TME - Top Down and Screamin (1128 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: Untruth
Rating: 1.93 on 36 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Snark << snarkk.at.gmail.com (View user info) at 2005-05-06 16:09:45 EDT
THE MANSON EFFECT - TOP DOWN AND SCREAMIN
We were top down, balls out, and screaming.
Jenna was sitting on the top of the back seat, shirtless and drunk and emptying the clip of her 9mm into the air. I remember her short red hair whipping around in the wind as if her head was made of fire. It wasn't like the kind of world eating blaze that comes from a burning house, but something much softer, like the flickering flame of a candle. She was beyond wasted and her little breasts bounced wondrously above me, her small pink nipples coaxed to attention by the warm rush of summer wind sliding over the car.
Dale was driving and yelling and pushing the 58 Impala harder than his old man ever had when he was alive. Somehow, despite the wind, his plain white ball cap stayed on, protecting his shaved head from being slow cooked by the sun, like mine.
He had a beer and a shotgun on his lap and Sherri's busy hand down the front of his khaki shorts.
It was slightly disquieting watching the two of them together; the jock and the Goth chick, but I guess the end of the world makes for strange bedfellows, like me and Jenna - The nerd and the Lesbian.
I watched Sherri run her black lips along the straight line of his tanned, chiseled jaw and fought off a sudden bout of envy, and then Jenna was screaming her dead lover's name and pushing one pert breast against my lips.
I don't know if it was the booze or the shrooms or the 3 days without sleep, but suddenly everything felt wrong, as if the planet had decided to go on an Armageddon road trip all its own and had fucked off towards the farthest edge of the milky way, taking me with it and leaving gravity behind to swirl uselessly around the shattered moon.
I pushed Jenna off and lurched to the side of the car as my rapidly revolving reality tried to suck out the contents of my stomach. I tried to take my mind off of the blurred green walls of the Evergreens speeding by, and focus on the low growl of the engine, and the steadying feel of the top of the solid door I held, as if it were the only thing keeping me from flying into the blue sky overhead. Behind me, Dale laughed and calling me a lightweight while Jenna's raspy, bluesy voice told me to just puke already so we could get on with the celebration - which really wasn't a celebration at all but more of a drunken frenzied tribute to our lost leader.
Cass.
Her full name must have been Cassie or Cassidy but none of us knew for certain. She'd introduced herself to us (from the business end of a shotgun) as Cass and so that's what we called her.
It was two days after we escaped the city.
48 hours almost to the minute after we'd left the murder and rot and bodies of our loved ones behind.
We had pulled up to a deserted gas station, to feed the beast, and suddenly Cass was there, her weapon pressed firmly against the side of Dales head. Her face was hidden beneath the grey hood of her baggy pullover but her intent was clear as she screamed her orders.
"LOOK AT ME!"
She was 5'6" at the most, maybe less. She was thin and short and the purest embodiment of "Don't fuck with me." I have ever encountered.
"LOOK AT ME!"
We looked at her alright. I mean, - we couldn't NOT look at her. Her presence was as jolting and inescapable as an explosion and in some ways twice as deadly.
We jumped in unison and then turned wide eyed towards her and met her gaze - one by one - as she searched our faces for the slightest sign of a smile, the smallest trace that we had been touched by the madness engulfing the planet.
Each of us took our turn peering into the ominous blackness beneath her hood, until she was confident that none of us were homicidally connected to her. She let the shotgun drop to her side, pulled the covering off of her head and said "Heya, I'm Cass. You guys have room for another?"
I think it was Jenna who said "Yeah."
I was too busy recovering from the piercing gaze of her brilliant eyes (one green, one gold), and the beautiful yet sharply stern face that encompassed them, to answer her. Her hair was short, black and wavy, except for a single streak of bright red down the left hand side. Her voice was clear yet commanding and I found myself wondering how much time she'd spent in the military.
