New Short Story (Part 1)
Hello, hello everybody! You all look lovely today (I assume). I hope you're all having a pleasant day. Let's get started with this blog, shall we?
It's come to my attention that I haven't shared a story with you guys in a while. Isn't that selfish of me? I do have another one up my sleeve that I'm willing to throw out to the world like a bouquet of mediocre flowers. But first, a little backstory on this one.
Two winters ago I was at work. There was some nasty ice coming to Missouri. So bad, in fact, that my supervisors were actually allowing people to leave work early to beat the ice before it forms on the roads and traffic starts to build up. A lot of people left, but not ol' hardworking Me. No, I wanted to make that extra money, so I decided to roll the dice and keep working.
At the end of the work day I walked outside with my collar turned up to shield myself from the biting wind. I speed-walked to my car, as fast as I could since the parking lot had a thin layer of ice on it, because I was only wearing shorts for pants. It gets really hot in that warehouse when your job is running around for eight hours. I had heard already that the highway was filled with cars idled bumper to bumper. Someone told me that the back road was more clear, and so that's where I'd I go. I had no idea how to get home from that road, but I figured if I needed to I could get my phone out and check the GPS.
Before I start telling the entire story, I'll skip to the end: I was stranded in someone's driveway for about seven hours and almost froze before I was able to continue driving. I have no idea how this story holds up; I wrote it a week or two after the incident, so it might be garbage, but read it anyway and tell me what you think of it. I may even go back through it and make some edits after I post it.
I'm also going to post the story in parts because it is a lengthy one. Please enjoy ... or don't. I can't stop you from having opinions.
“Is this day over yet?” I find myself asking this a lot during work, especially when we’re on overtime. I’ve been in this warehouse since 4:00 A.M. pulling pallets full of miscellaneous products down from their shelves and putting them back up again with our Jungheinrich stand-up forklift (pronounced like “yung-hine-rick” because Germany has a funny language). I don’t mind the morning shift that much, usually. Overtime can really put a damper on things, however; and today has not been fun day for me. Almost nine hours twisting my neck back to painful angles so that I can see where the pallets are going to be placed. My feet aching, my neck contorted, and my eyelids feel magnetized to each other. Not to mention that in the winter this warehouse drops to about 30 degrees. Not a fun day at all.
I’m pulling through though because it’s Friday which means that after work I can go home, snuggle up with my Australian Shephard Aspen, and sleep for hours, which I really need right now. Bringing empty pallets to the front of the warehouse with the forklift I can see my supervisor William walking In from the parking lot. He’s wearing a large and fluffy camo coat and thick black gloves on his hands. He rubs his gloved hands together and calls, “Alright everybody! Gather round here for just a sec!” All of the warehouse employees, including me, turned toward William and groggily shuffled toward him like a horde of zombies. William removed his gloves and pulled back the hood on his head, “Okay, so I just got back from looking out in the parking lot, and it looks pretty slick out there. The rain is still falling and it’ll probably get worse by the time we leave today, so everyone just please drive slow and be very careful.” He walked through the crowd of employees and into the breakroom to hang up his coat with everyone else’s.
I pulled the cellphone out of my pocket and looked at the time, 1:13PM. I turned toward my friend Kyle who was also checking the time on his own phone. “We’ve only got about an hour left.” I showed him the digital clock on my phone’s screen and asked, “How much worse could it get?”
“I don’t know.” He said shrugging his shoulders, “Jessie told me at break when he went out there to smoke the sidewalk was almost completely iced over.” We both had looks of nonchalant worry and departed back to our work. Kyle walked back to his computer to find empty locations for me to put pallets on. I dragged my feet as slowly as I could down the long aisle of shelves toward the forklift. I reached for my phone again and looked at the weather app before starting work again. It showed a cluster of dark gray clouds with small lines falling from beneath them indicating slight rain. The temperature was 23 degrees. I whispered to myself, “Just one more hour.”
