I remember you. (1437 hits)
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Rating: 2 on 30 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Bigmike (View user info) at 2006-02-08 01:11:32 EST
"Hey, I remember you. Buffalo, right?"
Brad kept his eyes on the road as he spoke.
"I don't know, I kinda like driving on the thruway. I mean it's scenic, there are larger cities every seventy miles or so, and plenty of sights to see if you are looking properly."
Brad took a break in the conversation to take a nice long drag on his Camel Light. He purchased a carton the other day, and he had maybe three packs left. He had the cigarette in his left hand as he drove. Right hand on the steering wheel, left hand on the smoke. He drove this way often, and this trip he had been driving for a very long time. He reached up with his left hand to flick the head of ashes off of his cigarette. The ashes disappeared swiftly through the half inch opening between the window top and the door frame. He always drove with the window open just a little bit. It might have been part of his obsessive compulsive personality, but he would rather like to think it was because he liked the car full of fresh air. She didn't voice an opinion either way.
" For instance, look there honey. See that sign? Exit thirty three, Turning Stone Casino. That's the casino them there indians built a few years back. I was in there once. Yes indeed. Won me about three hundred dollars playing blackjack. That's when you could sit at a three dollar table and play all night for forty bucks. When it first opened it was a shack. Look at it now. Just look at it. New hotel. Professional quality golf courses. Hell, the place has got it all. You want to stop? No, I guess you don't. You're too young to gamble anyway."
Brad took another hit on his Camel, reached over to the door and pressed the window button. The electric window started to glide downward and when it reached a point that was satisfactory to him, he stopped it. He flicked his finished cigarette out into the night air and paused to take a deep breath. He loved the way the night air smelled in New York. It smelled like lilacs and cowshit.
"You know, my daddy raised me on a farm," he said as he pressed the window button again to bring the window up to within half an inch before stopping it. "Not far from here exactly. Cayuga. Yup, out in the middle of nowhere really. Used to take the boat out on Cayuga lake and slam the bass. My daddy was a good fisherman. Hauled in many a lunker in his time, he did. Used to take them home and have momma cook em up right. He used to let me clean them. It's where I learned to like it, fishing that is. You ever go fishing?"
Brad didn't wait for a response. He reached into the front pocket of his red flannel shirt and took out the pack of camels, deftly flicking them once so a cigarette popped up from the opening in the pack. Lifting the pack to his mouth, he gently removed the cigarette from it's resting place in the opening of the pack. He placed the pack back in his pocket and reached to the console of his Buick to find his lighter. One flick and the end of the cigarette lit red, increasing in its intensity as he dragged deeply. Blowing out the smoke, he continued.
"Sooner or later we'll come up on Herkimer. There's a quartz crystal mine there. You can actually claim a stake and dig to your hearts content there. Herkimer diamonds they are called. Just cheap quartz if you ask me. No fun in digging up worthless pieces of old glass if you ask me. I heard a friend of mine talk about it back in the day. He said that they discovered the quartz there when some old hillbilly busted open a boulder and let loose with a hundred or so of them stones. They laid out right there at his feet. Man, I bet he thought he was gonna be a rich man till he found out they was just crystals and not real diamonds."
Brad let out a chuckle at what he considered to be a fine joke. He took another hit off the smoke and then reached for the radio. He flicked for a few minutes through the stations that would come in and then decided that silence would be best for this portion of the ride. He drove for a good hour without saying a word, every once in awhile casually glancing over at his passenger. She didn't make much noise and he was surprised by this. Kids always made noise, especially when you didn't want them to.
Another fifteen minutes and two cigarettes went by before he spoke again.
"Hey, you see that sign there? That's Howe Caverns. Boy I always wanted to go there when I was a kid. There's a huge cave there underground. All sorts of passageways you can walk or go by boat. They say it's a constant sixty two degrees down there, summer or winter. That'd be something to see allright. It's only another forty miles or so, maybe we should stop."
Brad was quiet then for the amount of time it took him to drive that forty miles to the Howe Caverns exit. He was almost done with his pack of smokes and was looking to get another pack out of the glove box. His entire time of silence was spent thinking about where he was going and where he might end up. He didn't quite know yet, but fortune had a way of smiling, and he was hoping it would smile upon him.
