MY STORIES

     When I opened my eyes, I was staring up into the face of a furious brunette, holding a tire iron.      I tried to get up, but I was too woozy to stand.  Blood seeped into my left eye, my vision blurred.  I had the mother of all headaches, and the woman looked angry enough to clock my again, so I stayed put.

     "You f*cking bastard," she screamed through clenched teeth, "Did you think that I'd ever forget you, after everything you did to me."

     I tried to remember how I got here.  

     I had followed this angry harpy out to her car, after she had shot daggers at me across the restaurant, while I was eating my breakfast.  She would have been an attractive young woman, under different circumstances.  Her shoulder-length hair framed a pretty face, over full breasts that stretched out her Minnie Mouse t-shirt.  But rage had distorted her fine features.  Her furrowed forehead, squinty eyes, flaring nostrils, and curled lips, all spat hate in my direction.

     As I finished my bacon and eggs, sopping up the yolks with my toast, and sipping the last of my coffee, she just stared at me, seething.  I looked over my shoulder, hoping that she was staring at someone behind me, but no such luck.  I was definitely the target of her wrath.

     I was scratching my memory for any hints of a previous encounter, but no, I would have remembered this one.  How could I forget anyone that I had pissed off to this extent?

     She kicked me hard in the balls, and brought me back to the present.  I curled into a fetal position, and moaned loudly, as the pain in my groin magnified the pounding in my skull.

     "Don't you recognize me, you piece of sh*t?"  she spat.  "you raped me, smacked my head against your truck, and buried me in that muddy hole.  You thought I was dead!"  She kicked me, again, in my back, and in my ass.  I rolled into a ball, covering my head and face.

     "I didn't," I screamed back.  "It wasn't me.  I don't know what you're talking about."

     But the denials just lit the fires of her fury, and she slammed the tire iron down on my neck and head until the blackness returned.

     When I work again, the sun was setting.  I was stretched out on my back, my hands tied over my head to a tree, my legs tied to the rear axle of a black Ram pickup truck.  One eye was now crusted over with blood.  I licked my parched lips, tasting blood.  The pounding in my head had been joined by the agony of broken ribs, and the stabbing ache of a broken leg.

     "I see you've woken from your beauty sleep," the woman scowled.  "I was afraid I might have given you a concussion, and I so wanted you awake for the grand finale."

     "Why are you doing this to me?" I gasped.  "You've got the wrong guy.  I've never laid eyes on you.  I've never touched you.  I have no idea what you're talking about."

     "Sure you do, you lying asshole.  It was April 13th of last year, just outside of Little Rock, Arkansas.  I was a waitress at the TA truck stop, and you offered to buy me a drink, after I got off work.  It was pouring rain,  and thunder was rattling the windows, so you offered to drive us to the roadhouse in your Peterbilt."

     "While we were there, you must have put something in my drink.  The only thing that I remember, after we left the truck stop, was waking up in your sleeping booth, naked, with you on top of me, grunting like a pig.  When I screamed and shoved you off of me, you grabbed me around the neck and slammed my head and face against the truck cab, and then you dragged me outside and buried me in a hole.  I nearly drowned.  After you drove off, I managed to dig myself out, and crawl to the interstate, and another trucker spotted me at the side of the road and called for help.  I spent several weeks in a hospital, and then several months more, in therapy."

  "You can imagine my surprise, and my delight, in seeing you again today," she hissed, "and I am going to give you everything, f*cking everything, you deserve."

     When she mentions Arkansas, I wince, and swallow hard.  You see, I have a brother who lives in Arkansas, and identical twin brother.  We're alike in many ways, he and I, and we share certain proclivities.  He got sloppy with this one, and she survived to call the cops.  Hell. she survived to wreck vengeance.  She just got the wrong brother.

     If she buries my remains, or if the coyotes and other critters scatter them around, why, my brother may never be the wiser.  On the other hand, when the cops find my car, when they find my log-book and my souvenirs, sh*t yeah, when they find that girl in my trunk, they may include my dear brother in their investigations.  And when they discover that he drives a Peterbilt, they might put two and two together.

     I suspect, though, that this little lady is going to be hard to track down as their star witness, after tonight.  I chuckle softly, and shake my head.  

     As the sun sets behind the fields of corn, here in Iowa, I watch her crawl up into her pickup and gun the engine.  She sticks her arm out of the window, and gives me the finger.  Then she slams the pedal to the floor, throwing mud into the darkening sky.