The hour that lasted an eternity. That is what the last hour of every workday is known as by most people I’m sure. “We did it!” yelled Kyle as we walked out the doors to the parking lot. “We actually survived all the way to 2:30!” We looked around to see the hell that Mother Nature broke loose all over the parking lot. The rain had stopped, but it looked like the clouds were there to stay. The blacktop was a blurry mirror trying to reflect what little light it could. The whole place looked like the definition of the word gloomy. Everyone took small, careful steps to their cars. I could hear talk from the other workers around me. “The highways moving as slow as snails or completely closed. My husband just called me.”
“Screw that, I’ll just take the back roads home. My truck oughta be fine.”
I stepped gingerly down the declined sidewalk onto the parking lot. There were a few slips and falls by some of the more hurried people. Halfway to my car an elderly man, Dennis Brutes, was walking in front of me and stopped. He slowly shifted in a circle to face me and warned, “Watch your step up here. I almost busted my ass on this patch of ice behind me.” He pointed to a small section of ice about fifteen feet ahead of me. I stopped to spot the glistening asphalt he was showing me and tried to find a way around it. After a few seconds my route was planned and I took my first step.
“OH SHIT!” I screamed as I was no longer in control of my feet while they slid across the pavement. I threw my arms out for balance like a tight rope walker and twisted my spine to keep from toppling over. My ice skating routine was finally over and all was still. I was frozen like some strange statue with my arms still reaching out in front of me and my upper body hunched over. I stood there for close to thirty seconds like I was anticipating an aftershock. Nobody laughed for the fear of losing their balance as well.
After walking, much more cautious than before, to my gray Buick Century I let out an irritated sigh as I noticed it was cloaked in a blanket of ice. After tearing the frozen door open with more force than needed I grabbed the St. Louis Blues ice scraper out of the pocket behind the driver seat and proceeded to scrape my car free from its icy prison. Looking around I saw that this was a mass breakout and everybody else was doing the same to their own cars. Finally, the Buick was back in drivable order and I slumped inside, cranked up the heat, and turned up the radio to prepare for the ride home.
The first forty feet out of the company parking lot was the easy part, maintenance had been periodically salting it since the rain started, but now I was getting closer to the fork in the road that would completely decide my trip. I could turn right and take the exit onto interstate 70, or I could try my luck on the back roads. The interstate is what I always take since it bypasses all of the humdrum neighborhoods and cuts straight back to my apartment. Thinking back to the conversations about how I-70 was jammed packed with drivers either too afraid or too inept to drive on the slick roadway and now that I can see the interstate it looked like my coworkers were underselling it. I stretched my head inches from the windshield to observe the full view of the traffic. Cars lined up bumper to bumper like a giant conga line about a mile and a half down the road both ways, or at least that’s as far as I could tell. “Screw that, like I want to get home in 3 hours.” I chuckled to myself, “I’d rather be home now and not stuck in traffic.” As the Buick crawled toward the stop sign I let the left blinker flash a few times before turning away from that inevitable nightmare of a trip.
I had never actually taken the back road to my apartment before, but according to my old roommate, who used to work at the warehouse before finding a better paying job, it’s a much shorter trip than the highway. I wasn’t sure on the exact route home, but I knew I was looking for some bridge three miles down the road and on the left. I think the name of the bridge was Gilleps Bridge, or was it Gillespie? It should take me to a neighborhood close to mine. Didn’t seem too difficult. I glanced at my phone to check its battery. A bar shaped like a battery was filled halfway with green and the number next to it read 53%. “Okay that’s not bad,” I put the phone in the cup holder, “as long as the stupid thing doesn’t drop to nothing out of nowhere and just shut off.” It’s notorious for doing that.
