope; hope that the drugs and boozing laced with periodic late night binge eating will keep my conscious enough to no longer have need for beds or the strange alternate realities that occupy dreams, for the latter will become my reality. How will I acquire such favors, you ask? Drug culture is a unique potluck; you find yourself with handfuls of this and that, from time to time, that you somehow managed to barter from a rainbow of insidious types that travel around the tri state area peddling their wares. I had known a few of these types to hail from the city of steel and apparently lsd, and was ready to call upon them when faced with the empty handed dilemma or when I found myself to familiar with my surroundings. Loosing yourself is the only way to go, things are more interesting when they always seem new to you, despite crossing paths with them previously. The trip would be made by road, I mean, why not, its supposedly only two and half hours away besides I’ve learned that once you face the barren wasteland that is the US interstate you find out things about yourself; how much of a imbalanced hate spewing cretin you are, when faced with sharing a narrow roadway riddled with unnatural daydreaming and stop and go brake checks perpetuated by sexting while driving. Housewives driving mini vans know nothing of the perversion etching along side them, where truck drivers are pleasuring themselves looking down from their high perch of solitude. At any moment you could be passing a seemingly normal driver who could have a small child or family of four tied up in his trunk, kicking and screaming, no one to hear their cries through the heavy winds of high speeds and in car sing a longs. The world we live in is grim and hopeless, how many of these faces have been seen in nightmares?, Or the news?, On milk cartons? I think this might be in fact, the highway to hell.

I’m making this trip with a long time friend of mine, a large Mexican with the insatiable lust for the drink and everything equally unholy. Hes just the kind of character you need to travel with, he keeps you aware of your surroundings, short tempered and immeasurable stamina when putting away the poison. If I were to let him loose we’d never make it back home, they’d have me committed just for knowingly letting someone like this run free, without supervision, and him, well, shit, they’d lock him up for good this time. Anger the man, and you’ll find yourself on the receiving end of a bludgeoning, one which you have little chance of escape, for his hard head only strengthens his drive. Trying to remain on your toes around such a man while simultaneously attempting to keep up with him in the field of debauchery and intoxication is a daunting task in itself, but one I am always up for. The cab of the vehicle is stocked with beverages to ail us in our quench for life and we hit the road with a heated drive.

Reeling into our destination we find our hotel and set up shop, we have plans to meet up with two others who had already been waiting for us to arrive at another hotel further off. Upon arriving at said locale I am met with what appears to be two normal, warm blooded Americans appearing out of a far more intriguing yet concerning establishment, while looking at this place I am dumbfounded at how someone could call it a motel, (the hotels inbred bastardized relative far down the family tree), it was the kind of location that one would later link many school yard disappearances to and vagrant abductions, a home to gypsies and hillbilly lovers forced to leave home. The smell inside could be labeled as a new prototype of musty air, its as if they had bottled the time period the place was erected in and kept it preserved with the factors of age intact. Additionally there lingered a certain smell of possible wanderers who might have broken in a back window to shelter for the night. The microwave was the original model crafted in the seventies, how does someone have these artifacts this many years? Mismatched thrift store furniture adorned the room while a thirteen inch television played only one channel one would only watch if he was deep in a mental trance from whatever drug he was toying with. I stumbled into the bathroom where half a bench protruded into the shower for a fiend who had no victim, could sit for hours thinking of all the innocent bystanders he had come into contact with earlier in his day and what he would have done. Strangely enough, the bible lay on the nightstand, unscathed, you know those murderous beasts they always hold the bible close to their blackened, inhuman hearts, wouldn’t dare defile that piece of fiction. Needless to say I had to get out of there quick, I never like to be in places like that, I feel myself tarnish the longer I linger. How they could stay in such a place, I don’t know. The room might take form and infiltrate their sleeping minds causing scenes of chaos and unspeakable horrors whilst they lay paralyzed, forced to view these disturbing images.