Third request for Buttercup

[KB.]

The shock, the pain, the realization & the darkness of being an active person one day to disabled the next.

~Buttercup

I wrote this to fit in with the other two, just another side of it. I wanted to make this guy despicable. When I talk about the jazz tune, both in this one and RGs story. I am talking about Coltrane's "In A Sentimental Mood". It doesn't follow exactly what she asked for, at least not directly.



He looked at his legs, shriveled and non-functioning; just like the rest of him. He couldn’t move anything, he could blink and that was it. He thought back to the night it had happened and wondered why it had happened to him. He had been an active person for most of his life, played sports in school, played softball with a team from where he worked at one time, was a house painter, and a construction worker. Now he was just a lump, cursed by bad luck. He thought about that night and how it all played out. He had picked up this blonde from a bar in the neighborhood he was working in. She was in her early thirties, long legged, and still in good shape. Her eyes were tired and red, and she had a chipped tooth, but he could deal with it. She wasn’t beautiful, but she would do. He worked on her a bit, and eventually she came around. She was nice and lonely, no one loved her, and she was missing someone. Perfect for the picking he thought.

He bought her a drink, it was a White Russian, she said something about it reminding her of an old friend. He didn’t pay much attention to her; he had little interest in her stories. It had been a long night she said, and she would have to leave soon. She had Sunday off and wanted to spend it with her son. Sh!t was the first word that came to his mind. He didn’t have time to be messing with a woman that had a kid. He wanted no part of it, if she had a kid and didn’t have a husband there had to be something wrong with her. He had a couple of his own that he had left behind with his ex wife, they drained the fun out of things, too much responsibility. What a witch she was as well, always nagging him about not working, and spending what he did make at the track instead of helping her to buy clothes for the kids.

He looked over at this woman and thought about what it would take to get her into his bed tonite. Figured he could play up the lonely bit, or ask about her kid. They way she drank that White Russian he might get off cheap and just buy her a few more. He didn’t feel like acting interested. He ordered her another and she drank it down. She looked over at him, and asked if he would call her a cab, but he told her that wasn’t necessary, her car was outside in case she had forgotten. She told him that she had made a promise to someone to not drink and drive, if not for herself then for her boy. There she went again talking about the kid. He told her he would drive her home, or to his house. She looked uncomfortable, but soon enough the Xanax he had slipped in her drink would take care of that.

An hour later as the bar closed down she was good to go. She could hardly even stand. He was excited thinking about it all. He put her in her car, no need to waste his gas, and drove towards his apartment on the other side of town. They got on the interstate and he pushed the little compact car as fast as it would go. It wasn’t a new car, but it was well taken care of, dependable. He missed the sign that warned of construction, and he missed the cement road dividers, missed them in the seeing sort of way; he managed to split the car in half as he hit them at a little under ninety miles an hour.

He woke up to sirens blaring, lights flashing, and smoke boiling out of the car. He couldn’t feel a thing, couldn’t even move his head, but he saw her laying a few feet away, destroyed. She wasn’t beautiful or perfect by any stretch of the imagination now. As they loaded him into the ambulance he saw them cover her with a sheet, or a tarp, the details didn’t matter. They asked him if she had been driving, it was her car after all. He told them or rather agreed with them that she had been. That would save him some paperwork he figured. What did it matter anyways. He found out the next day that he was paralyzed, total loss of physical control. The bitch had taken his life away from him. He was angry at her, and wished she were dead, then he remembered she was, he still couldn’t move.

They took a few days to bury her, they were doing an autopsy, found the alcohol and the drugs in her system, it was ruled her fault. Her insurance would be paying him for the rest of his life, and she wouldn’t even get money for a funeral.

Somewhere along the week a man had walked into his room. The man was older than he was, by a few years, skinny, but he had a look in his eyes that made his blood turn to ice. The man came in and sat down next to him, looked straight into him and whispered in a drawl so thick he couldn’t have been form there. That man, must have been the devil himself, told him that he knew she wasn’t driving, she had made him a promise years ago when he finally figured out she wasn’t going to stop drinking herself into oblivion; that she at least wouldn’t drive anymore. He had taken care of that. Gave her and her friends a place to stay if they wanted to drink the night and years away. That devil looked at him and called him a half-dead, lousy, son-of-a-bitch. He saw death in that man’s eyes, madness.

He watched television as he lay immobilized in his hospital bed, and he saw a story about a man, some hick from the south who had written a book. He had been found dead at the woman’s grave. They said he had a heart attack. When they flashed his picture on the screen he laughed, well he tried to laugh but he couldn’t, even that was paralyzed. He moved his eyes around and thought how he had came out the best in it all. He couldn’t walk, talk, feed himself, take a sh!t without a nurse, and he would never know what sex was alike again, but he was alive. He had his thoughts to keep him company. Thoughts about all the things he would never do again. When the darkness settled in over him he thought he saw the curtain move and could have sworn he heard some slow music playing, no words to it, just a piano, some light drums, and some kind of mellow horn sound. It tormented him, he couldn’t stand the sound of it. He wished he could get up and turn it all off and turn the lights back on again. When he closed his eyes he saw that devil, looking straight through him. Judgement in those green eyes.

[buttercup]

Once you have got through all the other requests perhaps we could shoot forward 10 years into the future & see what has become of him?

[KB.]

buttercup;632658 wrote: Once you have got through all the other requests perhaps we could shoot forward 10 years into the future & see what has become of him?


I hope someone set him on fire.

[buttercup]

Your much more imaginative than that

[KB.]

buttercup;632668 wrote: Your much more imaginative than that


Sometimes I just tell people to go to hell instead of discussing Dante's Inferno with them. That book, by the way is where the statement "cold as hell" originated. The lowest level; the one for the betrayers, back biters, and such is a lake of ice with satan imprisioned at the waist in the middle of it all. See with the guy above I would have just smoked a cigarette and left it burning on his bed. I wouldn't have went on a tangent about hell being cold.

[buttercup]

How then are you challenging yourself as a writer to simply burn his bed :sneaky:

[KB.]

buttercup;632683 wrote: How then are you challenging yourself as a writer to simply burn his bed :sneaky:


I ain't.

in the spirit of Jimbo

yada yada

I'd be much more satisfied if he lived for a hundred years.

[buttercup]

Is that why you choose to write short stories because they do not challenge you much? Not that im saying thats a bad thing, just asking/ wondering / interested :-6

[KB.]

buttercup;632687 wrote: Is that why you choose to write short stories because they do not challenge you much? Not that im saying thats a bad thing, just asking/ wondering / interested :-6


I like finality to come a little quicker, and more often. If you read my stories they all actually play together, for the most part. I managed 80 thousand words in a six weeks, including two weeks of vacation where I didn't write a thing. I don't want so much a short story genre as a big story in seperate parts.

Anything posted in this format is going to be short, as I get accused already of being too long winded.

[buttercup]

KB.;632692 wrote: I like finality to come a little quicker


Single then :sneaky:



Kidding, kidding :wah:

[KB.]

buttercup;632658 wrote: Once you have got through all the other requests perhaps we could shoot forward 10 years into the future & see what has become of him?


I think AF just sealed his fate.

Imagine a anti-heroine, a 43 year old butch lesbian named Alana. A sweet woman, to the core, but do her or someone she loves wrong and you might catch a fork in the eye. Comfortably Numb will fit her and the story just right.