013

Am I seeing stars again?

"HEY!"

Smoke was coming out from the bonnet of his convertible car. Driving under the influence at night, Pen was not able to control his car too well and swerved to the side of the street where he nearly hit someone he never really saw there sooner - hitting the street light instead. Fortunately for him, he was fine, other than being quite out of his mind for the time being.

"Watch out where you're going!" The guy he nearly hit before continued shouting at him. He was the only one still walking around there, of what seemed like a dark street that hardly anyone goes to.

Silent, Pen stared up to the lights above him, oblivious to his surroundings or whatever just happened around him. In his mind, he was only seeing the light from the street light above him that he had just hit with his car. Without much thoughts in his head, he just smiled at the damaged street mast.

Stars...

"Hey you! Don't you hear me? You could've killed me!" Again, the guy yelled at him, now coming closer to him, furious. Wearing a black hoody and brown cargo pants, of what seemed like a local drug addict, he drew himself closer to Pen, thinking to get back some compensation from him, some big compensation.

"You..." He called out louldly, now standing right next to his broken car. Pen turned from the light to look at him, feeling vague.

"Huh?"

Pen then saw him holding a knife in his right hand, as if ready to strike down at him with it in a downward position. Still it came into his senses that he could be in a dangerous situation at that moment, quite slowly. Too slowly.

That is... a... He blinked a few times, seeing the knife as a sparkling rectangular object that he could not identify, assuming it was some kind of a weird torchlight, thus decided to ignore the fella.

"Give me your money, all you've got!" The threat slid through Pen's ears like it meant nothing at all.

A noisy thug with a bling in his hand... He continued looking at the street lamp above his head, grinning to himself - giving a thought to the guy that he was, actually, a psycho.

"I SAID, GIVE ME WHAT YOU GOT!" He yelled out, louder, as he got closer to Pen and pulled his shirt up with his left hand, putting the knife right in front of his nose. At that, Pen forgot about the street light above him but just focused on the light of the street lamp rebounding from the guy's knife directly into his eyes. He gave no response, as if he had no fear, in fact he really felt nothing inside other than the eagerness to look at the light.

Pen simply snorted. "I ain't got anything..."

It seemed as if the guy threatening him could not take it anymore and had grown out of patience. "Weakling. You make me sick." He kept his knife away as Pen just watched him doing so. The guy opened the door of the driver's seat and looked through Pen's trousers' pockets to find his wallet or anything that could be valuable and took them away, all without Pen fighting back or even realising what was happening in his own car. In a few seconds, the guy took away every valuable he could find in the car. As a matter of fact, he could have taken the car away too, if he could start the engine again and the car was not broken - he would just leave Pen there, stranded on the street, left with nothing.

The guy opened up Pen's wallet before leaving. "Hah! Thanks man." Then he began taking off, with his last words to Pen, "Nothing for you now but your car, dude!"

All Pen could do was just moan, feeling like it was just like it was in his unreal dream.

_________________________________________________________________________________


Sparkling little thingy.

Nothing's sparkling here. It's gonna shine yeah, from the sun I know.

It's shining... and it's the stars...

What stars? It's almost morning. Get up, moron.

He could not tell what was going on.

"I smell you, you stink, now, get up!"

Suddenly he could feel very cold water being poured onto his face which made him wake up instantly, shaking his head out like a doggy. He rubbed his eyes hard, able to see the vision of several people standing next to him, talking. "Now, driving under the influence is a serious offense which can result in imprisonment, a substantial fine and loss of your driving permit, did you know that?!" The same male voice was the one yelling like the first one he first heard, indeed, sounding familiar.

"What are you, a lawyer?" He heard a female voice, quite distant, but becoming closer. "Pen, you with us? What happened?"

AH, damn it. His head hurt bad because of his drinking last night, and apparently it was not dark as it used to be anymore, as if it was almost dawn.

"Man, how'd you get here? There's hardly anyone around. Lucky we're here!"

Pen looked up. "Brian." He put both his palms against his head, still feeling dizzy. "Sarah, Nisa. I barely remember much." He looked at Brian. "How did you get here?"

Brian raised his eyebrows, pointing his fingers to Sarah. "She from steak to night driving to extreme police anxiety to getting us lost till the morning to getting us nowhere!"

She was starting to grow mad at his attitude of keeping blaming others.

"Shut up already!" She yelled and moaned, feeling very dissatisfied as Nisa just looked on, not quite sure what to say.

"Hey, you're the one who got us here, supposedly goin' to the police station in Lewes but you got us all lost instead!" Brian claimed back at her, also mad. He looked like he had not been able to get enough sleep. "Buggin' around with my sleepin' time, what is it, 4 am or somethin'?"

"I'm the one driving the car, it's my car, if you have a problem with me then don't ride with me!"

Oh man, what they arguing about now? Pen felt irritated, feeling pain around his nape of neck.

"Enough already, Sarah just took the wrong turn that just caused us going to the wrong route. We're not exactly lost, we are still in Sussex. Just that everything's needing longer time because you guys are always fighting over unnecessary things, taking unnecessary time," Nisa barged in out of the blue.

"You guys aren't solving anything," Nisa stated, getting to Pen who was about to fall back into slumberland again. "Whoa there, hang in there, you two, there are better things to do right now, huh?" Nisa said to the two, indicating she needed help.

Sarah moaned hard and turned away from Brian. As Pen was waking up again, Nisa opened his car door and tried to pull him out, with the assistance of Brian.

"I'll take your things from your car, Pen. We'll get this for repairs since we can't start it," Sarah said, after trying to start the engine.

"We'll take you to the hospital-" Brian told him as he helped to carry him to Sarah's car. "Yeah, thanks, Nisa. I can take it from here." Being the girl with the height that was not up to Pen's standards, there was not much that Nisa could really help much with him, unfortunately.

"I hate hospitals, don't take me there anymore, I'm fine..." Pen exclaimed feebly.

"You're like this and you said you're fine??"

"I'll be FINE," Pen said assuringly, this time turning to look at Brian with a serious look in his eyes. Brian looked back at him, puzzled.

"Fine it is, then."

"Yeah, I am fine." Pen walked out from Brian who was leading him by the hand when he saw clearly where Sarah's Nissan Altima was and immediately went inside to the rear seat, turning his head away from Brian. Letting out a deep sigh, Brian decided to not bother about it for the moment despite everyone's being moody. He checked on what the rest were doing.

At Pen's broken car, Sarah was kinda puzzled. She turned back around. "Hey Pen, don't you keep your MP3 player in your car? Usually in the compartment? Seems like nothing's here."

With the car windows all open, Pen could hear her from where he was, even if it was not too clear. He suddenly remembered something.

Pen checked his pockets and then all over his body. Feeling dissatisfied, he turned around to the window and yelled out, "I've been robbed! Under the stars!"