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High Fantasy Modern Storyhour - The Long Road (updated December 7)
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<blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 2622222" data-attributes="member: 63"><p><em>October 29, 2005</em></p><p><em>8:30 pm</em></p><p></p><p>"Thanks," Robert says with a wince. He sips his coffee.</p><p></p><p>The medtech dabs a bit more burn gel on Robert's neck, where the worst injury was. Amazingly, he was one of the few passengers of the Greyhound who was hurt. The same could not be said of the people whose cars were stuck next to the bus when it exploded. All told there were seven fatalities, and the road will be impassible for at least another few hours, until all the debris is cleared away.</p><p></p><p>The medtech shakes his head. "Man, we were real lucky there was that traffic jam. If your bus hadn't stopped, it mighta blown up on the bridge, and that woulda taken for<em>eva</em> to fix."</p><p></p><p>The pair of police officers in the room are getting impatient. "You done yet?" one asks.</p><p></p><p>The medtech, a black man, grimaces at the two white cops and nods. "Don't move your head around too much," he tells Robert before heading off.</p><p></p><p>Robert is alone with two cops in a meeting room inside the State of Texas Welcome Center, less than half a mile down the road from where the bus exploded. Lights of various emergency vehicles flash in through the windows. Outside, the scene is pandemonium. Injured people, burning wreckage, angry drivers forced to share a two-lane road with oncoming traffic. However, if not for the media blitz with its tons of cameras, Robert would almost wish he was outside.</p><p></p><p>One of the cops chews on something like he has an oral fixation. He's the tough one - hands on hips near his gun, a partial scowl, forearms like a baseball pitcher. The other one is more squat, more gentle and patient. He must be the catcher. Just two homoerotic white cops interrogating a black man, Robert thinks. This should be easy to talk his way out of.</p><p></p><p>"So," Robert chuckles, "how can I help you boys?"</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">* * *</p><p></p><p>They take his statement, his fingerprints, and a photograph, then brush his hands for gunpowder to verify his claim that, no, he didn't shoot the uzi at the bus's gas tank. They're *ssholes, but unfortunately they're cops, so as much as Robert wants to, he knows he can't touch them. Robert hates it when *ssholes go and become cops.</p><p></p><p>Robert was smart. He handed over the uzi first thing, as discreetly as he could, and then he waited around to cooperate with the cops and get as much suspicion off his back as possible. He's in a bad mood, irritable, and he knows that people in bad moods get sloppy. So even though he desperately wants to track down Scarpedin, Terry, and the others, he's</p><p>taking his time.</p><p></p><p>Free after the interrogation, Robert heads out, hoping no intrepid TV crew will catch him on film. On the way to the parking lot, he spots Missy, the bus driver, and he says a few encouraging words to her. She says she doesn’t know what the Greyhound company will do, but Robert assures her that he’s reconsidering the whole New Orleans trip, and that he plans to visit some friends while he’s in Texas. Robert figures this should be a good enough alibi in case he needs one.</p><p></p><p>The roadway is humid, and as he tries to look for a nice car to hitch a ride with he thinks he feels a mosquito getting stuck in the burn cream on the back of his neck. No doubt its suffocating, its lungs clogged with icy hot gel. Robert can’t help but laugh. Yet another casualty of this strange, strange day.</p><p></p><p>“Robert,” a voice says.</p><p></p><p>He jerks and turns in surprise, managing not to use his stun gun on John, who had snuck up on him. Belladonna and Terry are with John too, but the British man – Nathan, if Robert recalls correctly – and Scarpedin the gun-toting lunatic are nowhere to be seen.</p><p></p><p>“Jesus,” Robert says. “What are you doing here?”</p><p></p><p>Robert glances around. They’re in a dark end of the parking lot outside the visitor center, not quite close enough to anyone to be seen. It’s a struggle for Robert to retain his cool, but he manages.</p><p></p><p>Terry looks embarrassed. “We heard what Scarpedin did. Nathan got a vision that the bus was going to explode, and I guess Scarpedin didn't quite know how to deal with it. Things turned out better than they could have been, though. We didn’t know if you were in trouble, and we wanted to give you a ride if you need one.”