Backstep
1st Level Red Feather
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2006
- Messages
- 1,177
- Points
- 0
Carl Jenner was tired. He was tired of having two lives to maintain, tired of going out at 3AM at a moment's notice, tired of the screaming and begging.
It was always the same. Get the call from some pimp or Ukranian or fat scumbag and drive in his F-150 to some crappy little shell on the south side. Pick up the drugged hooker or foreign girl or looney or even kid. Drag them to whatever hellhole he was supposed to drop them at making sure to wave his 9mm around. Get the cash. Go home.
So once or twice a week he got to run on a few hours sleep to supplement his meager income from his career as a waste management supervisor. It was a regal title for having to work in a literal dump.
At first it was thrilling, doing something so illegal; chauferring the immigrants and tramps to thier private hells and getting to skim off the top. He'd saved up $50K so far, not that it was about the money.
Most of the time, they were out cold, but when they cried and begged and he had to get where he was going before the cops got suspicious... well, it was like a video game. He one time went down Wacker Drive as the sun peeked out, his heart jackhammering with some bound and gagged Mexican in the backseat wailing at him. And he hadn't been caught. It was what it must feel like to trot onto Soldier Field for the season opener or jumping out of an airplane for the first time. It was beyond words, that rush.
But now, as he sped west on Route 88, he found himself tired. Not just needing-some-sleep tired, but a kind of dark weariness. The kind that saw these women (mostly women, he reminded himself) as the same kinds of people tossed into his truck over and over again like a pack of cards shuffled face-up.
The one he had now, for instance, was kind of pretty for a prostitute. He had her drugged and lying under a few blankets on the backseat amongst the detritus of McDonald's and Burger King cartons and scattered binders and papers related to his day job. She had to be at least semi-hidden in case the cops came around, but he'd seen her briefly. Red, curly hair, freckles, pale. Reminded him of his babysitter when he was a kid. Thee one he'd almost had his first sexual experience with. Almost, sure.
He took a swig from a half-full styrofoam coffee cup and grimaced. Cold from yesterday. And Dunkin's wasn't open yet. America ran on Dunkin's, Carl thought, and gave a vague smile. Quoting slogans. He was getting pathetically dull. Maybe he should move to Austin or New Orleans or some other warm city. Get married and have a kid or two. He was bored, so maybe he could do the most boring thing he could think of. Pretend to fall in love and have a couple of preppy children. Start a small business. Shuttle sex slaves on the side when he got bored?
Carl's Sex Slave Shuttle Service... 30 minutes or less or you pay half the price! Coupons avaliable! Buy 3 and get a fourth for free! Operators are standing by!
He laughed hysterically at the infomercial playing in his mind. "What do you think, bitch?" He shouted back at his captive. "Wanna be on TV?" He laughed hard enough to start a coughing jag.
Once Carl had calmed down, he drove in silence towards Aurora. Some rich couple wanted some druggie as a playmate for their warped son. He was supposed to help break her spirit a little, but he'd bow out of that duty. He did most of the time, seeing as he didn't really perform so well on a stage as such. God knew what was in store for her, though. Not that Carl was much for believing in God or anything else supernatural for that mat-
"BOX!"
The sound rang out in the silence like the crack of a whip. Carl wrenched the wheel hard to the right out of reflex, sending sprays of gravel over the guardrail, coming within a whisker of tearing up the passenger side of the truck. He stomped on the brake hard doing over 70, whisps of smoke coming from the tires as they bit into the asphalt for purchase. The bitter smell of burnt rubber filled the air as the pickup shuddered to a halt in the breakdown lane.
"What the hell?" he shouted at the top of his lungs, his heart racing as he turned to look back at his captive.
She was staring at him with wide, vacant eyes. And smiling. It was almost a friendly grin as if to say hello. She was still half-covered by the old blankets. "Box," she said again in a quieter voice.
Carl licked lips that had gone dry. Must be a screwy drug interaction, he thought, trying to get himself under control. Heroin + chloroform = zombie. Simple. But he had never seen anything like this before. And he didn't like the look in her eyes. If it could be called a look.
"You scared the piss out of me. God!"
At the word 'God,' her eyes flicked slightly off to his left out the windshield as if in anticipation, then back to Carl. "Box," she said again.
Carl looked at the detritus in his backseat, his heart slowing down. "Sure, lots of boxes. Be a good girl and lie down. Only another ten miles to go." Carl opened his glove compartment where he kept his Glock and his taser in case he had to zap her. Or shoot her. Suddenly, he wondered if he'd have to shoot her.
"Box," the woman said again. "Box."
Carl took out the taser and placed it on the seat next to him. "Shut up, or I'll fry you." He put the truck into drive and hit the accelerator. "Nuts," he muttered.
