Win A Rabbit
05-14-2008, 02:40 AM
I wrote this like 6 months ago, I just stumbled upon it and figured it could use some criticism, if you would be so kind. It's a little longer than most submissions on here, hopefully everyone doesn't tl;dr it. Be as harsh as you need to be, it's not the most poetic thing I've written.
I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of Taylor’s car moving away from the sun at whatever this hunk of **** tops out at, and I’m thinking maybe I’m the only one not wanting to spend the rest of my life here. And maybe everyone else is thinking I’m driving like an asshole. And maybe all of us are right. Taylor’s sitting in shotgun, listening to a foreign radio station and enjoying their language, but I can’t tell if it’s a good or bad enjoyment.
He tells me that it’s nice not having an accent because it’s a lot easier to not sound like a douchebag. I want to tell him that we’ve all got accents. Only deaf people are truly exempt from this.
I. decide that honking the horn at the bitch infront of us is a more worthwhile usage of energy.
Alice wakes up in the backseat and says I’m driving like an asshole. Ding. I want to tell her that her hair looks ridiculous the way it is right now and she’s not fooling anyone by stuffing her bra. I want to tell her to stop filling her face with make-up and to maybe take care of her nails instead of gluing **** onto them and passing it off as her own. As if anyone would look
at her from head to toe and think she-looks-like-someone-who-takes-pride-in-her-own-body-and-spends-the-minimal-time-required-to-upkeep-goddamn-fingernails.
She shifts her eyes to me in the rear-view mirror.
I settle for It’s-nice-to-see-you-too-Princess.
And as much as it kills me, I fake a smile.
My phone rings. It’s Josh. We’re a couple minutes away. Lie. We’ll be lucky if we get there in an hour. You never tell a drug dealer you’re going to be late, or he’ll tell you not to waste his time. Always always always you’re a couple minutes away. Because a-couple-minutes is doable.
An-hour-if-we-don’t-cause-a-gigantic-pile-up-and-kill-ourselves-and-everyone-in-the-vehicles-near-us
is not.
We almost flatten some grandpa in his blue piece of **** that apparently has it’s brakes on full-time and I’m feeling like maybe this is a bad idea.
Maybe I should start this over. Close my eyes and start fresh again.
I blink.
Nothing.
I blink harder and for longer.
Nothing.
Still the same horrible hair and horrible stuffjob in the rearview and the same apparently unaccented non-douchebag in shotgun and the same recycled air.
Josh will be calling back in a bit, so already I’m coming up with an excuse to why we’re still a couple minutes away. Never use a specific measure of time with a drug dealer. He’ll walk. Numbers are definitive. Numbers are measurable.
Alice is on the phone with someone, and I’m asking who is it. She mouths the words SHUT UP even though I’ve said ten words in the last hour and now she’s rambling on into the phone about how ridiculous my hair looks and I’m feeling the irony in this car has just hit a dangerous high.
Taylor’s flipping through the stations to find an even funnier accent, repeating the number of the previous one to himself so he’s got something to fall back on if there’s no more accents flying around the air in specific frequencies that this hunk of **** manages to translate into sound.
I need to roll down the window, but the second I do I get Alice’s bruised scabby fist accented by her fake nails in the back of my head and Taylor yelling a mixture of ****, asshole, and window over the fresh oxygen rushing in. I guess accents and telephone conversations about how much of a ****up I
am are more important than air.
Taylor is quiet for a minute and then says that I made him forget the radio station. I know what the number was but I’d rather listen to static so I tell him I forgot it too. We don’t bother asking Alice. Unless the radio station was
you-are-a-****ing-asshole-and-I-can’t-wait-until-we-get-to-Josh’s, then Alice is pretty ****ing useless right about now.
The radio and Alice’s chit chat chit chat and the anticipation of Josh’s phone call and the impossibly slow cars around us, this is all too much right now, and so I continue to blink.
Nothing.
At this point Alice is trying to talk over the rapidly changing radio
stations about how we made her sit in the backseat with all the garbage and old needles and when she says
we’ll-see-you-in-an-hour-if-I’m-not-face-deep-in-the-back-of-this-seat
Taylor turns off the radio and we both look at her. Taylor is turned around and I’m focusing solely on the rearview. Cars do not matter to me now.
I blink faster.
Nothing.
That-was-Josh.
Why-the-hell-didn’t-you-tell-me-it-was-him.
He’s-my-boyfriend.
Alice-he’s-not-your-boyfriend.
Tell-that-to-him-when-you-see-him.
He’s-looking-forward-to-talking-to-you-face-to-face.
I blink slower.
Nothing.
What-were-you-two-talking-about.
And my only response is the most disgusting, makeup-drenched smile I’ve seen in a rearview mirror before.
The past 6 days are going through my head faster than this car is moving and I’m sorting my recollections into two categories:
things-that-are-going-to-get-me-killed and things-that-aren’t. Luckily for me, the first column is shorter than the second. Unluckily for me, it only takes one to get killed.
She’s still smiling.
And I’m thinking.
And then I’m smiling.
And then she’s not smiling as much.
I turn on the radio to static and I call Josh.
And then I blink for what has to be a minute and the next thing I hear is Alice screaming from the backseat and then the radio is off and what I’m seeing is white and I’ve hit enough airbags to know that the white I’m seeing is not an airbag.