</p><p></p><p>Robert lets a smile slowly creep onto his face as he looks at each of the three in turn. “Um, no thanks. In fact, you guys should get going. Discreetly, if you can manage it. I turned in the gun Scarpedin was shooting, by the way.”</p><p></p><p>“Why’d you do that?” Terry says, looking betrayed.</p><p></p><p>“Oh,” Robert says, “I’m sorry that I’m a law abiding citizen and I thought it might be a good idea to hand over the semi-automatic weapon to the police instead of carrying it around.”</p><p></p><p>John lights up and nods to Robert. “Uzis are full-auto, not semi.”</p><p></p><p>Robert holds out a hand as if presenting John as evidence. “Yet another reason I think I’ll go my own way. I mean . . . heh, <em>thanks</em> for saving my life, but trouble seems to follow you around.”</p><p></p><p>Belladonna smirks. “So you’re thinking not to be following us, then?”</p><p></p><p>“That’s my plan,” Robert says. “Now . . . you guys get out of here before some cop spots you. I got no hard feelings for you, but I don’t want to be seen with you, y’know?”</p><p></p><p>John rolls his eyes and heads away, muttering, “I told you this was a stupid idea.”</p><p></p><p>Robert waits for them to leave, then folds the straight razor he was hiding behind his back and puts it in his pocket. If they keep that kind of thing up, Robert thinks, he’s going to end up killing one of them.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">* * *</p><p></p><p>As Robert walks along Interstate 10 toward New Orleans, he lets many easy prospects for rides pass by. He’s going to get a ride later, but he’s angry at himself, and he needs time to think.</p><p></p><p>This day Robert made many protestations that he’s a normal, decent, law-abiding individual, and in his mind that’s mostly true. He’s conscious enough that what he does is viewed as illegal, but he’s confident few people would think what he does is actually wrong. How exactly he got on this path he finds hard to remember, but with the money his family gave him to invest, he’s been able to keep it up for over a year now, skipping out on college, studying abroad, and wandering between cities, looking for people who the law won’t handle.</p><p></p><p>Robert has no formal training in crime scene investigation, but he knows people who do, and he has a cunning, analytical mind. And he watches a lot of CSI in his spare time. Usually he tries to stay out of the law’s way. He knows there’s no such thing as the perfect murder, but his current plan has been working well so far. He’ll breeze into a city to party, take his time enjoying the sights, and spend his evenings wandering the seedier places of society’s underbelly. He’ll find an *sshole – a rapist, a drug dealer, a thug terrorizing innocents – and he’ll take his time figuring out how best to kill the bastard and ditch his body so that he’ll be long gone before the police find it.</p><p></p><p>A dozen murders around the country, two in the Czech Republic, all of people whose death will bring relief to many – no police department will ever figure it out.</p><p></p><p>Only very seldom, though, does Robert think hard on the nature of his life. He’s rich enough to keep this up for a few years, and normally he just lives from murder to murder. Not much else in his life is meaningful, and while he could try to actually join some law enforcement branch, or even run for political office, he knows that would be the end of him. As cool and controlled as he pretends to be, there are times when he cannot deny that he’s obsessed.</p><p></p><p>How many people in the world have the power to kill whoever pisses them off? Only a few, and most of them are monsters. In the dark, cloying night that hovers over the marshland of Louisiana, Robert wonders if he’s a monster too. He can no longer even really convince himself that he’s doing this for others.</p><p></p><p><em>Boondock Saints</em>, he thinks. People applaud the protagonists as heroes there. Robert’s not much different, is he? They killed for religion, as holy executioners. Robert’s anything but religious, but he views this as his duty too.</p><p></p><p>It irritates him that he has to work so hard to keep himself appear clean, off the radar of law enforcement, just because the government doesn’t like vigilantes. He was headed to New Orleans because he knew there were certainly people deserving of punishment there, but now he has met Terry, and so this whole new insane world of magic is stuck on his mind.