He was just approaching the speed limit when she shouted again. "BOX! Open it!"
Carl jammed on the brakes again causing a squal of protest from the tires, pulling onto the median once more. He threw the truck into park, killed the engine and came around to the side. "This will keep you quiet," he said, uncaring whether she made it to the crazy horny couple's house in one piece or not, pay be damned. He was too tired to concern himself with her. This was endgame. No more irritating flesh bags howling miserably in his truck unless he was taking them home for his own thrills. Enough was enough.
He opened the door, brandishing the taser. He grabbed the woman's ankle. "Say goodnight."
The woman reached under the blanket in a jerky, uneven movement and brought out a small brown cardbord box no bigger than her fist. "Open it. Box, open it open it, box." she said as if reciting a bizarre poem.
Carl felt an irrational wave of cold fear wash over him. He could have jabbed the taser into her thigh, slammed the door and driven on, but he was frozen in place. It was just a box. Nothing to see here, move along. But still, something about it...
He realized that he'd been standing there stupidly for a good minute holding this woman's ankle out the side of his truck while she offered him a cardboard box on the median along route 88. He'd normally find it funny, but that morning it didn't seem funny at all.
He realized he still held her ankle and she had gone quiet. He looked down and saw needle marks between her toes. He dropped her leg. "What's in the box?" he asked as casually as he could, anticipating more gibberish in response.
"You," she replied as if it were self-evident.
Carl wanted to say something snappy or spiteful to whoever or whatever it was that had found its way into his truck, but found himself unable to speak. His tongue appeared to be stuck to the roof of his mouth. He took the box from her hands, noticing he was trembling. "I'm not in the box," he managed.
"You," she said again, that smile never leaving, those vacant eyes never shifting.
He was afraid to open it and he didn't know why. What could fit in something that size? Explosives? What could cause him any harm that some street walker had on her? But he still didn't want to open it. "How can I be in the box?" It was a stupid question in a stupid situation, but he couldn't help it.
"Open it," she replied. "Box. Open it open it open it open it..."
Carl ground his teeth together as the words cut into his mind like a buzzsaw. "No."
"Open it open it open it open it open it open it open it open it..."
In his frustration, Carl threw down the taser, cracking it in half, and opened the box. "Fine!"
It was a yellow post-it-note face-down.
He took it out of the box, feeling angry and stupid. He turned it over and read what was written on the other side.
CARL JENNER,
The woman in your truck is a live human being.
Just saying.
- C.
"What?" Carl only just had time to ask.
Carl suddenly felt a wave of nausea. Memories of all the women he'd taken to their prisons or their graves swam before his eyes. People that he'd had a hand in murdering, torturing, one after the other on and on without end. Enabling depraved, digusting people finding flimsy excuses for justifying their horrific acts had paid him blood money.
Carl vomited.
One image after another, a parade of death skipping through his mind. His fault. His fault. His fault.
"What did you do to me?" he gasped.
"You weren't you," the woman said, wincing as if speaking required tremendous effort. "Now you're you."
The guilt was crushing, threatening to engulf him. It was like a physical pain; like he'd been stabbed over and over. "This isn't real," he said, falling to his knees and beginning to sob. "This isn't me, it isn't real!" He clutched at his stomach, tears streaming down his stubbled cheeks. "I don't care about them!" he screamed in a last act of denial. "I DON'T FUCKING CARE!"
Carl lost bladder control and lay on the ground next to his truck howling miserably into the twilight until he finally passed out.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Carl woke up feeling dizzy, his mind a broken-glass jumble of memories. When the pieces of the moments before he blacked out clicked together, he sat upright with a jolt. He was inside the truck, which was still parked in the same place as streaks of dawn filled the sky.
The box and its message were gone, but the girl (sex slave, this newfound voice in his head whispered, that you were going to transport like livestock) was asleep in the backseat, still drugged.
Carl thought that he'd had some screwy dream, but the same guilt from moments before had infected him like a virus. Not as horrific as it had been at first, but he felt a lead weight attached to his heart. He looked out the window where the taser was still lying, cracked.
He started the truck and accelerated onto the highway again.
There would be no need to call the Aadams family or whatever their real names were. They'd be pissed, but they'd find someone else. Maybe Carl could give an anonymous tip to the cops. After he dropped his passenger off at a shelter somewhere.
Carl would spend years thinking about that night, about the night that he stopped being what he was and properly joined the human race. But he struggled with whether it was real or just his warped imagination dredging up a scenario to explain that he wanted to build a better-lived life, no matter the cost.
He ultimately decided that it was in his head. But with the wrenching peaks of emotional agony that followed him day after day, for countless years, he wondered at times, late at night, if it had really been a demon speaking to him.
