The (Un)Dead Guide to Hitchhiking the Galaxy

(This post is in honor of the late, great Douglas Adams and the openning of his movie this weekend.)

I returned from the Spirit World to my body faster than I can ever recall doing before. My focus was not on the journey itself, but on the end result. I slammed into my body, felt things click into place and activated my optical nerves to get my bearings.

It took a moment to realize that it was now dark outside, it was a brilliant vision of dazzling stars and a very large, very bright moon that hung in the night sky. Even in my haste to get back to my car and my cell phone, I was taken aback by the sheer beauty of this sight.

The piercing sound of breaking glass and all too quickly after that the roar of an engine and the sqeal of tires brought me back to reality. Cursing, I turned around and started the rather more laborious process of climbing back up to the lookout point and the parking lot. In the dark, things weren’t quite as easy as it was in going down, but I was inspired to get up to the top quickly. Pulling myself up to eye level with the ground, I cursed even more as my eyes confirmed my fears, that my government sedan had been broken into and stolen while I was coming out of things below. I could see the tail lights of my receding car about 3/4’s of a mile up the road, with a second car not too far ahead of that.

What do you think the probability is of getting your car stolen on a lonely mountain road while you are down a cliff meditating at night?

I clambered over the top of the fence and and leaped over into the now vacant parking lot, landing amidst the shards of my broken window.

This was an intolerable situation. I didn’t have time to go walking towards Michigan!

I sat down into a lotus position, dropped my arms to my sides and set my Spirit free to pursue my car and the hooligan(s) who had taken it. Flying in the dark wasn’t nearly as exhilirating as it was earlier, but this wasn’t a joy ride to purify my soul, this a was mission of necessity. It didn’t take long for me to catch up to the cars, even though by now they were a couple of miles away.

I swooped down towards my wayward automobile and dropped through the roof and settled into the backseat so I could get a better handle on the situation. The front seat was occupied by two long haired young men who looked like they had spent a little too much time in the local meth lab. Both were skinny, almost bony in appearance. They were laughing and joking with each other as the passenger was going through the bag I had left on that seat, probably looking for drugs or money. He seemed to be rather disappointed with my various odds and ends.

My choices were pretty limited at this point. The father these two knuckleheads drove, the farther I would have to walk in order to collect my car. I needed to stop the car without damaging it too badly, or causing these two meth-heads from doing something so stupid that they would crash the car. There just weren’t a lot of options in Spirit Form. I was pretty sure I could disable the car, but I was also pretty sure I couldn’t get the thing started back up again if I did so, which made that an unsavory option.

I thought briefly back to that time when Papa Locks attacked me with a host of small spirits and how it had felt when they had tried to invade my body, and also back to the monster they had created out of Greg’s body. Spiritual possession was obviously possible, but would I be able to actually take over some living person’s body?

How fucking ethical would that be? Did I really need to worry about ethics when these two addicts had stolen my car, possibly preventing me from helping Kenny?

‘What the hell,’ I thought, ‘it can’t be that hard to impose my will on one of these schmucks, they can’t have much damn willpower if they are drug addicts anyway.’

So with that admonishment to myself, I gathered up my own will power and slipped inside the passenger’s body, I didn’t want to experiment for the first time on the driver and then total the car by accident. It was remarkably easy to slide inside his body and impose my Will on his voluntary muscle movements, yet it was also extremely unpleasant. Our thoughts breifly merged, his were focused on getting his share of the money from this gig so he get some more stuff, while I was focused on gaining control of his vocal cords.

After a moment, I was in enough to control to make my host grab at his own crotch and double over, I was able to get out a few words. “Dude, pull over man, I gotta piss.”

The driver looked over at him/us will a puzzled look, “What’s the matter with you Bobby, you just pissed before we took this ride.”

Bobby’s thoughts were trying to struggle in answer, but I clamped down on him briefly and said, “Dude, I don’t know, but I go, real fucking bad!”

Ricky (I picked his name up from Bobby’s panicked thoughts) looked disgusted as he put his foot down on the brakes, and pulled over onto a wide spot on the shoulder. “You better hurry dude, we don’t want to get too far back from the others, they’ll take our beer!”

The car rolled to stop. Bobby’s spirit tried to rally again as he began to sense my intentions. I forced him back into the recesses of his own overly empty mind and forced the body to open the door and stand up. I moved around to the front of the car, pretended to take a leak, and then wandered o ver to the driver’s side window that had been broken open. Using all of the Will I could muster and then all of the strength this pathetic body had to offer, I coldcocked Ricky before he could object. Luckily he wasn’t much of a physical specimen either, as his head slumped to side from the blow.

I opened the door, pasted him again for good measure, and pulled his limp form from the car. I pulled him out far enough so that he was in no danger of getting run over, by this or any other cars and then slipped into the driver’s seat. Luckily, the road was wide enough to turn around at this point and head back down towards my own body. Unfortunately, the lead car must have noticed us stopping and had pulled over as well, just about a half mile ahead of us. When they noticed this turn around, they also made the turn.

I punched the gas and roared back down the mountain towards my own body. I didn’t trust this pipsqueak’s body in any kind of real fight.

Bobby’s spirit was starting to gain a little strength out of desperation and practice...it seemed the longer I was in his body, the more he learned about his own hidden reservoirs of strength.

The car behind us was gaining on us as I slowed down in order to account for the internal struggle I had to fight with Bobby’s increasingly restive spirit as well as keeping enough concentration to stay on the road. They did however, stop when they came upon Rick’s unconscious body, so that gave me a little respite.

A couple of minutes later I pulled the car into the lookout point parking lot, with just enough control remaining over Bobby’s spirit to bring the car to a stop without running over my own body and to put it into park. I forced us to open the door and we fell out of the vehicle, thrashing on the ground as I held control jsut long enought to insure he couldn’t flee very easily when I transferred back to my own body.

Finally, I gathered myself up and leapt from his body to mine, snapped down into place and was up and moving quicker than I thought would have been possible. Bobby, being a little newer to the experience was slow to regain to full control of his limbs and his senses. Just as he was getting to all fours again, I was standing over him grinning like a fool as I punched him into unconsciousness.

I had just enough time to reach into the car and pull out of my batons as the second car came screaming back into the lot. It skidded to a stop and two more kids stepped out, clubs in hand. I could see Ricky clumsily fumbling around for something in the back seat of their old beater.

One asked, “Who the fuck do you think you are man?”

While the other said, “We’re gonna fuck you up old man!”

I wasn’t much in the mood to play. I made short work of them. Ricky was the last to fall, even as he pulled out the rusty old revolver he had been digging around to locate, my baton came down first on his outstretched hand and then with a quick flick I busted his nose and knocked him out.