KURS3D - Part Two

Humming like a sex toy taped to a car battery, Coming out of LA and into the long, rolling throat of the Mojave. Words by Billy Sheldon for Grave Runners.

KURS3D is a three part fable entirely based on the truest tale you’ve ever heard. In an act to protect the guilty I was going to change their names, but I couldn’t be ass’d, so I redacted them instead.

Read the other parts of KURS3D:
Part One / Part Three

4am isn’t your typical time to see Santa Monica pier for the first time. Yet, here I was, busted up knuckles, hands soaked in chain oil, toilet paper clinging to open wounds like my ex’s last apology. I haven’t slept, not properly. Not in a way that counts.

It’s moments away from the start of ∆∆∆ ∆∆∆∆∆ ∆∆∆∆∆∆∆, thousands of people packed onto the weathered timber boards. Like a factory sized microwave; people, protons, electrodes (whateveryoucallthem) are fucking buzzing around mad as hell. I can’t tell up from down, inside from out, only that if my skin touches someone else’s there’s going to be sparks.

All of a sudden the voltage breaks. The countdown begins.

3.. 2.. 1.. BOOM!

70 runners burst from the center of the crowd and down Santa Monica Boulevard, B-lining it straight to Hollywood. A sea of paperweight split shorts part to reveal the GT, lights absolutely blaring in the soggy black tarmac, I grab the bars and leg down the boulevard to catch our first runner, no brakes, no sleep and no clue what hell is coming next..

I jolt back into consciousness some time later. In a sun scorched parking lot amongst the trash strewn outskirts of LA, we’re wedged between a drugstore, Starbucks and a tire shop. The iPod styled Jeep rests beside me, the GT lays tits up in a patch of dirt on the other side. The crew are suckin’ back the strongest, specially formulated, Coffee Supreme branded human motor oil. Our runner is somewhere out there, heart pounding at the top of their throat as we wait and I’m scheming up ways to try to encourage the GT to make it a little further.

††††††† was right, getting out of LA on ‘er was going to be tough, if I could remember it, I’m sure I would have agreed.

Armed with nothing but the kind of tools you’d expect in a Happy Meal, I waltz up to the tire shop, hand over my last suspiciously clean $20 bill, and ask to borrow their tools instead. I’m halfway through pretending I know what I’m doing with a 9/16th inch socket and monkey wrench when the call comes through the radio:

“Runner incoming!”

As I scramble back across the lot, grease up to my elbows, the mechanic yells behind me:

“You’re a madman thinking you’ll get through Dogtown on that!”

No shit.

66 miles later, I hear the flamboyant stormtrooper Jeep’s tires grind to a halt on the dirt road, the doors swing open and the crew scream my name… I’m in full recovery position on the side of the road. I’d finally gotten my first bit of sleep in three days, wrapped in a Tyvek bodybag and coated in dust, probably not far off how the Zodiac Killer left his victims.

That morning, the GT and I had been humming like a sex toy taped to a car battery, clawing our way out of the hills behind LA and into the long, rolling throat of the Mojave. With my shift finishing up I went up the road, 30 miles ahead of our runner to catch sleep before the next grind, but now I was back in it, disoriented and half-mummified.

“You know we’re in Dogtown, right? You’ve gotta go, the runner’s already gone!”

That’s all I hear as someone jams something vaguely edible in my hand and pushes me toward the bike. No time for questions. Just go.

Dogtown is less of a place, more of a nondescript smear on google maps street view. A stitched-together sprawl of dusty townships where every single house seems to own a dog bred by Satan himself. Every 30 feet, a new set of teeth and fury launched themselves at us from behind rusted fences, all snarling, all rabid, all ready to turn us into a human halal snack pack.

Earlier that day, our team were ping’d drone footage of another team’s runner getting attacked. Just silence, dust, chaos and something I don’t want to put down in words. That could’ve been us. Could still be us. And I wasn’t with our runner. That was a problem.

This was the time to wind up the dial on the sex toy and get back on track, I crank through the gears on the rear derailleur, cover my face from the dust annihilating my lungs, and fang every fucking Knog light on until I could be mistaken for some hunk of junk UFO barely flying over the outskirts of AREA 51.

I punch through the streets of this stupid town and take an old forgotten service road as a shortcut to intersect with the runner, teeth rattling from the corrugated dirt, legs filled with acid (not the good kind), heart screaming at the setting sun, and then -

PSHHHHH

Rear tire. Blown, Half a mile to go.

I get off, and start running, bike in hand.

At the intersection, dusk melts behind the horizon and a beam of light blasts across my face. It’s our runner, wide-eyed, panting, clearly shaken.

“Those fuckin’ dogs, man…”

Before I get anything more, he’s already disappeared into the dark again.

Moments later, the greek statue Jeep screeches up, I sling the wrecked GT onto the back and pile into the passenger seat. Inside the dark cabin, with only the dash lights illuminating our faces, mutters are heard from the back seat,everyone fizzing with frustration. I ask what the hell happened. They tell me that the runner got jumped, two dogs cleared the fence, went for him. He hit the deck. Got up. Ran like hell.

We got lucky.

Here we again, another bloody breaking point. Another moment I finally should have admitted defeat, standing in the middle of nowhere, bike broken, nerves fried, a near-mauling behind us, and 200 miles of hell and a sleepless night ahead.

But that’s the thing about flirting with catastrophe, once you’ve made eye contact, it’s hard to look away.

When we see the sun again, Death Valley will be calling.

Not with words, but with heat, with silence, with the kind of stillness that makes you hear your own thoughts scream.

A lip-cracked, sun-bleached invitation to see how much pain you could swallow before the hallucinations kicked in.

How far do you go before you turn back?

Apparently, not yet.

Continue reading KURS3D:
Part One / Part Three

Join us for the full Trilogy at “3NGRAV3D” Presented by Grave Runners & Tempo Journal, a gallery exhibition showcasing the film, photo exhibition and remainder of this Trilogy on July 25-27 at 19-21 Johnston Street, Collingwood.