copyright 2009 by Randal Schaffer
His day on the road was pretty much like the previous one. Drive, eat, piss, repeat.
By the time he felt tired enough to stop, he had hit Big Timber, Montana. He found the only outlet of a chain motel, dropped sixty bucks more or less on a night's stay and went up to his room. He shit, showered and put on clean clothes.
He knew that he needed to sleep, but decided that the thing that he needed this evening was a drink. Mostly he decided that when he saw a little dive bar next to the hotel called the STOP ON INN. Thinking that, if there were any place in the world where it would be appropriate to sidle up to a bar then it was the STOP ON INN, he sidled up to the bar and ordered a bourbon straight up.
The bartender brought the drink to him and said “Four bucks.”
He put a five on the bar and said “Keep it.”
The bartender nodded his thanks, and then went to help another patron. As soon as he did, a woman took the bar stool next to him, carrying something pink and frothy. “Hi.” She said in a voice like silk on sandpaper from too many cigarettes and too little sleep.
He turned his head to look her over. Not bad. In Seattle he probably wouldn't have given her a second glance, but, he thought, Toto – it looks like we ain't in Seattle anymore. Out here in the boonies she was probably a beauty queen.
She was average height, average build, average boobs, all held together by an utterly and completely average blouse and almost standard-issue boot cut blue jeans. She was wearing too much makeup topped off by lipstick that was both too much and too dark. She would look like a whore, except that no self-respecting whore would ever go out looking like this. “You new in town?” She asked through her too red lips.
“I'm not “in town””, he said. “Not really. I'll be gone by seven o'clock tomorrow morning.”
“Really?” She tried to purr the word, but then had to choke back a cough. So she lit a cigarette and threw the pack on the bar. “How romantic.”
“No, not really.” He said.
They sat in silence for a few moments, sipping their drinks. Finally she said “You got a hotel room or something?”
He nodded. “Next door.”
“Would you like some company?” She asked.
He took the opportunity to look her up and down again. Yeah, not great but not quite “closing time at the bar” bad, either. “I wouldn't mind, but I have to ask you something first that's probably going to piss you off.”
She smiled. “Oh? Are you going to ask if I'm married?”
He looked away, a little surprised, then shrugged. “Actually, I don't even care enough about that to wonder. I was wondering if you were a hooker. Have no intention of paying for it, you see.”
She stood up and put one fist on a hip, saying “You son of a bitch! What kind of a question is that?”
“An honest one.” He said, without looking at her. “I told you that I'm on the road. I don't have money to waste on pussy, although I wouldn't mind having some. And the last thing that I need is some pimp trying to bust my head.”
“Well, listen to the mouth on you!” She said, blushing a little. That's right, he thought, I'm in the heartland now. They probably don't use the word “pussy” out here. Probably “cunt” or “slot” or something much more romantic like that. She stood there for a second, BOTH fists on her hips now, as if she expected him to apologize or beg or grovel. Out here in the asshole of nowhere he was sure that she could find some seedpicker to grovel for her if she wanted. Not his scene. And frankly, masturbation was almost as good, usually. Almost. Usually.
After she realized that she wasn't going to get an apology, and he wasn't going to beg, she sat back down beside him and sipped her drink again. “You didn't answer my question.” he said. “Are you a hooker?”
Without looking at him, as if she were trying to maintain some of the dignity that she had obviously lost sometime around age sixteen, she whispered “No I am not a whore.”
He sipped his bourbon, almost gone now, and calmly said “Well, that's too bad. You could probably make a pretty good living at it. Especially out here.”
She looked for just an instant like someone had tapped her between the eyes with a reflex-checking hammer, and then turned and looked at him. “Is that supposed to be some kind of a compliment?”
“Did you take it as some kind of a compliment?”
She shook her head, slowly, disbelief instead of negation, and said “I think that you're fucking with me. And I don't know if I like it or not.”
He looked at her for the first time since he had initially asked if she was a hooker, and said “Trust me. If I were fucking with you, you'd know.” He looked away again, into the depths of the bar mirror and said “And... you'd like it.”
They drank in silence for a moment longer. He shook the last couple of drops of bourbon out of the glass into his mouth and stood up, saying “Well, I'm going back to my room. If you'd like to join me, then come on.”