10 minutes later, Shirley was helping Dale strip out of his urine soaked jeans in the Gas Station restroom, and Jenna and Cass were sitting in the back seat of the car, talking as if they'd known each other for years.
Half an hour later we were back on the road, headed for Dale's father's cabin and getting to know the woman who we would soon wordlessly accept as our leader.
2 Days after that, we were all completely in love with her in one way or another.
Yeah, we all loved her, but in the end, Jenna got to have her.
And then, one morning, we stopped for Timothy and everything changed.
I don't know what made Dale stop for him. Cass had made it clear that we didn't have room for more and we'd all agreed that the risk was too high regardless. Finding 5 people that could co-exist without murdering each other was nothing short of a miracle. Trying to add a sixth would be tantamount to juggling nitroglycerine.
Maybe it was a voice in Dale's head or something about the way Timothy looked, or the way he stood in the morning chill, shoulders slumped and head down.
I don't know what Dales motivation was, and after it was all said and done, I didn't ask. As far as I was concerned it was between him and god.
What I do know, is that when the car stopped, it was Cass who got out too meet the Hitchiker. She met him in front of my door and they both pulled the hoods off their heads, to stare wide eyed in horror at each others faces.
I remember the color draining out of Cass's face and then her saying "Timothy" and then she was raising her shotgun but he was faster.
He went into a half crouch, grabbed the front of her t-shirt with one hand and brought the other up between her legs, and under her skirt.
She screamed high and hard as he lifted her off the ground, with the hand he had jammed between her legs, and then she twitched like a marionette as 3 muffled reports sounded out and her left shoulder, the back of her neck and then the top of her head exploded, raw and red as if her body was self destructing.
He let her go limp and then dropped her to the ground and raised the snub nosed revolver in his bloody hand and pointed it at my head.
And then everything went quiet.
No, that's not right.
Every fucking thing in the world completely stopped.
There was no sound, no movement, no whisper of morning breeze against my skin... nothing.
He stood there, emotionless and bloody and pointing the pistol at my head, and I sat and looked at the dark end of the barrel until I felt like I was falling into it.
It was Jenna's scream that broke the spell. It was the sudden violent verbal release of her broken heart that set things in motion.
She screamed and he pulled the trigger again and the hammer fell with a sharp metallic "Snap!", but nothing happened, and then I was keeping Jenna from crawling out of the car with one hand, and pulling Timothy's heavy canvas rucksack into the car with the other, while Dale stomped the beast into full gear and sent us rocketing down the highway in a cloud of dust.
We left him standing over Cass's mangled body, his shoulders slumped, and a look on his strangely familiar face that was a mixture of annoyance and amusement, as if to say "Where are you going? I'm not done yet."
And then he was a speck in the distance.
And then he was nothing more than a nightmare.
We drove for hours, awash in the horror of what had happened, serenaded by Jenna's heartbreaking sobs, until Dale pulled the car over and turned wet eyes towards us and announced that we had to go back.
He announced it but we all knew it wouldn't happen. We'd seen the back of our beloved Cass's head splinter into the morning air. We'd seen her fall at Timothy's feet as lifeless as nine tenths of the city we'd escaped.
We wouldn't go back and he knew it but he had to say it. Partly for his own conscience and partly because it snapped us out of our deadly malaise.
We went through the motions of discussing it but it was Jenna that showed us the way to mourn Cass.
It was Jenna that opened Timothy's duffel bag, and started handing out the guns and booze and drugs.
We threw Cass's favorite song (Julie Andrews singing Supercalifragilisticexpealadocious) on the car stereo and drowned our horror in excess. We celebrated like it was the end of the world because it was. We got drunk and high and screamed Cass's name into the wilderness as we blasted through it in the great white Chevy beast.
We grabbed hold of the downward spiral, shook the fucker into overdrive and left our horror and despair behind to suck our exhaust.
Jenna came to me on the first night, and despite the fact I knew she was feeling someone else when I touched her, I didn't turn her away.
