This was my third attempt at a short story 6 years ago. Toby Liberman's name is dropped yet again from the same character mentioned in 'The Hat Trick'. Still dark...
The Exit Not Taken
By: Chad Miller
The Ivory Ford van sped through the darkness like a celestial blade slicing the cool night air. All speed limit signs were written in some foreign language as far as the driver was concerned, for, you see, tonight was the first breath of a new life, the first of many, he hoped. He was immortal, or, at least, he felt that way now, because the Jack Daniels told him so.
He lit a Marlboro and cracked his window. The midnight, December air was just the hint of reality he needed to make it home, only fifteen miles to go. “What a night” he muttered to himself with a strong scent of alcohol wafting from his mouth to his nostrils. It was enough to know that attracting the attention of the local authorities was probably far from the greatest way to put a cherry on the top of a perfect night. He hit the accelerator.
As the white lines of the country highway morphed into an endless, unbroken guide, his thoughts began to wander onto the blurred past few months of his life: the divorce, the adjustments, and his triumphant return to the single’s lifestyle.
The divorce part was easily explained: hot chick, great sex, the guilt of one sided love, the forgotten pill, the obligation, the wedding, the weight gain, domino, the weight loss, the double shifts, the affair. You can take the bitch off of the corner, but you can’t take the corner off of the bitch. You know, basic life lessons. A faint smile began to appear on his face as he took his mental mind fuck of a trip down memory lane. “Oh Shit!” he screamed, passing by his opportunity to catch an access road to the interstate. There will be others, he thought to himself.
As the high beams of the metallic monster lunged forward into the night, he began to comfortably transform back into his hypnotic driver mode. Adjusting to the single life, what a bitch that had been. You spend the first nine months of life trying to escape a pussy, but the rest of your existence trying to get back in. Poetic justice, they call it. He just called it bullshit.
Out of the singles game for nearly a decade, he returned only to find that the game had been given a complete make over. Hell, it wasn’t even the same fucking sport anymore. All of your young life, you lift weights, beef up, play sports, learn to overhaul engines. Manly shit, you know. Only to realize that a decade later, all the women now went for the Billy Gates, geeky ass, wedgie, sign on the back, dork mother fuckers. What the hell is this world coming to, he inquired to himself as another small smirk of his evening victory crawled across his face.
Our lone rider was about to begin a sinister laugh when suddenly, “Fuck!!”
He had just missed the second of the interstate access roads. Not to worry though, with half a tank of gas and nearly a full pack of smokes, civilization was not a necessity. He blasted the stereo, and valiantly pressed onward into the night.
Two missed exits, a woman who gave less than a shit, a sudden forced change in lifestyle, and, not to mention, crying himself to sleep every night for the past few weeks in a lonely, desolate apartment, and yet, the events that took place earlier in the evening were enough to show him that he was no longer down, nor out, but at the beginning of, if his luck held out, rookie status in the new game of women. A moment of clarity only days before had made him come to realize, that in a world full of wannabes, posers, and look alikes, you have to stand out to get recognized. So replacing his traditional honky-tonk garb with a hockey jersey and eighties esque torn blue jeans, he was bound to get some looks amongst an endless sea of hillbillies. And come, the looks did. At first from all of the male patrons, dressed in their red neck best, but soon following were the ladies, the selected prey of the evening. Our hero was about to top off his third Shiner Bock when an angelic voice projecting from behind him exclaimed “You know, it’s a shame about Liberman, he was my favorite player.”
Instant connectivity! He shoots, He scores! It was at this very moment that he knew why the hands of fate had dealt him the ownership of a van! As fast as you can exhaustingly scream “horizontal mambo” the majestic Ford was rocking with the sweet rhythms of love, or lust actually, and at that exact orgasmic moment, he knew that this was only the beginning. Life had made a serious emotionally triumphant and increasingly sexual U-turn into his favor.
After the mutual exchange of fluids came the mutual exchange of numbers, and with a half cocked glimmer of hope and a little hitch in his git-a-long, he barreled down this midnight highway. Suddenly, he was slapped back into reality by a large explosion of steel and fiberglass and an excruciatingly painful and sudden stop.
As the car wrecked Casanova exits his vehicle, he realizes that the remains of a Ford Focus had now become his new hood ornament. Then came the horrid realization of a lifeless body occupying the remainder of the front seat of the mangled vehicle. As he slowly crept towards the driver, he noticed the windshield, or lack of windshield, had shattered and upon further inspection, an unrecognizable female face stared back at him, with a surprised, yet blank expression on her face. The steering wheel had almost completely severed her head. A steady flow of blood was still streaming from her wounds when he noticed the hand of the victim. In her right, a cellular phone, with a call remaining on its agenda that would never be sent. In her left, a shard of blood stained paper, containing nine digits. As he carefully removes the paper from her mannequin like grip, a frigid tingle made a bolt up his spine. This was his own phone number.
Mere minutes before, he’d killed her insides. Mere moments later, he’d finished the job. Life loves tragedy. So much for new beginnings.
No comments:
Post a Comment