I wasn’t the only person who saw the advantages of avoiding the interstate mess, and I was still close enough to see the warehouse when I found myself in a small line of vehicles slowly meandering down the icy road. I slowed behind a small blue pickup with a license plate reading JMS BND. “Not Likely.” I snickered at my own stupidity before getting my head ready for the mindful drive. I perked up and went into a driving position that would make even the nitpickiest instructor proud. I even turned off the radio. My eyes were glued to the rear tires of the truck skimming ahead of me. I turned my wheels to mimic his every move. The tension in the air was potent and my breathing was silent and sharp. “Focus, focus, focus…” I repeated my mantra as our line drifted back and forth from one side of the road to the other. Slow and steady wins the race and I was in no hurry. “FOcus, FOCus, FOCUs…” the words were coming out more fiercely as I entered the first right turn. It was sloped down to the right just a tad. There were already cars displayed on the side of the road. I went to the left of the road and hugged the shoulder as much as I could to make it through the devilish turn.
Without warning halfway into the turn I saw a lime green minivan two cars up slide out of line and fall down the slope and into the small ditch. It rocked violently back and forth a few times from the sudden stop. Our posse stopped at once. I could see the drivers leaning over their seats to watch over their fallen ally. Seconds later the march continued again. It wasn’t long before I saw other vehicles start giving out from the angle of the road. When the road started to straighten a little near the end of the turn I let go of the safe shoulder I was straddling. Wrong move. Almost immediately my back tires skid to the right and I was forced to step heavily on the brake. Now, I was stuck in the middle of the road. I knew that any move I made would send me closer to that ditch. Lucky for me I realized that I was already halfway down the road so when I slid it would only be a slow descent into the ditch and then I could just drive on from there, but the problem was the great white truck already sitting in my drop zone. I wasn’t really in the mood to get into a collision, but there was no choice. I lifted my foot off the brake and my car was now in an immediate drop down the road. I sluggishly, but nonetheless scarily, approached the truck. Our bumpers collided first with a small clank and then the fronts closed in like a mousetrap. It wasn’t a hard hit at all. There probably wasn’t any damage, but the truck’s owner, an older looking man, must not have seen me coming because he almost jumped clear out of his window when it all happened.
It's come to my attention that I haven't shared a story with you guys in a while. Isn't that selfish of me? I do have another one up my sleeve that I'm willing to throw out to the world like a bouquet of mediocre flowers. But first, a little backstory on this one.
Two winters ago I was at work. There was some nasty ice coming to Missouri. So bad, in fact, that my supervisors were actually allowing people to leave work early to beat the ice before it forms on the roads and traffic starts to build up. A lot of people left, but not ol' hardworking Me. No, I wanted to make that extra money, so I decided to roll the dice and keep working.
At the end of the work day I walked outside with my collar turned up to shield myself from the biting wind. I speed-walked to my car, as fast as I could since the parking lot had a thin layer of ice on it, because I was only wearing shorts for pants. It gets really hot in that warehouse when your job is running around for eight hours. I had heard already that the highway was filled with cars idled bumper to bumper. Someone told me that the back road was more clear, and so that's where I'd I go. I had no idea how to get home from that road, but I figured if I needed to I could get my phone out and check the GPS.
Before I start telling the entire story, I'll skip to the end: I was stranded in someone's driveway for about seven hours and almost froze before I was able to continue driving. I have no idea how this story holds up; I wrote it a week or two after the incident, so it might be garbage, but read it anyway and tell me what you think of it. I may even go back through it and make some edits after I post it.
I'm also going to post the story in parts because it is a lengthy one. Please enjoy ... or don't. I can't stop you from having opinions.
The Back Road (Part 1)
“Is this day over yet?” I find myself asking this a lot during work, especially when we’re on overtime. I’ve been in this warehouse since 4:00 A.M. pulling pallets full of miscellaneous products down from their shelves and putting them back up again with our Jungheinrich stand-up forklift (pronounced like “yung-hine-rick” because Germany has a funny language). I don’t mind the morning shift that much, usually. Overtime can really put a damper on things, however; and today has not been fun day for me. Almost nine hours twisting my neck back to painful angles so that I can see where the pallets are going to be placed. My feet aching, my neck contorted, and my eyelids feel magnetized to each other. Not to mention that in the winter this warehouse drops to about 30 degrees. Not a fun day at all.