I remembered it all in crystal clarity as I held onto the side of the car for dear life and then I remembered something else as well.
In my minds eye I saw Timothy's face as the car lurched away from him.
I saw him looking at me and I realized why his face had seemed so familiar.
I had seen those eyes before (one green, one gold) in the face of the woman he'd just killed.
I'd seen them before in the face of his sister.
I realized that, and then I realized something about his expression. He hadn't been smiling when he took her life. He wasn't touched by the homicidal influence sweeping the planet. He'd done what he'd done because it came naturally to him and on top of that...He'd been doing more than looking at me when we sped off... he'd been studying my face. He'd been cataloguing it, and immediately I knew...
He'd be coming for me.
Something about the knowledge helped to clear my mind a little and I opened my eyes and peered down the highway behind us.
I didn't need to see into the cop car, a half mile away and closing fast, to know it wasn't a cop driving it.
There were no cops anymore, there were only survivors and murderers and us.
Somehow I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Timothy had found me.
He'd found me and he was closing fast and if I didn't do something he'd have his bloody way with me.
I turned towards Dale to shout a warning and then the booze and drugs in my system hit a type of critical mass and I passed out cold, while Jenna ran her hands through my hair for the last time.
I passed out and when I woke up Timothy was there and my world turned to blood.
This story is loosely linked to these two...
http://www.ubersite.com/m/64690
http://www.ubersite.com/m/43650
User Reviews
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2005-06-23 12:10:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Damage Control
Submitted by ProgramGeek (user info) at 2005-06-22 17:34:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2005-05-12 12:52:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Well heloooooooooooooo there Timothy, I've been wondering where you were.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-05-12 12:36:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Again, I am blown away by how COOL this idea is for a story. I liked it a lot.
I thought it was kind of weird for you to preface how unlikely it was for Timothy to NOT want to kill one of the five, yet Cass, arguably the most suspicious of them, hopped out without her gun drawn? That seemed out-of-character for her.
Also, I thought the way she died was a bit sensationalized. He lifted her up in a military press and then shot bullets up her anal canal (when you read this, please pronounce as 'ay-nil cay-nil', it's more fun that way). I thought that over-the-top demise sort of detracted from the reality and emotional impact of the story.
Everything else, I loved. Story construction, brief but tangible character descriptions, etc. You're awesome.
Submitted by Jungle_Jimanee (user info) at 2005-05-12 09:11:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Gripping
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2005-05-12 08:37:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:23:52 (#)
Ranking: 2
what Kre8trix said. And then some.
And then some more.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-05-11 17:59:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:49:12 (#)
Ranking: 2
YES...YES.......YES..........
--
+2 for a good read, and for getting Crystle to do her 'When Harry Met Sally' routine.
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2005-05-09 09:18:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I was wondering when we would be hearing from Timothy again.
Submitted by Ducky (user info) at 2005-05-07 12:43:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Great read. The first part had me thinking of Johnny Depp, wrapped in a flag and tripping out on a rock. Very vivid.
Submitted by Cryopaul (user info) at 2005-05-07 10:04:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm glad you actually posted something so my latest refresh attempt wasn't in vain. Is the TME series a relief for you? I mean in the way that it's different from the necrosiac series. I bet it's nice to let different story ideas stew in your head for a while. I wouldn't know, I have no literary talent.
Oh, btw, thanks for the new stories.
Submitted by Benny (user info) at 2005-05-07 09:28:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I for one am pretty stoked that you are doing some more work on the Manson Effect series. A very good read.
Submitted by thorpe (user info) at 2005-05-07 06:39:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
It just keeps coming, doesn't it... wow.
Submitted by UberGirl (user info) at 2005-05-07 04:12:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You have an incredible mind.
Also, I saw what you said on Bigmike's post. I've seen your
picture and I don't think that at all.
