#real laugh so hard you cry. — anyway I’m fine. wildly for the amount of damage I’ve taken I’ve only ever broken 1 bone it ain’t that bad

[ziracona]

Hi im sorry but that feels like an insane amount of Very Large Injuries are you ok over there. The other option is that my concept of average injury amount is way off and I don't like that either.

Oh in the poll answer? It probably is abnormal. Idk about the average number of car wrecks to be in as a passenger honestly, but the rest I would think isn’t exactly at average. I am physically ok though I have some very solid hard survivability in my load out. Thank you for asking ^u^

[wellmeaningshutin]

Short Story #43: Road Trip.

Written: 2/14/2017

The idea was simple: if she drove for a long time, she would either have some fun and quickly arrive at the next day, or she would die. So, having no better idea, she decided to hit the long stretch of desert road, in the middle of the night, swerving from lane to lane, bare right foot pressing the petal to the floor of the car, sometimes closing her eyes for a couple moments, radio blaring, flicking her headlights on and off, laughing for the first half hour, but then eventually getting bored after there was nothing but the long, empty road. The boredom didn’t cause her to drive safely, and it actually made her a little more reckless.

Right, left, right, left, no other cars to be seen on this empty stretch of road, no animals that dared to cross, just a lot of dark and empty desert. Closing her eyes for a couple of seconds, she thought about her life back home, but she could only recall memories of lying around, watching crappy movies, counting down the time until she would be pummeled and would have to restart the timer all over again. When she tried to explain this to people it always sounded like she was in an abusive relationship, and they’d usually look her right in the eyes-something most people rarely did when they talked to her-and they would say, “Elizabeth, do you need any help? Should I call the police?” And she would try to explain that it was all fine, but then they would just press on with, “Are you sure? Don’t feel afraid to speak up, there are plenty of shelters and services that help women in your position?” By that point, she would just give up on trying to outline the whole situation, explain that it was all under control, but it was a struggle to not make it sound like she had Stockholm Syndrome.

For a moment it seemed like a jackrabbit was running across the road, and she swerved to hit it, but a thud and plenty of effort to regain control of the car proved that the rabbit was actually a rock. Since the tires seemed fine, she kept going, there was moonlight to burn.

She really never could think of a good way to explain her living situation, and as she was driving her mouth outlined the best attempt she could muster to make it seem alright, and put people at ease. ‘No, no, its fine. I’m in complete control of the situation and I can leave at any time. The only reason I put up with the beating is so I don’t have to pay any rent, and I have a high tolerance to pain anyways. Look, if he was actually strong enough to do serious harm to anybody, then he wouldn’t have to pay some woman to let him beat her daily. Think of me like a prostitute-’ she shook her head wildly, that word needed to be avoided since it rarely had a positive connotation to it. ‘Think of it like rent. Most people pay money, and all I have to pay is comfort, while my money is left untouched and I have more to spend on whatever I need. Its basically like living for free, who wouldn’t want to do that, why does it seem to you like it was such a bad thing?’ This seemed convincing, and she could imagine the fictional person she was talking to, nodding and saying how reasonable that all seemed, but she was aware that this was just her fantasies talking, and she could probably do better to explain, thus a second argument was thought of. ‘Look, the guy is a literal sadist and is going to want to hurt somebody, but isn’t strong enough to pick fights at bars or attack people on the streets. However, that doesn’t make him harmless, it just means that without me he would eventually go out and target somebody who he could effectively inflict pain on, like-”

Headlights? Were those headlights in the opposite lane? Just making sure, she swerved into the same lane and tried to speed up, but her car couldn’t go any faster, so her foot-already sore from holding down the pedal for such a long time-pressed harder against the stationary pedal, causing a slight amount of pain and no other result. It turned out that she was right about them being head lights, and they swerved onto the dirt in the last minute, which gave her cause to cackle over the radio, which  was fading in and out, and would help give her a little more energy to stay awake for the drive. Time went on, the radio eventually died out enough to leave a low sound of static, and she started to get bored again. What was it that she thought of earlier that kept her entertained? Was she thinking about a movie she saw a while back? After a couple minutes, she remembered, and began trying to convince an imaginary person again, but this time she spoke out loud.