He pulled the last camel out of the pack and lit it up. He crumpled the pack, pushed the window button down until the window was down all the way and threw the crumpled pack out. Then he reached over to the passenger side of the Buick and put his hand in her hair.
"It's time for you to go now honey. Too bad, I always liked blondes."
He lifted the head up off the seat, raised it to his face and gave it a quick kiss on bloodied lips before he tossed it out the window. He watched in his rear view mirror as it hopped and bounded behind his car, finally rolling off the side of the road into the ditch. He became disassociated with it as soon as it went out of sight.
"Goddamn she bounced good," he exclaimed to no one in particular. He hit the window button once more, being careful to stop it about a half inch before it closed completely. He did all this at exactly sixty eight miles per hour. Then he finished his cigarette.
After tossing the finished camel out of the window, and making sure that the window was back in its rightful place, he reached into the backseat and carefully pulled back the blanket that was spread out there. He grabbed a handful of hair, pulled it up over the back of the seat, and set it down gently in a mostly congealed puddle of blood. He examined her for a minute.
"Hey, I remember you. Rochester, right?"
User Reviews
Submitted by AlexorGM (user info) at 2006-02-10 22:14:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
you sicko. :)
Submitted by Aiya (user info) at 2006-02-09 22:02:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow....
I kind of figured the person in the passenger seat was dead, but I didn't think it was just a head.
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2006-02-09 11:27:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Oddly, I went through the thought of, she's dead...go bound and gagged....no just unconcious. Never thought of a severed head. The big kick in the ass is tying it all together with the additional heads.
How much head can you get in a backseat?
er.
nevermind.
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2006-02-09 07:39:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I've been in that park, too. In '84, my first gig out of school, I was Assistant GM in Little Falls with the Mets - we had 4 players from that team move on to the big leagues - and in '85, I moved to Newark to GM the Orioles NY-P League team.
Then, I had to get the hell out of baseball to go make some money but returned to it in 88-89 as Sales Director of the Red Wings in Roch.
The NY-P League these days is really the NY-P/Canada/Mass/PA League.
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2006-02-08 22:11:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Little Falls Mets.
Cool. NY Penn league teams are always so cool to me. I can remember sitting at Falcon park as a young lad watching the Auburn team play. Falcon park was always so neat to me. It was like a big league park to a little guy. I loved playing there when I was in Babe Ruth League.
We'd have alot to talk about, you and me Shlongy.
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2006-02-08 21:30:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 for Rochester- Shlongy's former home town.
+2 for the Herkimer reference- Shlongy used to run the minor league baseball team one town over, in Little Falls.
That = ummmm, well, +2.
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2006-02-08 19:59:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Just so that you all know. The first thought I had for this story was a guy driving down the thruway, having a conversation in a most casual way with a person in the passenger seat who, you find out later was bound with duct tape and had expired some time ago. I thought "Wouldn't that be creepy?" Make a nice short film. Then I thought, "What if he were talking to a severed head? Wouldn't that be even more creepy?" I thought it would. The idea of having even more severed heads in the backseat didn't come to me until the end when I thought, "What does he do now? Hey, he pulls out another of the several severed heads he has stored in the backseat that he has harvested from towns along his thruway route."
I love it when this stuff just comes out.
C'mon shandy, let's take a ride on the thruway. I'll drive.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-02-08 19:53:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Mike, you're sick, twisted, and perverted. We all love it!
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2006-02-08 19:43:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Method (user info) at 2006-02-08 19:32:57 (#)
Ranking: 2
<stretches> Damm it feels good to be a gangsta
I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack
Welcome back Method.
Submitted by Method (user info) at 2006-02-08 19:32:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
<stretches> Damm it feels good to be a gangsta
I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2006-02-08 19:27:44 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by shandythedog (user info) at 2006-02-08 17:31:19 (#)
Ranking: 0
i bet they all had sensitive ears, eh?????
I don't know, they didn't say.
