Pitchblack
04-28-2011, 09:11 PM
It was one of those nights. You know the ones. You're running late as it is. You jump in the truck to leave for work and it's out of gas, no thanks to your degenerate brother who needed to borrow it to move out of his girlfriend's place for the third time this month. You go to the Mobil and the goddamn gas pump won't accept your debit card. On the way in to the store to pay for the gas that should have been in the truck to begin with, you spot him.
Yeah it's him, he's still wearing that same dirty brown flannel with the rip in the right elbow, his greasy brown hair barely scraping it's tattered collar. Now here's the dilemma, you can wait outside and lambaste his *** just as he walks out of the sliding glass doors, or you can follow him; see where he leads you. Maybe there's bigger fish down the creek a bit, at least that's what granddad would've said. You pop your collar up and light a cigarette, pretending to inhale every last bit of monoxide before you have to gently balance the still glowing butt on the standup ashtray while you pay for another pack. You turn the opposite direction as he makes his way through the automatic doors.
If you had decided on the former rather than the latter, now would be your last chance to put a Dock Martin into his yellowish green teeth. As he passes by, that old familiar adrenaline tingle starts to creep up your body, you know the one. . .the one that starts just below your balls and makes it's way up your spine until it reaches the fully erect hairs on the back of your neck. The man stumbles his way to a rusty old Dodge Dart with no front license plate and fires it up. You hurry inside and pay for the gas before you lose the guppy that's going to lead you to the shark. just as you exit the store you see the Dodge take a left out of the lot and ramble down the road.
You hang the gas nozzle up hastily, not worrying about that last ten cents on a pre-pay pump that takes five minutes to dispense. Your Ford pickup gets sideways as it slides left out of the lot.
How much time did you lose? How many cross streets between here and where he might be? Your goddamn brother and that ***** of a girlfriend of his, if you miss out on this opportunity because they don't know how to play ****ing house!
Mail box after mailbox blur by your truck as you reach 85MPH. Finally, about five miles up the road, you recognize the round tail lights of the Dodge. You slow it down to 50MPH and follow at a distance. The Dodge veers left on to Old Dutch Road. You keep pace, passing by the decrepit barn where Matt Moses hanged himself back in high school. The eeriness of the dark country road coupled with the adrenaline dump from the gas station makes you shiver as you pass by Switzer Rd. The Dodge hangs a right onto Elmsly.
You roll down the window and light a cigarette. The smell of wood stove's burning fill the autumn air. It's funny how certain smells have the ability to transport you back to a time and place from your past. It's an oft overlooked sense, the bastard sibling of the four senses. Anyone with half a brain would choose to give up smell in order to see, hear or touch. For you, there's nothing more powerful for creating a memory than a specific smell associated with said memory. You take a deep pull of your marlboro and reminisce.
It was the winter of '85, and your parents had just separated. Your mom was out with one of her "bar friends". You chuckle to yourself as you remember the term "bar friend". It was coined by your grandmother one afternoon as she argued with your mom about how you and your brother were being raised since the separation. What your grandmother was basically saying was, a "bar friend" was a man that your mom met at the bar and screwed in the parking lot. Not an ideal example for nine and ten year old children. It was an exceptionally warm night for January, not warm enough to do without the heat of the wood stove, but not cold enough to get a good draft. Without a good draft, the smoke has a hard time being pulled up the chimney and out into the winter night. As the house slowly filled with the back draft of rejected smoke from the chimney, the babysitter's boyfriend fumbled with the damper and poked clumsily at the coals with the steel poker in an attempt to remedy the situation. The next several minutes were a slow motion train wreck. Your father, blood shot eyes, ethanol breath and rage. The boyfriend, wide eyed and nervous, white knuckling the red hot poker. Hot steel met flesh and your father lay bleeding in a smoke filled living room.
You snap back to reality as you find yourself quickly approaching brake lights. The Dodge was slowing down to take a right up a steep driveway.
With the pick up pulled over you approach the drive way on foot. Loose stone and gravel give way under foot, mimicking miniature landslides. You squat low to the ground and bear crawl in order to stave off falling rock. You slowly move toward barely audible murmuring that can be heard emanating from underneath a malfunctioning porch light. The intermittent twinkling of light becomes part of your cadence as you crawl towards revenge. Right hand, left knee, twinkle. Left hand, right knee, twinkle.