He wouldn't become the sort of person that wondred if it could have been the opposite.
It was always the same. Get the call from some pimp or Ukranian or fat scumbag and drive in his F-150 to some crappy little shell on the south side. Pick up the drugged hooker or foreign girl or looney or even kid. Drag them to whatever hellhole he was supposed to drop them at making sure to wave his 9mm around. Get the cash. Go home.
So once or twice a week he got to run on a few hours sleep to supplement his meager income from his career as a waste management supervisor. It was a regal title for having to work in a literal dump.
At first it was thrilling, doing something so illegal; chauferring the immigrants and tramps to thier private hells and getting to skim off the top. He'd saved up $50K so far, not that it was about the money.
Most of the time, they were out cold, but when they cried and begged and he had to get where he was going before the cops got suspicious... well, it was like a video game. He one time went down Wacker Drive as the sun peeked out, his heart jackhammering with some bound and gagged Mexican in the backseat wailing at him. And he hadn't been caught. It was what it must feel like to trot onto Soldier Field for the season opener or jumping out of an airplane for the first time. It was beyond words, that rush.
But now, as he sped west on Route 88, he found himself tired. Not just needing-some-sleep tired, but a kind of dark weariness. The kind that saw these women (mostly women, he reminded himself) as the same kinds of people tossed into his truck over and over again like a pack of cards shuffled face-up.
The one he had now, for instance, was kind of pretty for a prostitute. He had her drugged and lying under a few blankets on the backseat amongst the detritus of McDonald's and Burger King cartons and scattered binders and papers related to his day job. She had to be at least semi-hidden in case the cops came around, but he'd seen her briefly. Red, curly hair, freckles, pale. Reminded him of his babysitter when he was a kid. Thee one he'd almost had his first sexual experience with. Almost, sure.
He took a swig from a half-full styrofoam coffee cup and grimaced. Cold from yesterday. And Dunkin's wasn't open yet. America ran on Dunkin's, Carl thought, and gave a vague smile. Quoting slogans. He was getting pathetically dull. Maybe he should move to Austin or New Orleans or some other warm city. Get married and have a kid or two. He was bored, so maybe he could do the most boring thing he could think of. Pretend to fall in love and have a couple of preppy children. Start a small business. Shuttle sex slaves on the side when he got bored?
Carl's Sex Slave Shuttle Service... 30 minutes or less or you pay half the price! Coupons avaliable! Buy 3 and get a fourth for free! Operators are standing by!
He laughed hysterically at the infomercial playing in his mind. "What do you think, bitch?" He shouted back at his captive. "Wanna be on TV?" He laughed hard enough to start a coughing jag.
Once Carl had calmed down, he drove in silence towards Aurora. Some rich couple wanted some druggie as a playmate for their warped son. He was supposed to help break her spirit a little, but he'd bow out of that duty. He did most of the time, seeing as he didn't really perform so well on a stage as such. God knew what was in store for her, though. Not that Carl was much for believing in God or anything else supernatural for that mat-
"BOX!"
The sound rang out in the silence like the crack of a whip. Carl wrenched the wheel hard to the right out of reflex, sending sprays of gravel over the guardrail, coming within a whisker of tearing up the passenger side of the truck. He stomped on the brake hard doing over 70, whisps of smoke coming from the tires as they bit into the asphalt for purchase. The bitter smell of burnt rubber filled the air as the pickup shuddered to a halt in the breakdown lane.
"What the hell?" he shouted at the top of his lungs, his heart racing as he turned to look back at his captive.
She was staring at him with wide, vacant eyes. And smiling. It was almost a friendly grin as if to say hello. She was still half-covered by the old blankets. "Box," she said again in a quieter voice.
Carl licked lips that had gone dry. Must be a screwy drug interaction, he thought, trying to get himself under control. Heroin + chloroform = zombie. Simple. But he had never seen anything like this before. And he didn't like the look in her eyes. If it could be called a look.
"You scared the piss out of me. God!"
At the word 'God,' her eyes flicked slightly off to his left out the windshield as if in anticipation, then back to Carl. "Box," she said again.
Carl looked at the detritus in his backseat, his heart slowing down. "Sure, lots of boxes. Be a good girl and lie down. Only another ten miles to go." Carl opened his glove compartment where he kept his Glock and his taser in case he had to zap her. Or shoot her. Suddenly, he wondered if he'd have to shoot her.
"Box," the woman said again. "Box."
Carl took out the taser and placed it on the seat next to him. "Shut up, or I'll fry you." He put the truck into drive and hit the accelerator. "Nuts," he muttered.
He was just approaching the speed limit when she shouted again. "BOX! Open it!"
