A short story I wrote

Discussion in 'The Artist's Corner' started by Postal Blowfish, May 12, 2011.

  1. #1 Postal Blowfish, May 12, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: May 12, 2011
    In the suburban sprawl between Portland and the West Hills sat an azure Jeep Cherokee. Inside, Danny and his girlfriend sat in unstated silent opposition as the orange candle of the sun burned down into its hilltop base. She was visibly inconvenienced as they waited for a unstarted drug deal to finish. He gazed up at a singular wisp of cloud in the northern sky, trying to ignore the sabres of her eyes held to his throat.

    "How long is this going to take?" she sighed, with an aggression that seemed to accuse him of infidelity.

    "It shouldn't be long now, Janie," he mused back, "but you know how these things go..."

    "I hate waiting for these assholes," Janie quipped, "I could probably have gotten it by now."

    "Maybe you should see about doing it, then." said he as he turned to face her in earnest.

    She rolled her eyes to complete her superior gesture. It was if he couldn't stand to be with her if he couldn't be high - she found it more than a little insulting, but she knew the futility of expression. She would be accused of being a typical oversensitive female, which was a development she was well past tired of enduring. An hour went by as they waited, and the candle had burnt itself out now behind those slopes leaving behind the dull glow like a dawn in the west. It was all but obvious that the deal was not to be. They both fidgeted and shifted in their seats, listening to the radio's distant tinny parade of soon-to-be-forgotten artists belching out of the left speaker alone. They had that all too comfortable conversation that involved complete silence and looks like blades clanging against one another, occasionally punctuated with short verbal jabs.

    "We can't sit here forever," warned Janie, "it won't be long before the authorities decide to question what we're doing here."

    "Fine then," Danny replied, "start it up and let's get moving. Take us 'round the block or something."

    "Sure, let's get moving," she tossed back as the engine roared up, "but I'm not killing it again until we're home."

    "Whatever you want."

    They began orbiting the residence in extending spirals on the city blocks in the neighborhood. A few minutes later, she was ready to give up on the deal.

    "Fuck this," Janie said casually, "we're leaving."

    "Fuck that!" said he, "we're staying."

    "I'm driving," she observed petulantly, "I say where we go, and I want to go home."

    Danny looked ahead at that northern cloud, which had now grown in size and somehow had blackened the darkening sky. The inevitable was now approaching and the future was threatening to drown them in the wash of the colorless erosion of the all-too-common downpour of yet another misery. A river inside him rose to its banks and threatened to overcome his flood barriers.

    "Gawdammit, Janie," Danny all-but-growled, "you always know what's best, don'tcha?"

    She responded with biting silence and yanked the Jeep around a corner onto a different road, ignoring the stop sign at the empty intersection. They crossed in front of the house where they expected to finish the deal.

    "Why don't you just let me out over here?" he pleaded, "I'll do it myself and see you later when it's done."

    "You're acting like a fucking addict," she chuckled back, "it's not like we're trying to score H."

    "Just let me out."

    "No," said she, haltingly, "it's not going to happen tonight."

    "Damn you," he sighed as he unfastened his safety belt, "I'll get out at that sign."

    "No," she grinned as she began to slow to the vehicle to a stop, "you won't."

    "Don't do nothin' crazy," warned he, "I'm getting out."

    The stop sign approached and the vehicle slowed to around bicycle speed, and Danny was determined to have his way. Janie was determined to reign in his rebellion, and confident in her chokehold of the situation. The vehicle slowed through walking speed and came close to stopping as Danny opened up the door and began to extricate himself, but as the door swung open Janie put her foot down on the accelerator just as Danny's weight released and gave itself to gravity.

    How hard could it be? They do it all the time on the silver screen, bailing out of the car just before it hits something big and explodes, rolling onto the street just before they jump up with their guns drawn and start shooting down the bad guys while all the ladies look on with moistening panties. I will have my chronic! That's what happens, he was sure of it. His confidence faded in the unmeasurable moments as his feet descended toward the hardening blacktop, but he intrepidly prepared to "roll into it" even as the terror of the truth came rushing into his sanctuary to challenge his calm.

    His feet hit the ground, and almost as quickly, the rest of his dead weight was catapulted into the unforgiving road. A crack and an indescribably horrific crunch seemed to hit his ears at the same time, and before he realized his rag doll was beginning to roll a pop could also be heard. His body rolled across the road like it was shot from a cannon, his head knocking against it back, then front, then back, then finally front as his momentum ground itself to a halt. Before he knew the pain, his body had vaulted itself onto its feet and stumbled across the road as his body let out a low, growling wail. As he stumbled, the pain began to hit him and his body called forth again for the mercy of anything ultimate and divine. His whole body seemed to resonate a dull pain he was sure would peg any sensor that could be attached to measure it, but his arm was curiously numb. An alarm at the realization of his arms numbness set off another guttural yelp as he tripped and fell onto the sidewalk and the Jeep screeched to a halt dozens of meters away.