There was a moment... maybe three seconds, when he thought that she wouldn't, but after that, she took one last sip of her drink, and then got up and grabbed her purse.
The two walked to the hotel and up to his room without talking, without touching. He turned the overhead light on, and she walked into the main room, saying “Nice place.”
“No it's not.” He said, pushing her onto the bed. “It's a shithole. But it has a bed, a tub and a toilet and that's really all that I need.”
He started to kiss her, unbuttoning her top and then sliding a hand under her bra. She moaned, arched her back so that her breast went more fully into his hand, but obviously wasn't going to help. As he moved his hands down to undo her jeans, without her moving a muscle, he thought “yeah, she's the queen of the cattlemen all right.”
Once her jeans were open enough, he slipped a hand inside her jeans and a finger inside her, his mouth working at one of her nipples. After rubbing her with his finger for a second, he ran the finger up her body and surreptitiously sniffed at it. She smelled like over-ripe apricots. He loved to eat pussy, but had had enough bad pussy in his life to know what a mood killer it was. So no eating her.
He stood up, went to his suitcase. She propped herself up on her elbows, watching him. Not even going to take her pants and underwear off, he thought. Lazy bitch.
He rummaged through his suitcase until he found the box of condoms that he had stashed there... just in case. He took one out of the box, ripped the top off of the sleeve and tossed the condom, still inside the now-open sleeve, onto the bed.
He took her boots off, then, in one motion and as if they were one garment, smoothed her pants and panties off. He quickly stripped, and then worked the condom over his erection. One point of pride for him was that, at the age of 44, he could still get as hard as he could when he was seventeen. He released his sheathed penis, and it immediately sprang up to point at his chin. He knelt between the woman's legs, and then rested a hand on her thigh, closing his eyes. He thought “Dear Lord, for this pussy that I am about to receive, may I be blessed with gratefulness. Amen.”
“What are you doing?”
He opened his eyes to see that she was looking at him. He said “Praying.” She laughed her cigarette smoke laugh, and then stopped when she saw that he was serious.
He propped himself up on an elbow over her body, and then eased his way into her. Once he was fully in, he started the mechanical rhythm that he knew would produce the best orgasm for him in the shortest amount of time. With a committed lover, not that there had been all that many of those in his life, he treasured his lover's orgasm like a rare gem, and never allowed himself to have one until she did. With a one-night stand like this, it didn't really matter to him, he just wanted to cum. And no matter how good masturbation was, it usually couldn't beat the feel of real pussy. Usually.
She moaned and groaned under him, scratching his back with her long fake nails. That was okay, he'd just have to remember to get some peroxide back there later to disinfect them. Scratches were almost as nasty for carrying crap as bites.
He was getting close. He could feel it. That feel of climbing, of floating. Really, he thought, that few minutes before the orgasm was better than the orgasm itself. Just as he thought that it was time for him to reach the home stretch and kick her out, someone started to pound on the door and a voice from the other side yelled “MERLENE, YOU BITCH! OPEN THIS FUCKING DOOR!” Followed by more pounding.
Immediately, the woman underneath him... Merlene, presumably, started trying to throw him off. “Shit! It's Luther!” He thought for a second of asking her who Luther was, but decided that it was either a boyfriend, husband or pimp. One thing that Luther definitely wasn't was good news.
He stood up, pulling out of her as he did, and stood by the door. From the other side he heard what he had been waiting for... what every pissed-off shitkicker who's seen too many movies ultimately says. “I'M KICKIN' THIS FUCKING DOOR DOWN!” He heard two shuffling steps, gave Luther a second to wind up, and then opened the door. Luther's foot came through the door, followed by a very off-balance Luther. He popped Luther in the back of the head with the flat of his hand as the man fell through the door. Before Luther could recover, he took one step to the prone body, and delivered one swift, hard kick to the diaphragm, pulling at the last minute. It would hurt like Hell. He wouldn't be able to draw a good breath for a while, but it wouldn't leave any lasting damage.
He heard Merlene scream from across the room, and looked over to see that she had had time to put her bra and jeans on. Obviously has some practice at this, he thought.
“LUTHER! Oh, my God! Luther! Did he hurt you, baby?”