“Sadists are fucked up, right? There’s no denying that, well, I guess unless you’re a sadist, but to a normal person they’re fucked up. Nobody should get pleasure from hurting other people, but some do, and that’s just a truth that we have to deal with. Now, Randy might be a weak little guy, unable to do any real damage against a normal person, and could probably get his ass kicked by teenagers, but that doesn’t de-fang him, that doesn’t take away all of the bile that’s in his heart. He’s still a predator, just pretty low on the food chain, so he has to go after things that are even lower than him, which leaves children and animals. That’s fucked up, right? So, all I have to do is let him hit me for a little while every day, maybe give some fake screams or act like I’m very afraid of him, and that way I get free housing and he doesn’t go out there and commit evil acts against those who can’t defend themselves, the innocents.” Feeling really confident in her speech, she looked around her car to see if she had a pen or paper anywhere, so she could start writing it down, but by the time she looked back at the road a coyote was staring down into her headlights. With no time to move out of the way, the creature eventually stared at the underside of her car, directly at and under the tires, and was left as a mangy, bloody pulp far down the road.

This was only funny to Elizabeth at first, since after a couple minutes the right side of her car started to vibrate hard, and she realized she had a flat. It was only 2AM, and she already had to quit, but not because she was dead. It was a frustrating situation. Not knowing what to do, as she sat there in her dark car, on the side of the road, she tried to connect to a radio station but they all seemed like the same kind of dim static. She had no phone to call for help, and nothing to kill herself with. She was too antsy to go to sleep, and hope for sunlight, because now that she was just sitting there, at the side of the road, they could catch up to her in less than an hour.

Finally, she thought of a new plan, which was to wander out into the desert in the hopes that she would be mauled by a wild animal, bitten by some deadly snake, or find a ravine or cliff that she could use to plummet to her death. Before she did that, she would have to take care of other business, so she rummaged around in her car, looking for a flashlight, but there wasn’t one in the car. Turning on the interior lights, hoping that it would shed enough on the outside since the moon was hardly in the sky, having the same appearance as a discarded fingernail clipping, she got out of the car and walked around to the trunk, unlocked it, and looked at the pathetic sight inside.

Although Randy was a shaking and crying mess, with snot running over the duct tape over his mouth and dandruff mixed in with the sweat that caused his shirt to cling to that skeleton of a body, she had to admire that he was still alive, even with all of the blood that poured out of that wrist he had gnawed open. She didn’t even know how he was still alive, half of his body was covered in dark brown crust, and he smelt of copper, so she gave respect where respect was deserved. She also punched him directly in the nose, then again for a second time when the first failed to break anything, and told him “I’m leaving you here so they’ll take care of you. There’s no hope that you’ll either die an easy death, or be able to be taken into the authorities, but honestly you deserve everything that’s going to happen to you and I’m sick of dealing with your bullshit. I’d say I would see you in hell, but I figure I’ll at least get into purgatory, so I’ll leave you with this: Fuck you.”He tried to mumble something, it seemed desperate, but she didn’t bother to try and take the tape off, it was easy enough to figure out what he would probably say: kill me now, please kill me now, you know you want to kill me more than anything, so why don’t you, don’t leave me with them, you’re evil if you leave me with them, I was good to you so please fucking kill me, etc. Annoyed what she perceived to be as pleading, she slammed the trunk on him, then turned to run into the desert to save her own ass.

Then she realized that he wasn’t begging for her to kill him, he was trying to tell her about the car that was quietly pulling up behind them, headlights off, and she wished that she had decided to run earlier. What did she gain from seeing him before she left? Wasn’t it a good enough thought to know that his life was about to become a living hell? Considering running anyways, she took a couple steps towards the empty desert ahead of her, but a voice, belonging to some silhouette that had moved outside of the car, told her, “Now girl, you can’t out run a car so you might as well just stay there.” They had a point, but maybe if she did run they would run her over, which would probably be a better fate than what was probably going to happen to her. “Why don’t you reopen that trunk, show us what you have inside there.” Complying, she opened up the trunk and once again saw Randy, pathetic and frantic, but before she could turn around again, she woke up in a different trunk right next to that awful, awful man.

“I can’t believe I’m getting roped into this. You deserve this, not me!” Some muffles were given in response, and although she was sick of seeing his sweaty, snotty, bloody, tear drenched face, there wasn’t enough room for her to turn around, so she had to settle with just closing her eyes. The car they were in bumped, vibrated, and was generally uncomfortable, but what she couldn’t stand was feeling that asshole’s cold, wet body. “I should’ve been smart about this, I should’ve either killed you a long time ago, turned you into these fuckers so that I wouldn’t be a part of this, or at least should have brought a razor or something to, to-” She almost couldn’t believe what she was starting to feel pool up against her thigh, “ARE YOU PISSING ON ME?! God damn it! Fuck you, asshole!” She yelled at him in this manner for quite some time, partially for the urine, partially to vent all of the pent up frustration she had towards him, but mostly towards herself.