I’m pulling through though because it’s Friday which means that after work I can go home, snuggle up with my Australian Shephard Aspen, and sleep for hours, which I really need right now. Bringing empty pallets to the front of the warehouse with the forklift I can see my supervisor William walking In from the parking lot. He’s wearing a large and fluffy camo coat and thick black gloves on his hands. He rubs his gloved hands together and calls, “Alright everybody! Gather round here for just a sec!” All of the warehouse employees, including me, turned toward William and groggily shuffled toward him like a horde of zombies. William removed his gloves and pulled back the hood on his head, “Okay, so I just got back from looking out in the parking lot, and it looks pretty slick out there. The rain is still falling and it’ll probably get worse by the time we leave today, so everyone just please drive slow and be very careful.” He walked through the crowd of employees and into the breakroom to hang up his coat with everyone else’s.
I pulled the cellphone out of my pocket and looked at the time, 1:13PM. I turned toward my friend Kyle who was also checking the time on his own phone. “We’ve only got about an hour left.” I showed him the digital clock on my phone’s screen and asked, “How much worse could it get?”
“I don’t know.” He said shrugging his shoulders, “Jessie told me at break when he went out there to smoke the sidewalk was almost completely iced over.” We both had looks of nonchalant worry and departed back to our work. Kyle walked back to his computer to find empty locations for me to put pallets on. I dragged my feet as slowly as I could down the long aisle of shelves toward the forklift. I reached for my phone again and looked at the weather app before starting work again. It showed a cluster of dark gray clouds with small lines falling from beneath them indicating slight rain. The temperature was 23 degrees. I whispered to myself, “Just one more hour.”
The hour that lasted an eternity. That is what the last hour of every workday is known as by most people I’m sure. “We did it!” yelled Kyle as we walked out the doors to the parking lot. “We actually survived all the way to 2:30!” We looked around to see the hell that Mother Nature broke loose all over the parking lot. The rain had stopped, but it looked like the clouds were there to stay. The blacktop was a blurry mirror trying to reflect what little light it could. The whole place looked like the definition of the word gloomy. Everyone took small, careful steps to their cars. I could hear talk from the other workers around me. “The highways moving as slow as snails or completely closed. My husband just called me.”
“Screw that, I’ll just take the back roads home. My truck oughta be fine.”
I stepped gingerly down the declined sidewalk onto the parking lot. There were a few slips and falls by some of the more hurried people. Halfway to my car an elderly man, Dennis Brutes, was walking in front of me and stopped. He slowly shifted in a circle to face me and warned, “Watch your step up here. I almost busted my ass on this patch of ice behind me.” He pointed to a small section of ice about fifteen feet ahead of me. I stopped to spot the glistening asphalt he was showing me and tried to find a way around it. After a few seconds my route was planned and I took my first step.
“OH SHIT!” I screamed as I was no longer in control of my feet while they slid across the pavement. I threw my arms out for balance like a tight rope walker and twisted my spine to keep from toppling over. My ice skating routine was finally over and all was still. I was frozen like some strange statue with my arms still reaching out in front of me and my upper body hunched over. I stood there for close to thirty seconds like I was anticipating an aftershock. Nobody laughed for the fear of losing their balance as well.
After walking, much more cautious than before, to my gray Buick Century I let out an irritated sigh as I noticed it was cloaked in a blanket of ice. After tearing the frozen door open with more force than needed I grabbed the St. Louis Blues ice scraper out of the pocket behind the driver seat and proceeded to scrape my car free from its icy prison. Looking around I saw that this was a mass breakout and everybody else was doing the same to their own cars. Finally, the Buick was back in drivable order and I slumped inside, cranked up the heat, and turned up the radio to prepare for the ride home.