She started to come toward them, so he rested his right foot on Luther's adam's apple. Again, not enough for any lasting damage, but enough to make Luther go “URK”. “Don't come any closer.” He said calmly. “If you want Luther to keep breathing, how about you just stay on that side of the room and get dressed while Luther and I discuss some shit. Cool?” She nodded and withdrew to the corner of the room.
“Luther? That right?” Luther nodded his head frantically. “Okay. Luther. I'm going to ask you a couple questions, and all I need are straight answers so that I can provide you with some advice, okay?” Luther nodded again. “At least one of these questions is going to piss you off, but I don't want you to get any ideas about acting on that pissed-off feeling, okay? I throw iron for a living, and I CAN beat your ass if I have to, okay?” Luther nodded once more.
“Okay. Cool. First question. Merlene over there... she your whore? You pimping her out?” Luther's face grew a little redder, and he sputtered in a choked voice “You... son of a...”
“Yeah, save your breath.” He said, stepping down just a little harder to cut off the flow of words. “Son of a bitch, I heard it all earlier. Is she?” Luther glared at him for a second, and then shook his head no. “Girlfriend?” Another shake of the head. “Oh, Luther... don't tell me that you MARRIED that.”
From across the room he heard “HEY!” He shot a glance at her long enough to make sure that she would shut up, and then turned back to Luther.
“Wife?” Luther was still for a moment, and then nodded his head and shrugged as much as he could. “Has she pulled this shit before?” He nodded again and croaked “Yes...” “How many times? A few?” A head shake. “A lot?” Luther nods. He glances back up at Merlene for a moment, and is pleased to see that she's blushing deeply. “And you're a big guy... look like maybe you were a football player in high school, yeah? So you've probably beaten the shit out of your fair share of horny hayseeds, yeah?” Luther nods again, a little pride working into his stressed face. “And then... when you get her home... you fuck her harder than you've ever imagined that you could, don't you?”
“Yes.” Luther croaks again. “Hard. After I beat the shit out of HER.”
“Luther. Buddy. She's playing you. I don't know if she really wants to fuck other guys or not, but what she DOES want is to be dominated. She wants you to take possession of her like that. So it's your choice... you can either fuck her like that EVERY TIME, without her picking up some sucker in a bar to get you to do it... or you can drop her like the poisonous cunt that she is. Your choice.”
With those words, he lifted his foot off of Luther's throat. “Now both of you, get out of here. And don't think about coming back and fucking with me anymore.”
The couple slunk rather shamefacedly from the room, and as soon as they were gone, he started to throw all of his stuff back into the suitcase. He wouldn't put it past these two to come back when he was asleep. And he wouldn't put it past that shitheel of a clerk to let them into his room. It must have been him who told Luther where he was to begin with.
He walked his suitcase to the desk, and threw the keycard on the counter. “I'm checking out.”
“I won't be able to refund your money.” The little clerk sneered.
“You will notice, shit for brains, that I didn't ASK you to.”
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
The Journey Part 2
Copyright 2009 by Randal Schaffer
He found the local outlet of a motel chain that had been on the news a few years back as an example of a really bad place to stay. The upside for him is that it was far away from anything else and way off the road.
I forgot to mention earlier... one of the things about him that caused him to so seriously consider suicide. He didn't sleep. Wasn't even really an insomniac, any more than the ocean is a "little damp". He blamed it on his mother's bad genes. She had never slept well, either. So it was important to him to find a place that was quiet. Clean was secondary and amenities were so tertiary that they really didn't even matter.
He pulled into the parking lot, and found the lobby door locked, the desk unmanned.
"Shit."
He started to turn and head back to his car when he noticed a doorbell with a sign, poorly-written by hand that read "Please wring bell for service. Thx." He had a moment to puzzle over the weird misspelling of "ring", and then followed the instructions. Thirty seconds later, he rang again, and then a door opened in the back of the desk, and a very fat man with a face the color of a fire hydrant came out, fastening his belt. He pushed a button on the desk, causing the door to buzz like a pissed-off hornet, and began to gesture frantically with his free hand.
He entered the lobby, and the fat man said "Sorry about the wait... had to take one hell of a dump."
He had a moment to wonder why the fat man felt it necessary to share that particular piece of information with him, and then shook his head, realizing that, in the grand scheme of things (whatever THAT was), it didn't really matter.