</p><p></p><p>What concerns him most is that he feels an urge to kill Terry. It takes him a while to think through why, and eventually he realizes it is because Terry knows who he is. Except for the first, every times before when he’s helped people in trouble, he’s done so discreetly, slowly, unseen. But now because of Terry, many people might suspect him. Robert realizes that he doesn’t want to kill Terry because the man is an *sshole – though magic <em>is</em> somewhat irritating – but because Robert is worried of getting caught.</p><p></p><p>He’s becoming too much like a criminal. Whatever happens these next few days, Robert suspects he will have to make a choice that he doesn’t want to make. That, perhaps, is why Robert wishes he could just kill Terry.</p><p></p><p>It starts to dapple rain, so Robert throws out a thumb. Within a minute, headlights catch him, and he sees a van slowing down to pick him up.</p><p></p><p>A window rolls down, and a sweet-looking forty-something woman smiles out at him.</p><p></p><p>“Headed to New Orleans?” Robert asks, smiling back to her.</p><p></p><p>“Jesse,” the woman says, “open the door.”</p><p></p><p>From inside the van, a man grumbles, “D*mmit Linda, I can’t believe you want to pick up a hitchhiker. What kind of example are you setting for our son? Jesse, God d*mmit, close that door.”</p><p></p><p>The door was opened a crack, but Robert is only able to catch a glimpse of the young boy Jesse before he slams the door shut.</p><p></p><p>“Walter,” chides the mother, Linda. “You’d want someone to pick you up if you were stuck in the rain, wouldn’t you? Jesse, open the door. We’ll take him at least to a hotel.”</p><p></p><p>Robert hides a frown, but Jesse opens the door and moves aside for the bedraggled black hitchhiker. This, Robert thinks, is not helping his mood.</p><p></p><p>“Close the damn door,” Walter says.</p><p></p><p>He’s a big, ugly man in an air conditioner repairman’s uniform, and as soon as Robert closes the car door, Walter guns the engine and they speed off.</p><p></p><p>Then Robert hears Walter mutter, “Stupid b*tch. Can’t believe I let myself get told what to do by a fat b*tch like you.”</p><p></p><p>“Mom?” Jesse says. “Dad sounds angry.”</p><p></p><p>The kid’s only ten, the wife is trying to hide her tears, and Walter keeps grumbling, not even caring if his wife and son hear. Robert knows that, after getting caught in a bus explosion and nearly being fingered by the cops, he’s in an irritated mood, and irritated people make stupid mistakes, but Walter is certainly starting to sound like an *sshole. Despite himself, Robert finds himself slipping away from rational thinking, and drifting toward the cold, smug part of himself that takes over when he’s going to kill someone.</p><p></p><p></p><p><em>To be continued. . .</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RangerWickett, post: 2622222, member: 63"] [i]October 29, 2005 8:30 pm[/i] "Thanks," Robert says with a wince. He sips his coffee. The medtech dabs a bit more burn gel on Robert's neck, where the worst injury was. Amazingly, he was one of the few passengers of the Greyhound who was hurt. The same could not be said of the people whose cars were stuck next to the bus when it exploded. All told there were seven fatalities, and the road will be impassible for at least another few hours, until all the debris is cleared away. The medtech shakes his head. "Man, we were real lucky there was that traffic jam. If your bus hadn't stopped, it mighta blown up on the bridge, and that woulda taken for[i]eva[/i] to fix." The pair of police officers in the room are getting impatient. "You done yet?" one asks. The medtech, a black man, grimaces at the two white cops and nods. "Don't move your head around too much," he tells Robert before heading off. Robert is alone with two cops in a meeting room inside the State of Texas Welcome Center, less than half a mile down the road from where the bus exploded. Lights of various emergency vehicles flash in through the windows. Outside, the scene is pandemonium. Injured people, burning wreckage, angry drivers forced to share a two-lane road with oncoming traffic. However, if not for the media blitz with its tons of cameras, Robert would almost wish he was outside. One of the cops chews on something like he has an oral fixation. He's the tough one - hands on hips near his gun, a partial scowl, forearms like a baseball pitcher. The other one is more squat, more gentle and patient. He must be the catcher. Just two homoerotic white cops interrogating a black man, Robert thinks. This should be easy to talk his way out of. "So," Robert chuckles, "how can I help you