The Day of the Whale
It was a lonely and dark evening. The time was right for something
evil to occur, the feeling of dread hung about like winos
in a vinyard. I had just ingested about a half ounce of wet
mushrooms, and i could feel them coming on. I was in the midst
of contemplating the purpose and shape of the human body,
and the reproductive organs in particular, when i heard
a knock on the door. Any time that there is a knock on the door
on a night like this, it is a bad sign. When you get that feeling,
ignore that knock. Grab a big pistol, and a knife, and sit
in a room with no windows with a bottle of whiskey and a good
book and wait for it all to come to an end. But whatever you
do, don't open that door, no good can come of it on such
a night. It was a woman. A beautiful twenty-eight year old
blond. She was soaked from the rain, and i could see her shirt
clinging to her nipples. But more than that, i could almost
smell the abject terror coming from her. The look in her
eyes just spoke of a fear i knew nothing of. When our eyes
met, i felt her pain on a level i knew nothing of, and i could
see that she did as well. We said nothing, and neither of
us had ever seen the other before. But we embraced. We shared
a hug and a deep kiss that seemed to connect us on an otherworldly
level, I had never experienced such a thing as this before.
We broke off, and i invited her into my house. As she came
in, I asked her if she smoked, but I already knew the answer
well before i offered her a cigarette. I also knew she would
be cool as I pulled a joint from the pack and lit it and passed
it to her. "Something is wrong here" I said.
"That is definately an understatement" she
replied.
I began to worry. Maybe by opening the door and choosing
to embrace I had poked the hornets nest, and there is no getting
that stick back. So I decided it was already to late, and
I might as well help this poor girl. "What's the
problem, in full?" I asked softly.
And then she delved into such a tale of woe that by the end
I was in tears. I was full of pain, and empathy, and rage and
even hate. But most of all I was filled with sadness, and
disgust. This woman had been engaged to a man for almost
a year. He had begun verbally abusing her, and she had ignored
it, filing it away as whatever excuse was convienient for
the day. Then he had begun to hit her. It was a textbook story,
I knew that from having many dysfunctional friends and
playing neighborhood shrink. But it's always ugly
to hear. And the pain and details are always different.
But on this night, they had been on their way to a timeshare,
with another couple. They were, she admitted, going to
have some fun with each other, maybe do a little swinging.
But it had all gotten ugly at the liqour store. They had stopped
to get a bottle, and it seemed the other couple had misplaced
their money. Steve, the womans fiance, became enraged.
He called them scum and vagabonds and all sorts of foul names.
He began flipping out, blaming his poor fiance, Sarah,
for all their problems. Everyone was sitting in the tense
silence after his freakout, when Steve pulled over to the
side of the road and pulled out a Glock .45 he kept in the center
console, and motioned and ordered the other couple out
of the car. He then walked them into a cornfield, which was
when Sarah decided to run. As she was running, she heard
two gunshots, and tears came down her eyes at the thought
of what had just occured, and who had done it. But there was
no time for tears now. Now was the time for action, for life.
She began to hear footsteps behind her. She was running
harder, and suddenly realized there were multiple people
chasing her. At that point a car came down the road, and everyone
but her hid off to the side of the road. But she kept running.
Right up to a little Farmhouse by the field....
OH SHIT I thought, coming back from the peaceful seperation
from reality. I grabbed a .454 cassul revolver from the
coffee table, grabbed the girl, and the still smoking joint,
and ran for the basement. Then turned around and went for
the garage. The one safe place is the road sometimes, and
this was one of those times. So I jumped in the Caddilac,
opened the door for Sarah, and took off like a bat out of hell
for the highway.
To be continued.......
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