He signed the guest card, was told that the room plus tax was fifty-seven fifty per night, with a miserly 10 AM checkout time. He dropped three twenties on the desk. The fat man glared at the bills for a moment, and then, with a put-upon sound, unlocked the cash drawer and doled out his change.
As he turned and headed back for his car, the desk clerk said "Hey."
He turned back around.
"Yeah?"
The fat man said "Buddy... I don't know you and you sure God don't know me, but I gotta tell you. You look like trouble to me, and I don't want no trouble. You give me trouble and I'll put your ass out in a second, you read?"
He looked at the fat man for a few short moments and then said "I'm kind of glad to hear that, as long as you're as strict with all of your customers. There are a lot of things that I want at this moment in my life. Trouble ISN'T one of them." He turned and headed out the door, shaking his head and smiling as the fat man mumbled "Smart ass" under his breath.
As he got his one suitcase out of the trunk of the car and headed up to his room, he wondered why it was that honest people were always called smart-ass. Did it have something to do with the resentment of people who WEREN'T honest?
The first thing that he did... the first thing that he ALWAYS did in a hotel room, come to that, was to cover his hand with one of his clean socks, and then use that hand to remove the top blanket from the bed and throw it in the corner where it huddled, discarded, like the victim of a sex crime, waiting for someone to help it. Hotels... especially cheap dives like this one... NEVER washed the top blanket. Too much expense and trouble. So there was always dust, sometimes jizz and occasionally shit on them. The dust he could live with, the jizz was unfortunate and the shit was just UNTHINKABLE, so it always went into the corner.
He took a quick, very hot shower, and then padded naked back into the room. It was always a bit of an exhibitionistic thrill with him to walk around a hotel room buck-ass naked, as if the ghosts of all of the previous and future tenants were watching him, shocked, excited or bored by his show.
He looked through the drawers in the room, trying to find anything that the other guests had forgotten and the maids (assuming this armpit actually HAD maids) had missed.
The only thing that he found was a Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. As he started to slide it shut, the Bible shifted and he saw a glint of plastic bag under the edge of it. He reopened the drawer, and moved the Bible, revealing a sandwich bag with a small amount of marijuana and some rolling papers and matches inside. He smiled and shook his head, started to close the drawer on the pot and then thought "You know what? Fuck it."
He was forty-four years old. A week before Christmas that year, more or less, he would be forty-five and he hadn't smoked a joint in more than twenty years. So you know what? Fuck it.
He sat down cross-legged on the bed, and poured the dope carefully into the rolling paper, clumsily and inexpertly rolling a serviceable but far from perfect doobie. Even when he HAD smoked grass, in those dim dead days of 1980 something, he had almost never smoked joints, had almost always used pipes and bongs. So this was not an easy task, and, when he was done, he really felt as if he had EARNED this doob.
He pulled the matches out of the bag, and then folded his arms across his chest, saying "Dear Lord, thank you for this day. For this high that I am about to receive may I be blessed with gratitude. And please bless whatever holy traveler left this little bag of Maui Wowie. Amen."
He unfolded his arms, raised the doobie to his mouth, struck a match to it, and drew the acrid, old sock and feet smelling smoke deeply into his lungs. Since he didn't smoke cigarettes and had been free of the demon weed for so long, his body immediately rebelled with a half-cough, half-retch, but he fought and won, holding the smoke in. He swallowed repeatedly, wanting to keep as much of this as possible. He sure wasn't going to BUY any weed, even now that he was smoking again, so he wanted to savor what he had while he had it.
When he finally released his breath, he was pleased to see that very little of the smoke had escaped alive. He laughed an evil laugh, and then toked deeply again, settling back against the headboard as the high started to settle in. It happened exactly as he had always remembered... his fingertips started to tingle, and then his sinuses went numb.
He grabbed the TV remote and started to wade through the pond of shit that is late night TV as he smoked his joint.
Finally, around three in the morning, his joint long gone, struggling to keep his eyes open, he turned the TV off, set the little bedside clock radio for 6:30, and lay down. He was completely, utterly and thoroughly exhausted, and he knew that he would wake up at 6:30 feeling like someone had beaten the shit out of him with a watermelon wrapped in a pillowcase, but he also knew that if he went to bed BEFORE that point, sleep wasn't happening.
