Junior Seau 2: You Broke the Hearts of Angels

“Hey buddy, what you ain’t?” asks Junior, leaning sideways in the backseat. Junior’s in his Chargers uniform, cleats and everything. But no helmet. The bullet hole and black hole in his chest remain, however, cut between the number 55.

The mere vision of Junior in the backseat of the car sucks the air from Jim’s lungs, causes Jim to have gooseflesh, the hair on his neck prickling in a morbid electric shock.

Jim presses his eyes closed, for a second, sees stars colliding, exploding and ending in infinite darkness.

Opening his eyes, Jim fixes his eyes at his rearview mirror. It’s empty. But he can spot a clear indentation in the peanut butter-colored leather backseat. A clear outline of a massive man...

The car in motion, Jim is driving. “Rusty Cage” by Soundgarden is blasting from the Porsche’s Burmeister surround sound stereo system.

” ... hit me with a hand of broken nails...”

The howling vocals and supersonic guitar focuses, uplifts Jim, and he fixes his eyes on the road.

Then, inside the car, he smells sweat, a salty, musky smell. He knows the smell. It’s like a locker room. It’s thick in the air, filling his nostrils. His nostrils flare; for a second, he almost forgets what he’s doing and nearly swerves off the road, collides with a yellow “SCHOOL XING” traffic sign.

But he shakes his head, trembles, gathers himself, jerks and steadies the steering wheel. He glances back in the rearview mirror and sees Junior again. The tip of Junior’s skull has been sliced off and his brain is exposed. Junior’s brain looks like oatmeal mixed with raspberry jam.

Jim cringes, shifts his eyes back to the road. Although mortified, he can’t resist the impulse to check the rearview again. And he does. Curling his upper lip, he peeks back up, sees Junior, still there. Junior’s staring at him with intention.

Junior’s brain stirs, animates, and twists into a nest of slithery white snakes, swirling and active, dueling and hissing at one another, like Medusa’s hair.

Jim snaps his mouth shut, gulps, and looks back to the road. He refocuses his attention on his driving, on traffic, on the whites of the lines in the road and the cars passing by. He turns up the stereo. He tells himself that it’s not real. It’s not real...

“Who I Ain’t,” the country song, cuts in and over Soundgarden. The awful song begins playing, befuddling Jim.

Jim hates country music. He attempts to change the station. But he can’t. The song is on every station on the dial. Jim clicks off the radio, pulls over to the side of the road, into the breakdown lane. He opens the glove compartment, extracts a bottle of pills, twists off the cap, shakes out two white ovals.

The car’s windshield is a bright box of gold, the sun so dazzlingly iridescent. The sun’s winking rays are flaming arrows shot at his eyes, and Jim squints and his eyeballs burn and his head starts to throb in painful pulses. An uppercut of vertigo rocks his equilibrium.

Despite the Porsche’s windows being closed, a gust of cold wind roars from the backseat and beats at his neck. Then his forehead thumps like it’s being beaten with a hammer. The smell of sweat grows stronger. He hears Junior sing, in a terribly off-key squeal, “Turn from the Bible with a bottle in my hand...”

Jim grinds his teeth, shakes his head. Then he slaps the pills into his mouth, bites into them, enjoying their tangy bitterness. A solitary tear streaks down his quivering face. He peers back to the rearview, which is again empty, and he screams, “You broke the hearts of angels! YOU BROKE THE HEARTS OF ANGELS!”

A truly euphoric rush of oxycodone enters his bloodstream, pumping through his veins. He’s calmed. His pulse slows. His breathing steadies. He gathers himself. Everything is okay. “Everything is okay,” he whispers to himself.

He forgets the visions, the pain, and shifts his attention...