boys?" [center]* * *[/center] They take his statement, his fingerprints, and a photograph, then brush his hands for gunpowder to verify his claim that, no, he didn't shoot the uzi at the bus's gas tank. They're *ssholes, but unfortunately they're cops, so as much as Robert wants to, he knows he can't touch them. Robert hates it when *ssholes go and become cops. Robert was smart. He handed over the uzi first thing, as discreetly as he could, and then he waited around to cooperate with the cops and get as much suspicion off his back as possible. He's in a bad mood, irritable, and he knows that people in bad moods get sloppy. So even though he desperately wants to track down Scarpedin, Terry, and the others, he's taking his time. Free after the interrogation, Robert heads out, hoping no intrepid TV crew will catch him on film. On the way to the parking lot, he spots Missy, the bus driver, and he says a few encouraging words to her. She says she doesn’t know what the Greyhound company will do, but Robert assures her that he’s reconsidering the whole New Orleans trip, and that he plans to visit some friends while he’s in Texas. Robert figures this should be a good enough alibi in case he needs one. The roadway is humid, and as he tries to look for a nice car to hitch a ride with he thinks he feels a mosquito getting stuck in the burn cream on the back of his neck. No doubt its suffocating, its lungs clogged with icy hot gel. Robert can’t help but laugh. Yet another casualty of this strange, strange day. “Robert,” a voice says. He jerks and turns in surprise, managing not to use his stun gun on John, who had snuck up on him. Belladonna and Terry are with John too, but the British man – Nathan, if Robert recalls correctly – and Scarpedin the gun-toting lunatic are nowhere to be seen. “Jesus,” Robert says. “What are you doing here?” Robert glances around. They’re in a dark end of the parking lot outside the visitor center, not quite close enough to anyone to be seen. It’s a struggle for Robert to retain his cool, but he manages. Terry looks embarrassed. “We heard what Scarpedin did. Nathan got a vision that the bus was going to explode, and I guess Scarpedin didn't quite know how to deal with it. Things turned out better than they could have been, though. We didn’t know if you were in trouble, and we wanted to give you a ride if you need one.” Robert lets a smile slowly creep onto his face as he looks at each of the three in turn. “Um, no thanks. In fact, you guys should get going. Discreetly, if you can manage it. I turned in the gun Scarpedin was shooting, by the way.” “Why’d you do that?” Terry says, looking betrayed. “Oh,” Robert says, “I’m sorry that I’m a law abiding citizen and I thought it might be a good idea to hand over the semi-automatic weapon to the police instead of carrying it around.” John lights up and nods to Robert. “Uzis are full-auto, not semi.” Robert holds out a hand as if presenting John as evidence. “Yet another reason I think I’ll go my own way. I mean . . . heh, [i]thanks[/i] for saving my life, but trouble seems to follow you around.” Belladonna smirks. “So you’re thinking not to be following us, then?” “That’s my plan,” Robert says. “Now . . . you guys get out of here before some cop spots you. I got no hard feelings for you, but I don’t want to be seen with you, y’know?” John rolls his eyes and heads away, muttering, “I told you this was a stupid idea.” Robert waits for them to leave, then folds the straight razor he was hiding behind his back and puts it in his pocket. If they keep that kind of thing up, Robert thinks, he’s going to end up killing one of them. [center]* * *[/center] As Robert walks along Interstate 10 toward New Orleans, he lets many easy prospects for rides pass by. He’s going to get a ride later, but he’s angry at himself, and he needs time to think. This day Robert made many protestations that he’s a normal, decent, law-abiding individual, and in his mind that’s mostly true. He’s conscious enough that what he does is viewed as illegal, but he’s confident few people would think what he does is actually wrong. How exactly he got on this path he finds hard to remember, but with the money his family gave him to invest, he’s been able to keep it up for over a year now, skipping out on college, studying abroad, and wandering between cities, looking for people who the law won’t handle. Robert has no formal training in crime scene investigation, but he knows people who do, and he has a cunning, analytical mind. And he watches a lot of CSI in his spare time. Usually he tries to stay out of the law’s way. He knows there’s no such