The first time that he woke up, the clock face told him that it was 3:49 AM. He lay and stared at the pattern on the ceiling that the parking lot halogens made through the slats of the blinds, and then drifted back off to sleep.
The second time that he woke up it was 5:37 AM and the day was beginning to dawn outside. He had a moment to panic, not recognizing his surroundings, and then remembered that he was in Kellogg, Idaho headed... well, pretty much anywhere... and then went back to sleep.
It seemed like seconds, or possibly two minutes later that the clock radio clicked on to a static-laden country station. He started the day as he had since he was a teenager... by swearing at the alarm clock as he turned it off, then took a moment to center himself, crossed his arms across his chest and said "Dear Lord, thank you for the sleep. Please bless this day and keep me from getting a flat tire. Thank you and amen."
He dressed in the same clothes from yesterday, reasoning that no one was really going to care, brushed his teeth quickly, zipped up his suitcase and headed downstairs.
The desk was empty again. He looked for and found the "continental breakfast" through the office window, and decided that it really wasn't worth going through the trouble of disturbing the fat man or whoever happened to be on the desk that morning. As he looked at the forlorn doughnuts and slightly pissy-looking orange juice, he thought that these things could really only be called "continental" if you considered "continental" to mean "coming from between somewhere in Arkansas and somewhere in Oklahoma".
He slid the key card into the small slot on the door that said "KEY CARD HERE PLEASE THX" and then started his car and backed out of the lot.
The same fast-food joint that had served him dinner last night served him breakfast this morning, and he was back on the road.
He found the local outlet of a motel chain that had been on the news a few years back as an example of a really bad place to stay. The upside for him is that it was far away from anything else and way off the road.
I forgot to mention earlier... one of the things about him that caused him to so seriously consider suicide. He didn't sleep. Wasn't even really an insomniac, any more than the ocean is a "little damp". He blamed it on his mother's bad genes. She had never slept well, either. So it was important to him to find a place that was quiet. Clean was secondary and amenities were so tertiary that they really didn't even matter.
He pulled into the parking lot, and found the lobby door locked, the desk unmanned.
"Shit."
He started to turn and head back to his car when he noticed a doorbell with a sign, poorly-written by hand that read "Please wring bell for service. Thx." He had a moment to puzzle over the weird misspelling of "ring", and then followed the instructions. Thirty seconds later, he rang again, and then a door opened in the back of the desk, and a very fat man with a face the color of a fire hydrant came out, fastening his belt. He pushed a button on the desk, causing the door to buzz like a pissed-off hornet, and began to gesture frantically with his free hand.
He entered the lobby, and the fat man said "Sorry about the wait... had to take one hell of a dump."
He had a moment to wonder why the fat man felt it necessary to share that particular piece of information with him, and then shook his head, realizing that, in the grand scheme of things (whatever THAT was), it didn't really matter.
He signed the guest card, was told that the room plus tax was fifty-seven fifty per night, with a miserly 10 AM checkout time. He dropped three twenties on the desk. The fat man glared at the bills for a moment, and then, with a put-upon sound, unlocked the cash drawer and doled out his change.
As he turned and headed back for his car, the desk clerk said "Hey."
He turned back around.
"Yeah?"
The fat man said "Buddy... I don't know you and you sure God don't know me, but I gotta tell you. You look like trouble to me, and I don't want no trouble. You give me trouble and I'll put your ass out in a second, you read?"
He looked at the fat man for a few short moments and then said "I'm kind of glad to hear that, as long as you're as strict with all of your customers. There are a lot of things that I want at this moment in my life. Trouble ISN'T one of them." He turned and headed out the door, shaking his head and smiling as the fat man mumbled "Smart ass" under his breath.
As he got his one suitcase out of the trunk of the car and headed up to his room, he wondered why it was that honest people were always called smart-ass. Did it have something to do with the resentment of people who WEREN'T honest?
The first thing that he did... the first thing that he ALWAYS did in a hotel room, come to that, was to cover his hand with one of his clean socks, and then use that hand to remove the top blanket from the bed and throw it in the corner where it huddled, discarded, like the victim of a sex crime, waiting for someone to help it. Hotels... especially cheap dives like this one... NEVER washed the top blanket. Too much expense and trouble. So there was always dust, sometimes jizz and occasionally shit on them. The dust he could live with, the jizz was unfortunate and the shit was just UNTHINKABLE, so it always went into the corner.
