Category: Writers Block
During the next two years, he remained on the run, usually staying just one step ahead of his Mother, until she was run down by a train one day in California. She had been chasing him in a rented car, but he had made it across the tracks ahead of her. She, not only being crazy, but somewhat stupid as well, either believed that God would protect her from the big bad chew chew train, or apparently forgot, or never was clued into the fact that those silly little bells, and those funny little red lights near rail rode tracks went ding ding ding, and flash flash flash for a reason, and it wasn't just to hear, and see themselves do it, that those funny metal thingies everyone with a brain called cross bars didn't just come down to prevent cars from crossing the tracks because they didn't have anything better to do sometimes, or simply wanted to make some poor sad sack late for work out of some sadistic need to prove that they were in control, that the drivers of all the other cars didn't stop when the lights went flash, the bells went ding, and the cross bars came down because they had suddenly fallen madly in love with their break petals, and that those big metal things that ran on the tracks weren't just cutesy, boxy things that went clickity- clack, and toot toot just so kids could sing songs about them, and that they did not under any circumstances say "I think I can, I think I can.". As a matter of fact, what they usually said was more along the lines of, "Hey, asshole! What the fuck do you think you're doing on the tracks while I'm coming through? Get the fuck out of my way, or I'll pulverize your stupid ass! As a matter of fact, I think I'll just save us all some time, and do just that! You're too fucking stupid to live, so get ready to go splat! I mean! Jesus fucking Christ! If it's not cows wondering onto the tracks in all those stupid kid's train stories, it's stupid, idiotic, Jesus shouting no-brains fartheads like you!"
After that, Mark began retracing his path across the country, but before he had gone very far on his return journey, he had lucked into the car which would become his prised possession. He had first seen it as he was driving past a house on the outskirts of a small California town. The 58 Fury had been in need of a bit of work, but not really that much. Its owner, Mark thought, must have really loved it.
As it turned out, the owner of the car had died a few days before, and his family were disposing of the property. None of them wanted the car, as they all had cars of their own. Mark discovered this when he stopped to get a better look at the car he had thought he would never own, and drove away fifteen minutes later behind its wheel.
During the rest of his return journey, he stopped in several towns throughout the country, and when he wasn't working on other people's cars, he was working on his own. A year after he had first seen it, the Fury looked like brand new, and ran like a dream.
He eventually finished up in Boston, working at an automobile repair garage, which had the misfortune to be run by a guy with a serious gambling problem. As a matter of fact, it was that particular problem that eventually forced the closure of the garage, and the end of Mark's employment there, but before that happened, he was to meet the girl he would be madly in love with less than six months after their first meeting.
He had been driving home after a trip to the grocery store, the trunk of the fury loaded with everything from milk, to meat, to bred, and everything in between, including two dozen eggs, which unfortunately wouldn't survive long enough to make it into a refrigerator. On the way, he passed one of the many bars in the city, and in the parking lot, he saw a man holding a young woman by her hair, and preparing to hit her, most likely not for the first time.
Upon seeing this, Mark pulled over to the curb, cut the engine, and got out quietly. He found that it was remarkably easy to sneak up on the extremely loud, and extremely disreputable individual. He was, after all, doing a great deal of yelling, not all of which could be understood by anyone but a long time bar tender, and Mark's progress was aided by the fact that there was some noise coming from some other quarters as well.
He made it to within four feet of the man, who would turn out to be the young woman's Father, reared back his right fist, and landed a hard punch to the back of the man's neck. This forced the man to release his hold on the crying woman, and turn toward Mark.
"You lookin for trouble, son?" the man said in slurred tones.
"Nope," Mark answered calmly, "I think I found him, and he looks like eighty pounds of shit in a five pound bag. As a matter of fact, he, or should I say, you, don't look as much like trouble as you do the great King Shithead the Seventh."
At this, the man tried to get in his own swing, but mark hadn't had anything to drink apart from a can of Pepsi, and was able to duck out of the way, reaching out, and pulling the woman with him. The man's fist impacted with the window of someone's pickup truck, making a sound like splintering bones. King Shithead then began jumping up, and down in the parking lot, holding his bleeding hand, and howling like a wolf caught in a steel trap.
"Come on!" Mark nearly shouted to be heard over the combined noise of King Shithead, two lawnmowers, a radio blasting rap music at top gain, and several people on the other side of the parking lot, who were cheering as if this was the best sporting event that had come to Boston since the first settlers came over on the May Flower, and guided her gently, but quickly toward the Fury.
King Shithead, meanwhile, picked that moment to forget about his hand, which would turn out to be sporting three broken knuckles thanks to him punching a pickup's passenger window, and decided to give chase. He wobble stagger stumble bumbled his way across the lot, coming into involuntary contact with three more vehicles on the way, and reached for the woman. Before he could grab her, however, Mark got her into the car, closed her door, and ran around to the other side, got in, and keyed the engine.
At the same time, King Shithead began drumming on the Fury's hood with his uninjured fist.
"Lemme in, you fucker!" He slurred, "das my kid you god in there!"
For a moment, mark wondered what the fuck the drunken idiot was talking about. He had, after all, never heard of anyone, either male, or female, who had the name Das, and then he got it. what he was actually trying to say was, "that's my kit you've got in there."
"Frankly, asshole," Mark countered, "I don't give a rat's ass. You don't go around treating your daughter like that. Now get out of here, before I run over your sorry ass!"
"Fuck off, and die!" King Shithead screamed back, "die you motherfucker! Die you motherfucker! Die! Die! Die!"
"Oh, well," Mark thought, "I did warn him," and he gunned the Fury's engine, and put it in drive.
At first, King Shithead didn't have the faintest idea what was going on, or at least that's the way it appeared to Mark. For a moment he simply stood there as the car began to move forward. Then he got the clue, and took off across the parking lot, still not doing very well in the navigation department. He wove first to one side, striking a garbage can, and upsetting it onto himself, and then the other, running face first into the side of the same pickup he'd punched the window of earlier. He fell to the ground, unconscious, covered in swill from the overturned trash can, and looked as if he intended to set up house right there.
Oh yuck! That really sucks. And let me guess. Her life and his are both gonna start sucking a whole lot more before this novel comes to an end. Hurray! What can I say? i'm alittle it morbid.
Keep it up, this is getting real interesting now.