Eventually a compartment opened up behind her, one that was opened by pulling down a section in the back seat, and somebody told her, “Be quiet, or we’re going to pull over. Do you want that?” She didn’t want that, remained quiet for some time, and they didn’t pull over.

Lying there was dull and miserable, so eventually she began whispering to the guy. “You couldn’t go one fucking day? What’s wrong with you, do you have no sense of self control, do you even feel bad about what you’ve done or do you only feel bad now because you know that you’ll be punished for it? What was even going through your fucking head when you decided to do it, why not pick up a stray dog or some shit? I can’t believe I agreed to our deal in the first place, I can’t believe that I even tried to defend you!” This eventually proved to be dissatisfying, it was like talking to a wall, so she decided to rip the tape off of his mouth and demanded, “Well?”

It took him a little bit to adjust to the pain on his mouth, then to catch his breath. “Don’t take the moral high ground here, you’re the one who decided to keep me out of harms way so that you could take me into the police.”

“Well, I was also hoping that I’d get killed during the drive-”

“Who gives a shit if you were hoping that you’d die? You wouldn’t even want death if you didn’t decide to help me in the first place, you could’ve left me there for them, or you could’ve even just let me bleed out in the first place, but no, you needed to fulfill your own misguided sense of justice. Don’t act like you’re in the right here.”

“Don’t fucking act like you’re in the right here! Look whose talking? You think I’m wrong for wanting to see you fucking punished for what you did, because I thought dying was too easy for you? It doesn’t matter if my plan fell apart int he end, my intentions were good, unlike yours! Its not like-”

“So a suicidal drive across the state is somehow better than-”

“Its not like I killed a kid!”

Silence on his end, but not from guilt. She knew that he was just trying to think of a good enough argument, or a way to spin things around onto her.

“What, no comment? Is it too hard to act superior when you’re the one who couldn’t hold it in for one day, just one fucking day, and instead had to drive to some cheap ass family pizza parlor, wait among the games and-”

“I never went near the game section, you’re getting it all wrong. You don’t even know the facts, you have no idea what you’re talking about, and displaying ignorance-”

“At the end of the day, that kid is still-”

“Displaying ignorance-”

“The fucking kid-”

“DISPLAYING IGNORANCE DOES NOT MAKE YOU SEEM INTELLIGENT!”

After this outburst they both shut up, and quietly waited to see if the car would pull over. Several minutes passed, and they figured that they were in the clear, and Randy was the first to whisper and break the silence. “If you’re going to make me seem like the bad guy here, at least get the facts straight.”

In the darkness she couldn’t see his face, but she wanted to hit it again. “Okay, so because I don’t perfectly know the events that lead up to it, I can’t call you a bad guy? The kid is still dead, asshole. I don’t care how that happened, you still-”

“Oh, so you’re complacent with your ignorance? You don’t need to know the facts, you’re just complacent with your opinion and are willing to ignore any semblance of a discussion to pat yourself on the back and feel-”

“What discussion? Why do we need to have a discussion about this? Its pretty black and white, killing kids is fucked up and wrong no matter how you look at it. Its like being a nazi.”

“Oh, so you’re going to bring in the nazi comparisons, real original.”

“Shut up.”

“How long did I take you to think of that one, huh? You should get a Pulitzer for that comment.”

“Fuck you, killing kids is still fucked up, no matter what the circumstances.”

“Oh, so what about in wartime when children carry IED’s and soldiers have to kill them to save the lives of civilians or their-”

“So you’re saying that the poor kid that you decided to beat, break their arms and legs, and suffocated with a plastic bag, was carrying and IED and you had to kill them to protect the lives of the people in that shit hole of a restaurant?”

“No, that would be ridiculous to claim that, I’m just pointing out the flaws in you’re stupid argument.”

“Who cares if my argument is flawed, my argument isn’t the focus, we’re talking about whether or not it was evil of you to do what you fucking did, and it was. You have yet to do the impossible and prove that you are not a bad person for what you’ve done.”

“Well, it seems like you already have made up your mind about the whole subject, and there’s no use in trying to talk to you. All I wanted was to discuss the facts, but it seems like you just want to put your head in the sand.”

“Oh, fuck you!”

“See, you’re only proving my point.”

The car stopped, and after a little while she could hear car doors slammed. There were footsteps on gravel outside, and somebody began fumbling with the door of the trunk. When it finally swung open, and light had almost blinded her, she could start to see that not only was Randy dead, but he had probably been that way for quite some time.