He took a quick, very hot shower, and then padded naked back into the room. It was always a bit of an exhibitionistic thrill with him to walk around a hotel room buck-ass naked, as if the ghosts of all of the previous and future tenants were watching him, shocked, excited or bored by his show.
He looked through the drawers in the room, trying to find anything that the other guests had forgotten and the maids (assuming this armpit actually HAD maids) had missed.
The only thing that he found was a Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. As he started to slide it shut, the Bible shifted and he saw a glint of plastic bag under the edge of it. He reopened the drawer, and moved the Bible, revealing a sandwich bag with a small amount of marijuana and some rolling papers and matches inside. He smiled and shook his head, started to close the drawer on the pot and then thought "You know what? Fuck it."
He was forty-four years old. A week before Christmas that year, more or less, he would be forty-five and he hadn't smoked a joint in more than twenty years. So you know what? Fuck it.
He sat down cross-legged on the bed, and poured the dope carefully into the rolling paper, clumsily and inexpertly rolling a serviceable but far from perfect doobie. Even when he HAD smoked grass, in those dim dead days of 1980 something, he had almost never smoked joints, had almost always used pipes and bongs. So this was not an easy task, and, when he was done, he really felt as if he had EARNED this doob.
He pulled the matches out of the bag, and then folded his arms across his chest, saying "Dear Lord, thank you for this day. For this high that I am about to receive may I be blessed with gratitude. And please bless whatever holy traveler left this little bag of Maui Wowie. Amen."
He unfolded his arms, raised the doobie to his mouth, struck a match to it, and drew the acrid, old sock and feet smelling smoke deeply into his lungs. Since he didn't smoke cigarettes and had been free of the demon weed for so long, his body immediately rebelled with a half-cough, half-retch, but he fought and won, holding the smoke in. He swallowed repeatedly, wanting to keep as much of this as possible. He sure wasn't going to BUY any weed, even now that he was smoking again, so he wanted to savor what he had while he had it.
When he finally released his breath, he was pleased to see that very little of the smoke had escaped alive. He laughed an evil laugh, and then toked deeply again, settling back against the headboard as the high started to settle in. It happened exactly as he had always remembered... his fingertips started to tingle, and then his sinuses went numb.
He grabbed the TV remote and started to wade through the pond of shit that is late night TV as he smoked his joint.
Finally, around three in the morning, his joint long gone, struggling to keep his eyes open, he turned the TV off, set the little bedside clock radio for 6:30, and lay down. He was completely, utterly and thoroughly exhausted, and he knew that he would wake up at 6:30 feeling like someone had beaten the shit out of him with a watermelon wrapped in a pillowcase, but he also knew that if he went to bed BEFORE that point, sleep wasn't happening.
The first time that he woke up, the clock face told him that it was 3:49 AM. He lay and stared at the pattern on the ceiling that the parking lot halogens made through the slats of the blinds, and then drifted back off to sleep.
The second time that he woke up it was 5:37 AM and the day was beginning to dawn outside. He had a moment to panic, not recognizing his surroundings, and then remembered that he was in Kellogg, Idaho headed... well, pretty much anywhere... and then went back to sleep.
It seemed like seconds, or possibly two minutes later that the clock radio clicked on to a static-laden country station. He started the day as he had since he was a teenager... by swearing at the alarm clock as he turned it off, then took a moment to center himself, crossed his arms across his chest and said "Dear Lord, thank you for the sleep. Please bless this day and keep me from getting a flat tire. Thank you and amen."
He dressed in the same clothes from yesterday, reasoning that no one was really going to care, brushed his teeth quickly, zipped up his suitcase and headed downstairs.
The desk was empty again. He looked for and found the "continental breakfast" through the office window, and decided that it really wasn't worth going through the trouble of disturbing the fat man or whoever happened to be on the desk that morning. As he looked at the forlorn doughnuts and slightly pissy-looking orange juice, he thought that these things could really only be called "continental" if you considered "continental" to mean "coming from between somewhere in Arkansas and somewhere in Oklahoma".