thing as the perfect murder, but his current plan has been working well so far. He’ll breeze into a city to party, take his time enjoying the sights, and spend his evenings wandering the seedier places of society’s underbelly. He’ll find an *sshole – a rapist, a drug dealer, a thug terrorizing innocents – and he’ll take his time figuring out how best to kill the bastard and ditch his body so that he’ll be long gone before the police find it. A dozen murders around the country, two in the Czech Republic, all of people whose death will bring relief to many – no police department will ever figure it out. Only very seldom, though, does Robert think hard on the nature of his life. He’s rich enough to keep this up for a few years, and normally he just lives from murder to murder. Not much else in his life is meaningful, and while he could try to actually join some law enforcement branch, or even run for political office, he knows that would be the end of him. As cool and controlled as he pretends to be, there are times when he cannot deny that he’s obsessed. How many people in the world have the power to kill whoever pisses them off? Only a few, and most of them are monsters. In the dark, cloying night that hovers over the marshland of Louisiana, Robert wonders if he’s a monster too. He can no longer even really convince himself that he’s doing this for others. [i]Boondock Saints[/i], he thinks. People applaud the protagonists as heroes there. Robert’s not much different, is he? They killed for religion, as holy executioners. Robert’s anything but religious, but he views this as his duty too. It irritates him that he has to work so hard to keep himself appear clean, off the radar of law enforcement, just because the government doesn’t like vigilantes. He was headed to New Orleans because he knew there were certainly people deserving of punishment there, but now he has met Terry, and so this whole new insane world of magic is stuck on his mind. What concerns him most is that he feels an urge to kill Terry. It takes him a while to think through why, and eventually he realizes it is because Terry knows who he is. Except for the first, every times before when he’s helped people in trouble, he’s done so discreetly, slowly, unseen. But now because of Terry, many people might suspect him. Robert realizes that he doesn’t want to kill Terry because the man is an *sshole – though magic [i]is[/i] somewhat irritating – but because Robert is worried of getting caught. He’s becoming too much like a criminal. Whatever happens these next few days, Robert suspects he will have to make a choice that he doesn’t want to make. That, perhaps, is why Robert wishes he could just kill Terry. It starts to dapple rain, so Robert throws out a thumb. Within a minute, headlights catch him, and he sees a van slowing down to pick him up. A window rolls down, and a sweet-looking forty-something woman smiles out at him. “Headed to New Orleans?” Robert asks, smiling back to her. “Jesse,” the woman says, “open the door.” From inside the van, a man grumbles, “D*mmit Linda, I can’t believe you want to pick up a hitchhiker. What kind of example are you setting for our son? Jesse, God d*mmit, close that door.” The door was opened a crack, but Robert is only able to catch a glimpse of the young boy Jesse before he slams the door shut. “Walter,” chides the mother, Linda. “You’d want someone to pick you up if you were stuck in the rain, wouldn’t you? Jesse, open the door. We’ll take him at least to a hotel.” Robert hides a frown, but Jesse opens the door and moves aside for the bedraggled black hitchhiker. This, Robert thinks, is not helping his mood. “Close the damn door,” Walter says. He’s a big, ugly man in an air conditioner repairman’s uniform, and as soon as Robert closes the car door, Walter guns the engine and they speed off. Then Robert hears Walter mutter, “Stupid b*tch. Can’t believe I let myself get told what to do by a fat b*tch like you.” “Mom?” Jesse says. “Dad sounds angry.” The kid’s only ten, the wife is trying to hide her tears, and Walter keeps grumbling, not even caring if his wife and son hear. Robert knows that, after getting caught in a bus explosion and nearly being fingered by the cops, he’s in an irritated mood, and irritated people make stupid mistakes, but Walter is certainly starting to sound like an *sshole. Despite himself, Robert finds himself slipping away from rational thinking, and drifting toward the cold, smug part of himself that takes over when he’s going to kill someone. [i]To be continued. . .[/i] [/QUOTE]
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