Submitted by MickGinny (user info) at 2006-02-08 10:27:11 (#)
Ranking: 2
Ahhh, this reminds me of family summer vacations when I was a lad. Driving through upstate NY singing songs and drinking pop. With a backseat full of decapitated heads.
I've read this review three times now and have bust a gut laughing each time.
Submitted by shandythedog (user info) at 2006-02-08 17:31:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
i bet they all had sensitive ears, eh?????
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2006-02-08 14:04:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
sick
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2006-02-08 13:43:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
AHAHAHAHAHAHA!
WOOHOO!
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2006-02-08 12:40:31 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Mmmmmmm, bloody heads. Fun for the whole family, really.
Submitted by MickGinny (user info) at 2006-02-08 10:27:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Ahhh, this reminds me of family summer vacations when I was a lad. Driving through upstate NY singing songs and drinking pop. With a backseat full of decapitated heads.
Submitted by simple_catalyst (user info) at 2006-02-08 09:52:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
disturbing.
Submitted by MyNameIsTim (user info) at 2006-02-08 09:45:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
i've driven that stretch of rt90 at least 25 times, back and forth from boston to syracuse. nice driving up there.
Submitted by MyNameIsTim (user info) at 2006-02-08 09:41:22 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
time after time you were there. for, me
remember yesterday
walking hand in hand
love letters in the sand
I REMEMBER YOU
through the sleepless nights
and every endless day
i wanna hear you say
I REEEMEMBERRRRRR YOUUUUU OOHHHHHHHH
i really wish this post was set to some skid row
Submitted by Nellypaal (user info) at 2006-02-08 09:35:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Great story, but an even better sign.
The colours cheered me up no end.
Submitted by Agent_Smith (user info) at 2006-02-08 09:34:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
YOU GO TO HELL!
YOU GO TO HELL AND YOU DIE
I FUCKING HATE YOU!!!!
YOU SHIT +2'S, DON'T YOU? BROWN LITTLE FLOATING +2'S IN YOUR TOILET, HUH?
FUCK YOU JERKOFF
Submitted by MANICMOTHER (user info) at 2006-02-08 09:25:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Even a family man has to have a dark side. I like yours, it's evil.
Submitted by Badlands (user info) at 2006-02-08 08:58:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This was fantastic. Loved it!
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2006-02-08 08:23:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Woke up to the sound of pouring rain
The wind would whisper and I'd think of you
And all the tears you cried, that called my name
And when you needed me I came through
I paint a picture of the days gone by
When love went blind and you would make me see
I'd stare a lifetime into your eyes
So that I knew you were there for me
Time after time you were there for me
Remember yesterday - walking hand in hand
Love letters in the sand - I remember you
Through the sleepless nights and every endless day
I'd wanna hear you say - I remember you
We spend the summer with the top rolled down
Wished ever after would be like this
You said I love you babe, without a sound
I said I'd give my life for just one kiss
I'd live for your smile and die for your kiss
Remember yesterday - walking hand in hand
Love letters in the sand - I remember you
Through the sleepless nights and every endless day
I'd wanna hear you say - I remember you
We've had our share of hard times
But that's the price we paid
And through it all we kept the promise that we made
I swear you'll never be lonely
Woke up to the sound of pouring rain
Washed away a dream of you
But nothing else could ever take you away
'cause you'll always be my dream come true
Oh my darling, I love you
Remember yesterday - walking hand in hand
Love letters in the sand - I remember you
Through the sleepless nights and every endless day
I'd wanna hear you say - I remember you
Submitted by Awko (user info) at 2006-02-08 05:39:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Your kids must be fucked up from bedtime stories at your house.
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2006-02-08 04:49:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Shit.
Submitted by sparkle_pink (user info) at 2006-02-08 04:16:45 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I like all the colours in the picture.
Submitted by Davros (user info) at 2006-02-08 02:53:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I think that maybe shandy was right.
Good Stuff.
-Dave
Submitted by TigerLilly (user info) at 2006-02-08 01:38:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Dude...I have no words.
Submitted by Dreg (user info) at 2006-02-08 01:26:33 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
http://www.ubersite.com/m/83566