    He was regaining his footing when a panic-striken Janie ran up to him and stopped a few feet away, as if she was tied by a leash to her vehicle. This was unexpected - this was not what she was used to - she tried to silence her loving need to comfort with the knowledge that she didn't yet understand the severity or nature of the injuries. Danny stood there cradling his arm, sure that it was dislocated and probably broken, staring through hell-cannon betrayed eyes but suppressing his painful moans like the man he was sure he was now that he could control himself. He stood there, shaking in the embrace of adrenaline and bare anger trying to compose himself while Janie paced a half-circle around him while the engine idled out a dull roar nearby. For a long moment, they stared at each other as if preparing to draw down, she speechlessly awaited the coming condemnation.

    "Jane Abigail Sparks," his broken voice summoned a pretend condemnation, "you failed to stop at that signage. I hereby place you under citizen's arrest until such time as an officer of the law can appear to issue the proper citation."

    Her jaw could have hit the base of her neck. What in the world was this?

    "Are you okay?" her loving soul pleaded. Maybe it was a joke. Maybe he was playing. Maybe everything is okay!

    "Pretty fuckin' far from it," he growled back, "for once in your life could you let me have my way? One... fucking... TIME!"

    His anger echoed across the neighborhood as Janie considered that his previous noise-making had already inspired emergency calls.

    "What's wrong, baby?" she pleaded again.

    "I'm broken."

    "Your arm?"

    "Dead, maybe. Disjointed, probably."

    "Let's get you to the hospital!"

    Now finally, he was ready to give up on the quest. He put himself inside Janie's Jeep as drops of nauseating inevitability began to drop on them, while she took the long trip through the tunnel toward the hospital in Beaverton on the other side. Every bump in the road was amplified by the Jeep's shocks, something he had not quite appreciated before, when he was not nursing a torn-up arm.

    "Why didn't you let me out?" he said, between bump-induced yelps.

    "I didn't think you would get out."

    They eventually arrived at the emergency room, where Danny was given a shot in his buttocks to dull his pain and fill the coffers of the hospital. He got a limited Vicoden prescription, and although he would live with a painful spiral shoulder fracture, he got his high. Three weeks worth, anyway, at even greater expense. The weeks went by as Janie tried to make up for her part with sex and pleading, but he knew it was all radioactive and past its half-life. He let her do all of that feeling he was owed it, until he was starting to feel better again.

    One evening, she had taken him to an overlook they were fond of using as a place where they could fuck in public and let him take her for the first time leaning on his own two arms again. She felt a great optimism in all of the lofty lies she had been told since the incident. When it was over, she climbed back into the forward seat with the euphoria of an orgasm fading from her and the memory of the trauma draining away as if a plug had been pulled from a bathtub full of worries and woes. He climbed forward with a reluctance and uncertainty as to his course in life.

    "Isn't it great to be out here again?" asked she, a beaming silhouette from the darkness.

    "Yeah," he came back weakly, "it's nice."

    They sat in silence as she let her heart lie to her, and he steeled himself to do what he simultaneously wanted and did not want. An hour passed while she commented on the beauty of everything outside the cab (and inside it), but he didn't hear it. In his mind, she had shot him out of a cannon into a brick wall.

    "I can't do it anymore, Janie." said he, meekly as his eyes began to flood over.

    She responded with an incredible "what?"

    "We been through a lot," he carefully continued, "but I thought about it and I can't trust a girl who would rather control me than compromise with me."

    "We can compromise," she pleaded, "c'mon, you don't mean that. We can get high and go to the planetarium... I know how much you love it."

    "You think that makes up for it?" he faced her with his shining, mournful eyes.

    She saw his state of mind, and it crushed her like an eighteen wheel truck.

    "Baby," she began to compose, "we can..."

    "laugh about it?" he interjected, "Surely yes, we can. But if I want out, you'd rather let me jump out of a speeding train, and we both know it."

    "It's not like that anymore," she pleaded, "I wouldn't do that again."

    "Once is enough."

    Millions of insects in the local area perished in the silent stare-off that followed. He was as a stone pillar holding in tears like the man he was, even if they were clear to see to anyone watching... they would not stream down his face. She was confused and threatened, facing the same abandonment she was all-too-used to, desperate to solve the problem but trying hard to deny any concept that it was unsolvable.

    "Take me home," said Danny, "and you better not fuck with me. I'll get there even if you throw me out."

    "I'll take you home," she mumbled back, "you should be more worried whether I will stop when I get there."

    "If you love me," he reasoned, "you will stop. And if you don't, I will increase my hospital debt."

    A typically moderate trip followed this, as they wound through the west hills back into Beaverton where Danny lived. They came to his dwelling, and she didn't want to stop but forced herself to hold down the brake pedal. She had turned it over in her mind like her laundry turned in the dryer, and had figured out the next move.

    "You're actually going to stop?" he mocked.

    "You don't want to be without me."

    "The hell I don't!"

    He should have slammed the door, but his latent love made him hear her last words.

    "You're leaving me?" she asked.

    "We're done."

    "I say when we're done."

    The Jeep sped off, the momentum closing its passenger door only a meter down the road, and Danny was left standing in the road with the unwelcome realization dawning on him as he reluctantly walked down the path to his basement dwelling. Will my life consist of women who insist I can't leave the vehicle?



    I did not title it.
     
  2. You been following me around???:eek::D:smoke:

    Nice read....liked the radioactive line:smoke:
     
  3. Good read bro I can dig it. You got skills. Is this non fiction?
     
  4. it's fiction, but as i suspect any writer does, injected with a little bit of autobiography.
     

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