Airbags do not feel like relief.
Airbags do not feel like happiness.
Airbags do not feel like closing your eyes and opening them to start over.
I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of Taylor’s car moving away from the sun at whatever this hunk of **** tops out at, and I’m thinking maybe I’m the only one not wanting to spend the rest of my life here. And maybe everyone else is thinking I’m driving like an asshole. And maybe all of us are right. Taylor’s sitting in shotgun, listening to a foreign radio station and enjoying their language, but I can’t tell if it’s a good or bad enjoyment.
He tells me that it’s nice not having an accent because it’s a lot easier to not sound like a douchebag. I want to tell him that we’ve all got accents. Only deaf people are truly exempt from this.
I. decide that honking the horn at the bitch infront of us is a more worthwhile usage of energy.
Alice wakes up in the backseat and says I’m driving like an asshole. Ding. I want to tell her that her hair looks ridiculous the way it is right now and she’s not fooling anyone by stuffing her bra. I want to tell her to stop filling her face with make-up and to maybe take care of her nails instead of gluing **** onto them and passing it off as her own. As if anyone would look
at her from head to toe and think she-looks-like-someone-who-takes-pride-in-her-own-body-and-spends-the-minimal-time-required-to-upkeep-goddamn-fingernails.
She shifts her eyes to me in the rear-view mirror.
I settle for It’s-nice-to-see-you-too-Princess.
And as much as it kills me, I fake a smile.
My phone rings. It’s Josh. We’re a couple minutes away. Lie. We’ll be lucky if we get there in an hour. You never tell a drug dealer you’re going to be late, or he’ll tell you not to waste his time. Always always always you’re a couple minutes away. Because a-couple-minutes is doable.
An-hour-if-we-don’t-cause-a-gigantic-pile-up-and-kill-ourselves-and-everyone-in-the-vehicles-near-us
is not.
We almost flatten some grandpa in his blue piece of **** that apparently has it’s brakes on full-time and I’m feeling like maybe this is a bad idea.
Maybe I should start this over. Close my eyes and start fresh again.
I blink.
Nothing.
I blink harder and for longer.
Nothing.
Still the same horrible hair and horrible stuffjob in the rearview and the same apparently unaccented non-douchebag in shotgun and the same recycled air.
Josh will be calling back in a bit, so already I’m coming up with an excuse to why we’re still a couple minutes away. Never use a specific measure of time with a drug dealer. He’ll walk. Numbers are definitive. Numbers are measurable.
Alice is on the phone with someone, and I’m asking who is it. She mouths the words SHUT UP even though I’ve said ten words in the last hour and now she’s rambling on into the phone about how ridiculous my hair looks and I’m feeling the irony in this car has just hit a dangerous high.
Taylor’s flipping through the stations to find an even funnier accent, repeating the number of the previous one to himself so he’s got something to fall back on if there’s no more accents flying around the air in specific frequencies that this hunk of **** manages to translate into sound.
I need to roll down the window, but the second I do I get Alice’s bruised scabby fist accented by her fake nails in the back of my head and Taylor yelling a mixture of ****, asshole, and window over the fresh oxygen rushing in. I guess accents and telephone conversations about how much of a ****up I
am are more important than air.
Taylor is quiet for a minute and then says that I made him forget the radio station. I know what the number was but I’d rather listen to static so I tell him I forgot it too. We don’t bother asking Alice. Unless the radio station was
you-are-a-****ing-asshole-and-I-can’t-wait-until-we-get-to-Josh’s, then Alice is pretty ****ing useless right about now.
The radio and Alice’s chit chat chit chat and the anticipation of Josh’s phone call and the impossibly slow cars around us, this is all too much right now, and so I continue to blink.
Nothing.
At this point Alice is trying to talk over the rapidly changing radio
stations about how we made her sit in the backseat with all the garbage and old needles and when she says
we’ll-see-you-in-an-hour-if-I’m-not-face-deep-in-the-back-of-this-seat
Taylor turns off the radio and we both look at her. Taylor is turned around and I’m focusing solely on the rearview. Cars do not matter to me now.
I blink faster.
Nothing.
That-was-Josh.
Why-the-hell-didn’t-you-tell-me-it-was-him.
He’s-my-boyfriend.
Alice-he’s-not-your-boyfriend.
Tell-that-to-him-when-you-see-him.
He’s-looking-forward-to-talking-to-you-face-to-face.
I blink slower.
Nothing.
What-were-you-two-talking-about.
And my only response is the most disgusting, makeup-drenched smile I’ve seen in a rearview mirror before.
The past 6 days are going through my head faster than this car is moving and I’m sorting my recollections into two categories:
things-that-are-going-to-get-me-killed and things-that-aren’t. Luckily for me, the first column is shorter than the second. Unluckily for me, it only takes one to get killed.
She’s still smiling.
And I’m thinking.
And then I’m smiling.
And then she’s not smiling as much.
I turn on the radio to static and I call Josh.
And then I blink for what has to be a minute and the next thing I hear is Alice screaming from the backseat and then the radio is off and what I’m seeing is white and I’ve hit enough airbags to know that the white I’m seeing is not an airbag.
Airbags do not feel like relief.
Airbags do not feel like happiness.
Airbags do not feel like closing your eyes and opening them to start over.