He slid the key card into the small slot on the door that said "KEY CARD HERE PLEASE THX" and then started his car and backed out of the lot.
The same fast-food joint that had served him dinner last night served him breakfast this morning, and he was back on the road.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
The Journey Part 1
copyright 2009 by Randal Schaffer
One day, he just left.
To this day if you ask him why he left, he probably couldn't tell you.
He just did.
It seemed like the right thing to do.
He withdrew all of the money that he had from the bank, something like $5000 and some change. What some would call his "life savings". Pretty miserable life, really, if that's the savings.
Maybe he did it to save his life.
Suicide was something that was never far from his mind, usually. And not in that "cry for attention:" way that so many people like his ex-wife used it. To her, "I'm going to kill myself" was a statement used to get her way. He hated that. To him, being a basically logical person, it seemed more like a shortcut to an inevitable destination. We're all going there, we all get there, what difference does it really make how or when you do it?
But that day... instead of killing himself... he tossed his clothes into a suitcase, tossed the suitcase into the car and just... left.
He headed out of Seattle on I-90 East. Not that there was anything drawing him East, really. It just seemed like a trip West would end very quickly at the Pacific Ocean, and he didn't want that.
He had a moment to wonder if anyone at the plant would miss him, and if they did, when it would happen. Tomorrow? The next day?
He listened to the radio for a while, old rock and roll from when he was a kid, but turned it off pretty quickly. It was difficult to keep a radio station tuned in moving cross-country as he was.
He didn't realize that he had dropped his cell phone in his pocket until it started to ring around Ellensburg. He pulled his car to the side of the road and looked at the display. It was his ex-wife. Probably, he thought, calling to threaten to kill herself over one thing or another. He couldn't cope with it. He pulled as far as he safely could off the road, put on his emergency flashers and turned the ignition off. He walked about a hundred yards into the scrub grass, and then threw his cell phone as hard as he could. He watched it arc through the air, creating a moment of beauty in the cloudy Washington sunlight before disappearing over a low hill. Probably, he thought, the two most useful things that one of those damned things has ever done.
When he got back into his car and pulled back into the sparse traffic, he felt like two large lead fishing weights had been removed from his balls. In his happiness at feeling liberated, he turned the radio back on, fiddled with the tuning until he found some oldies station belting out "Back In Black" by AC/DC, sang along for a while, and then turned the radio off again.
The end of his first day found him in Kellogg, Idaho. He had never been to Kellogg, had BARELY ever been in Idaho, so it seemed as good a place as any to start.
He got a burger and fries and a Coke at the drive through at some dive fast-food place, and ate in the car while he looked for a cheap place to crash.
One day, he just left.
To this day if you ask him why he left, he probably couldn't tell you.
He just did.
It seemed like the right thing to do.
He withdrew all of the money that he had from the bank, something like $5000 and some change. What some would call his "life savings". Pretty miserable life, really, if that's the savings.
Maybe he did it to save his life.
Suicide was something that was never far from his mind, usually. And not in that "cry for attention:" way that so many people like his ex-wife used it. To her, "I'm going to kill myself" was a statement used to get her way. He hated that. To him, being a basically logical person, it seemed more like a shortcut to an inevitable destination. We're all going there, we all get there, what difference does it really make how or when you do it?
But that day... instead of killing himself... he tossed his clothes into a suitcase, tossed the suitcase into the car and just... left.
He headed out of Seattle on I-90 East. Not that there was anything drawing him East, really. It just seemed like a trip West would end very quickly at the Pacific Ocean, and he didn't want that.
He had a moment to wonder if anyone at the plant would miss him, and if they did, when it would happen. Tomorrow? The next day?
He listened to the radio for a while, old rock and roll from when he was a kid, but turned it off pretty quickly. It was difficult to keep a radio station tuned in moving cross-country as he was.
He didn't realize that he had dropped his cell phone in his pocket until it started to ring around Ellensburg. He pulled his car to the side of the road and looked at the display. It was his ex-wife. Probably, he thought, calling to threaten to kill herself over one thing or another. He couldn't cope with it. He pulled as far as he safely could off the road, put on his emergency flashers and turned the ignition off. He walked about a hundred yards into the scrub grass, and then threw his cell phone as hard as he could. He watched it arc through the air, creating a moment of beauty in the cloudy Washington sunlight before disappearing over a low hill. Probably, he thought, the two most useful things that one of those damned things has ever done.