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Yeah it's him, he's still wearing that same dirty brown flannel with the rip in the right elbow, his greasy brown hair barely scraping it's tattered collar. Now here's the dilemma, you can wait outside and lambaste his *** just as he walks out of the sliding glass doors, or you can follow him; see where he leads you. Maybe there's bigger fish down the creek a bit, at least that's what granddad would've said. You pop your collar up and light a cigarette, pretending to inhale every last bit of monoxide before you have to gently balance the still glowing butt on the standup ashtray while you pay for another pack. You turn the opposite direction as he makes his way through the automatic doors.
If you had decided on the former rather than the latter, now would be your last chance to put a Dock Martin into his yellowish green teeth. As he passes by, that old familiar adrenaline tingle starts to creep up your body, you know the one. . .the one that starts just below your balls and makes it's way up your spine until it reaches the fully erect hairs on the back of your neck. The man stumbles his way to a rusty old Dodge Dart with no front license plate and fires it up. You hurry inside and pay for the gas before you lose the guppy that's going to lead you to the shark. just as you exit the store you see the Dodge take a left out of the lot and ramble down the road.
You hang the gas nozzle up hastily, not worrying about that last ten cents on a pre-pay pump that takes five minutes to dispense. Your Ford pickup gets sideways as it slides left out of the lot.
How much time did you lose? How many cross streets between here and where he might be? Your goddamn brother and that ***** of a girlfriend of his, if you miss out on this opportunity because they don't know how to play ****ing house!
Mail box after mailbox blur by your truck as you reach 85MPH. Finally, about five miles up the road, you recognize the round tail lights of the Dodge. You slow it down to 50MPH and follow at a distance. The Dodge veers left on to Old Dutch Road. You keep pace, passing by the decrepit barn where Matt Moses hanged himself back in high school. The eeriness of the dark country road coupled with the adrenaline dump from the gas station makes you shiver as you pass by Switzer Rd. The Dodge hangs a right onto Elmsly.
You roll down the window and light a cigarette. The smell of wood stove's burning fill the autumn air. It's funny how certain smells have the ability to transport you back to a time and place from your past. It's an oft overlooked sense, the bastard sibling of the four senses. Anyone with half a brain would choose to give up smell in order to see, hear or touch. For you, there's nothing more powerful for creating a memory than a specific smell associated with said memory. You take a deep pull of your marlboro and reminisce.
It was the winter of '85, and your parents had just separated. Your mom was out with one of her "bar friends". You chuckle to yourself as you remember the term "bar friend". It was coined by your grandmother one afternoon as she argued with your mom about how you and your brother were being raised since the separation. What your grandmother was basically saying was, a "bar friend" was a man that your mom met at the bar and screwed in the parking lot. Not an ideal example for nine and ten year old children. It was an exceptionally warm night for January, not warm enough to do without the heat of the wood stove, but not cold enough to get a good draft. Without a good draft, the smoke has a hard time being pulled up the chimney and out into the winter night. As the house slowly filled with the back draft of rejected smoke from the chimney, the babysitter's boyfriend fumbled with the damper and poked clumsily at the coals with the steel poker in an attempt to remedy the situation. The next several minutes were a slow motion train wreck. Your father, blood shot eyes, ethanol breath and rage. The boyfriend, wide eyed and nervous, white knuckling the red hot poker. Hot steel met flesh and your father lay bleeding in a smoke filled living room.
You snap back to reality as you find yourself quickly approaching brake lights. The Dodge was slowing down to take a right up a steep driveway.
With the pick up pulled over you approach the drive way on foot. Loose stone and gravel give way under foot, mimicking miniature landslides. You squat low to the ground and bear crawl in order to stave off falling rock. You slowly move toward barely audible murmuring that can be heard emanating from underneath a malfunctioning porch light. The intermittent twinkling of light becomes part of your cadence as you crawl towards revenge. Right hand, left knee, twinkle. Left hand, right knee, twinkle.
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