Submitted by MyIdiom (user info) at 2005-05-06 22:11:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
... so how long til the next chapter? I wasn't ready to stop just yet damnit.
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2005-05-06 21:27:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Boblobla and Shandy,
I can't begin to tell you both how much I appreciate reviews like the ones you just gave.
Thank you so much.
Submitted by shandythedog (user info) at 2005-05-06 19:49:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
interesting concept and some very nice description
i would try and avoid a slighly melodramatic pattern that appears here and there. you build up to a revelation/moment of intensity in a way that telegraphs it, then make the point with a melodramatic short sentance, often alone in a para.
eg:
"I realized that, and then I realized something about his expression. He hadn't been smiling when he took her life. He wasn't touched by the homicidal influence sweeping the planet. He'd done what he'd done because it came naturally to him and on top of that...He'd been doing more than looking at me when we sped off... he'd been studying my face. He'd been cataloguing it, and immediately I knew...
He'd be coming for me."
or
"Behind me, Dale laughed and calling me a lightweight while Jenna's raspy, bluesy voice told me to just puke already so we could get on with the celebration - which really wasn't a celebration at all but more of a drunken frenzied tribute to our lost leader.
Cass. "
i think the story would be better without this kind of thing, would be better with a flatter, more deadpan delivery. maybe a bit more dry humour.
mind you, i when i make remarks like this i'm basically trying to mold something more toward my own taste.
Submitted by ruthless (user info) at 2005-05-06 19:06:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Oh my.
Submitted by runswithscissors (user info) at 2005-05-06 18:32:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Submitted by CJRipley (user info) at 2005-05-06 17:56:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by dodahdave (user info) at 2005-05-06 17:40:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Holy shit.
Submitted by Xena (user info) at 2005-05-06 17:05:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Well, I already told you what I thought, I'm awaiting #2
thanks for not taking a break from writing
Submitted by Loren1 (user info) at 2005-05-06 17:05:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Very good writing.
Submitted by kimmy02721 (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:55:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
you have a glorious mind
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:49:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
YES...YES.......YES..........
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Submitted by BobLobla (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:22:09 (#)
Ranking: 2
How about a part 3,4,5 and possibly 6
Please???
Pretty Please????
With a cherry on top, and whipped cream, who doesnt like whipped cream.
Submitted by BobLobla (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:48:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"We looked at her alright. I mean, - we couldn't NOT look at her. Her presence was as jolting and inescapable as an explosion and in some ways twice as deadly.
We jumped in unison and then turned wide eyed towards her and met her gaze - one by one - as she searched our faces for the slightest sign of a smile, the smallest trace that we had been touched by the madness engulfing the planet. "
I LOVE this story, my only critique is that I almost felt these two paragraphs were in the wrong order, I think it might read better if they were reversed. It almost seems as if you say that you looked at her before you actually looked at her, I dont know, it just stuck with me.
I am offering this only as constructive criticism and please dont take any offence. I absolutley love your writing and find myself infatuated with this series. Please write more.
Submitted by GodLovesALittleLovin (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:46:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by MyNameIsTim (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:37:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
you're good.
Submitted by HadToBeDone (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:32:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Me love you long time!
Submitted by mystiamoon (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:30:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
very good
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:23:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
what Kre8trix said. And then some.
Submitted by BobLobla (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:22:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
How about a part 3,4,5 and possibly 6
Please???
Pretty Please????
With a cherry on top, and whipped cream, who doesnt like whipped cream.
Submitted by GodChicken (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:21:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Keep on truckin.
Submitted by Kre8rix (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:16:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You will not hear me complain about your presence here.
Carry on my friend.
Submitted by WhatTheHell (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:14:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked it dude... please continue
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:11:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Oh yeah.
There is a part 2.
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2005-05-06 16:10:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Fuck this site.
I know I said I was gonna take a break but I felt like I hadn't really taken the whole Manson Effect theme to where I should have.
Goddamn you Uber.