Carl jammed on the brakes again causing a squal of protest from the tires, pulling onto the median once more. He threw the truck into park, killed the engine and came around to the side. "This will keep you quiet," he said, uncaring whether she made it to the crazy horny couple's house in one piece or not, pay be damned. He was too tired to concern himself with her. This was endgame. No more irritating flesh bags howling miserably in his truck unless he was taking them home for his own thrills. Enough was enough.
He opened the door, brandishing the taser. He grabbed the woman's ankle. "Say goodnight."
The woman reached under the blanket in a jerky, uneven movement and brought out a small brown cardbord box no bigger than her fist. "Open it. Box, open it open it, box." she said as if reciting a bizarre poem.
Carl felt an irrational wave of cold fear wash over him. He could have jabbed the taser into her thigh, slammed the door and driven on, but he was frozen in place. It was just a box. Nothing to see here, move along. But still, something about it...
He realized that he'd been standing there stupidly for a good minute holding this woman's ankle out the side of his truck while she offered him a cardboard box on the median along route 88. He'd normally find it funny, but that morning it didn't seem funny at all.
He realized he still held her ankle and she had gone quiet. He looked down and saw needle marks between her toes. He dropped her leg. "What's in the box?" he asked as casually as he could, anticipating more gibberish in response.
"You," she replied as if it were self-evident.
Carl wanted to say something snappy or spiteful to whoever or whatever it was that had found its way into his truck, but found himself unable to speak. His tongue appeared to be stuck to the roof of his mouth. He took the box from her hands, noticing he was trembling. "I'm not in the box," he managed.
"You," she said again, that smile never leaving, those vacant eyes never shifting.
He was afraid to open it and he didn't know why. What could fit in something that size? Explosives? What could cause him any harm that some street walker had on her? But he still didn't want to open it. "How can I be in the box?" It was a stupid question in a stupid situation, but he couldn't help it.
"Open it," she replied. "Box. Open it open it open it open it..."
Carl ground his teeth together as the words cut into his mind like a buzzsaw. "No."
"Open it open it open it open it open it open it open it open it..."
In his frustration, Carl threw down the taser, cracking it in half, and opened the box. "Fine!"
It was a yellow post-it-note face-down.
He took it out of the box, feeling angry and stupid. He turned it over and read what was written on the other side.
CARL JENNER,
The woman in your truck is a live human being.
Just saying.
- C.
"What?" Carl only just had time to ask.
Carl suddenly felt a wave of nausea. Memories of all the women he'd taken to their prisons or their graves swam before his eyes. People that he'd had a hand in murdering, torturing, one after the other on and on without end. Enabling depraved, digusting people finding flimsy excuses for justifying their horrific acts had paid him blood money.
Carl vomited.
One image after another, a parade of death skipping through his mind. His fault. His fault. His fault.
"What did you do to me?" he gasped.
"You weren't you," the woman said, wincing as if speaking required tremendous effort. "Now you're you."
The guilt was crushing, threatening to engulf him. It was like a physical pain; like he'd been stabbed over and over. "This isn't real," he said, falling to his knees and beginning to sob. "This isn't me, it isn't real!" He clutched at his stomach, tears streaming down his stubbled cheeks. "I don't care about them!" he screamed in a last act of denial. "I DON'T FUCKING CARE!"
Carl lost bladder control and lay on the ground next to his truck howling miserably into the twilight until he finally passed out.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Carl woke up feeling dizzy, his mind a broken-glass jumble of memories. When the pieces of the moments before he blacked out clicked together, he sat upright with a jolt. He was inside the truck, which was still parked in the same place as streaks of dawn filled the sky.
The box and its message were gone, but the girl (sex slave, this newfound voice in his head whispered, that you were going to transport like livestock) was asleep in the backseat, still drugged.
Carl thought that he'd had some screwy dream, but the same guilt from moments before had infected him like a virus. Not as horrific as it had been at first, but he felt a lead weight attached to his heart. He looked out the window where the taser was still lying, cracked.
He started the truck and accelerated onto the highway again.
There would be no need to call the Aadams family or whatever their real names were. They'd be pissed, but they'd find someone else. Maybe Carl could give an anonymous tip to the cops. After he dropped his passenger off at a shelter somewhere.
Carl would spend years thinking about that night, about the night that he stopped being what he was and properly joined the human race. But he struggled with whether it was real or just his warped imagination dredging up a scenario to explain that he wanted to build a better-lived life, no matter the cost.
He ultimately decided that it was in his head. But with the wrenching peaks of emotional agony that followed him day after day, for countless years, he wondered at times, late at night, if it had really been a demon speaking to him.
He wouldn't become the sort of person that wondred if it could have been the opposite.
