Freedom from Habeebdom

Almost... there...

Almost...

There...

Habeeb's presence had become a suffocating grip that threatened to ensnare each one of us. Not only that, but we were getting irritated at ourselves for getting so irritated with Habeeb.

Fernweh, having dealt with Habeeb's unreasonable demands as much as we had

("you can't wave to strangers on the road!" 

"why not? they waved to us... this is a perfectly rational and friendly greeting, man."

"no! you can not do that!"

"fuck you..." )  

had just spilled a glass of water on himself, and finally flipped. He'd spent the next 3 hours muttering profane curses and death threats to the back of Habeeb's seat. Scrib's knees were driving him into a state of wretched agony, and his grunts and grimaces were sucking the sympathy out of each of our sickened souls.

The excited demeanor with which we'd left Vancouver was quickly dwindling.

Finally, after one of the worst six hours in recorded rideshare history (that anyone lived to speak of), the highway began to twist itself into a network of spiraling highways, an endless current of on-ramps and offramps.

We were coming into the city, at last, and we'd be freed from Habeeb's grumbling presence and our own cynicism that he'd unearthed from within. We'd be freed from a mire of fetid foot-stench. We'd be freed from these daggers that so diligently stabbed at our thighs.

We'd be free!

sometimes, life's like a fable;

each frown gives way to a smile;

upside down lips melt into the brightness of day

and every grin

brings off the burden of sin.