The first forty feet out of the company parking lot was the easy part, maintenance had been periodically salting it since the rain started, but now I was getting closer to the fork in the road that would completely decide my trip. I could turn right and take the exit onto interstate 70, or I could try my luck on the back roads. The interstate is what I always take since it bypasses all of the humdrum neighborhoods and cuts straight back to my apartment. Thinking back to the conversations about how I-70 was jammed packed with drivers either too afraid or too inept to drive on the slick roadway and now that I can see the interstate it looked like my coworkers were underselling it. I stretched my head inches from the windshield to observe the full view of the traffic. Cars lined up bumper to bumper like a giant conga line about a mile and a half down the road both ways, or at least that’s as far as I could tell. “Screw that, like I want to get home in 3 hours.” I chuckled to myself, “I’d rather be home now and not stuck in traffic.” As the Buick crawled toward the stop sign I let the left blinker flash a few times before turning away from that inevitable nightmare of a trip.
I had never actually taken the back road to my apartment before, but according to my old roommate, who used to work at the warehouse before finding a better paying job, it’s a much shorter trip than the highway. I wasn’t sure on the exact route home, but I knew I was looking for some bridge three miles down the road and on the left. I think the name of the bridge was Gilleps Bridge, or was it Gillespie? It should take me to a neighborhood close to mine. Didn’t seem too difficult. I glanced at my phone to check its battery. A bar shaped like a battery was filled halfway with green and the number next to it read 53%. “Okay that’s not bad,” I put the phone in the cup holder, “as long as the stupid thing doesn’t drop to nothing out of nowhere and just shut off.” It’s notorious for doing that.
I wasn’t the only person who saw the advantages of avoiding the interstate mess, and I was still close enough to see the warehouse when I found myself in a small line of vehicles slowly meandering down the icy road. I slowed behind a small blue pickup with a license plate reading JMS BND. “Not Likely.” I snickered at my own stupidity before getting my head ready for the mindful drive. I perked up and went into a driving position that would make even the nitpickiest instructor proud. I even turned off the radio. My eyes were glued to the rear tires of the truck skimming ahead of me. I turned my wheels to mimic his every move. The tension in the air was potent and my breathing was silent and sharp. “Focus, focus, focus…” I repeated my mantra as our line drifted back and forth from one side of the road to the other. Slow and steady wins the race and I was in no hurry. “FOcus, FOCus, FOCUs…” the words were coming out more fiercely as I entered the first right turn. It was sloped down to the right just a tad. There were already cars displayed on the side of the road. I went to the left of the road and hugged the shoulder as much as I could to make it through the devilish turn.
Without warning halfway into the turn I saw a lime green minivan two cars up slide out of line and fall down the slope and into the small ditch. It rocked violently back and forth a few times from the sudden stop. Our posse stopped at once. I could see the drivers leaning over their seats to watch over their fallen ally. Seconds later the march continued again. It wasn’t long before I saw other vehicles start giving out from the angle of the road. When the road started to straighten a little near the end of the turn I let go of the safe shoulder I was straddling. Wrong move. Almost immediately my back tires skid to the right and I was forced to step heavily on the brake. Now, I was stuck in the middle of the road. I knew that any move I made would send me closer to that ditch. Lucky for me I realized that I was already halfway down the road so when I slid it would only be a slow descent into the ditch and then I could just drive on from there, but the problem was the great white truck already sitting in my drop zone. I wasn’t really in the mood to get into a collision, but there was no choice. I lifted my foot off the brake and my car was now in an immediate drop down the road. I sluggishly, but nonetheless scarily, approached the truck. Our bumpers collided first with a small clank and then the fronts closed in like a mousetrap. It wasn’t a hard hit at all. There probably wasn’t any damage, but the truck’s owner, an older looking man, must not have seen me coming because he almost jumped clear out of his window when it all happened.
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