When he got back into his car and pulled back into the sparse traffic, he felt like two large lead fishing weights had been removed from his balls. In his happiness at feeling liberated, he turned the radio back on, fiddled with the tuning until he found some oldies station belting out "Back In Black" by AC/DC, sang along for a while, and then turned the radio off again.
The end of his first day found him in Kellogg, Idaho. He had never been to Kellogg, had BARELY ever been in Idaho, so it seemed as good a place as any to start.
He got a burger and fries and a Coke at the drive through at some dive fast-food place, and ate in the car while he looked for a cheap place to crash.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Welcome to "The Journey"
Hello, and welcome to my first online book.
I will start publishing the book proper tomorrow night. For now, i wanted to issue some cautions and ground rules.
This is a book for adults. I do not mean porn, although it does contain some fairly strong sexual content. It contains drug, alcohol and tobacco references. It contains "bad" words. It contains violence.
In other words, it resembles real life.
Now, the ground rules...
I am publishing this book in this format because i want to be read, damn it! I think that i am a good writer. People that i share my work with tell me that they enjoy it, and i'm tired of waiting for an agent or publisher to recognize that. I would like to make money off of my writing, but so far it ain't happening. The next best thing is to be read and to receive feedback. Like a lot of writers, i have a rather large ego, and the safest thing is to just keep it calm by stroking it.
This work is my copyright, and no one else can use it any time for any reason without my written permission. I hope to publish this book once completed, provided that i haven't shot myself in the foot by weblishing it. (With that in mind, any agents or publishers who happen across this and would like to represent or publish me based on its strengths, please let me know.
I love feedback, but please keep the feedback civil. I will delete rudeness. Also, please do not send suggestions for things to happen in the story. If i realize that's happening, i will delete the feedback unread. This is my story, not a group effort.
If you live in one of the towns mentioned, please feel free to post a WOO HOO FOR {insert town name here} but please do not send me corrections or minutia about your town. I am going for real town names, but everything else is more or less fictional. More or less.
If you enjoy this story, please leave a note letting me know, and send the URL to your friends who enjoy fiction. If you don't, then by all means stop reading. My mind criticizes me far worse than any of you could, so please don't feel that you need to drop a note that says "you suck". Just stop reading and back slowly away from the blog.
All righty. Tomorrow night begins "The Journey".
Thanks in advance for reading and enjoy.
Randal
I will start publishing the book proper tomorrow night. For now, i wanted to issue some cautions and ground rules.
This is a book for adults. I do not mean porn, although it does contain some fairly strong sexual content. It contains drug, alcohol and tobacco references. It contains "bad" words. It contains violence.
In other words, it resembles real life.
Now, the ground rules...
I am publishing this book in this format because i want to be read, damn it! I think that i am a good writer. People that i share my work with tell me that they enjoy it, and i'm tired of waiting for an agent or publisher to recognize that. I would like to make money off of my writing, but so far it ain't happening. The next best thing is to be read and to receive feedback. Like a lot of writers, i have a rather large ego, and the safest thing is to just keep it calm by stroking it.
This work is my copyright, and no one else can use it any time for any reason without my written permission. I hope to publish this book once completed, provided that i haven't shot myself in the foot by weblishing it. (With that in mind, any agents or publishers who happen across this and would like to represent or publish me based on its strengths, please let me know.
I love feedback, but please keep the feedback civil. I will delete rudeness. Also, please do not send suggestions for things to happen in the story. If i realize that's happening, i will delete the feedback unread. This is my story, not a group effort.
If you live in one of the towns mentioned, please feel free to post a WOO HOO FOR {insert town name here} but please do not send me corrections or minutia about your town. I am going for real town names, but everything else is more or less fictional. More or less.
If you enjoy this story, please leave a note letting me know, and send the URL to your friends who enjoy fiction. If you don't, then by all means stop reading. My mind criticizes me far worse than any of you could, so please don't feel that you need to drop a note that says "you suck". Just stop reading and back slowly away from the blog.
All righty. Tomorrow night begins "The Journey".
Thanks in advance for reading and enjoy.
Randal
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