Stuck in the Driveway Part IV

It is Fiction Friday again. We are going to continue with our story from last week. 

Enjoy!

Stuck in the Driveway Part IV

At the same time that Bev met Mr. Darksuit, a man, somewhere in the same town, begins to awaken.

“ahh...oohh...whaa...where am?”

It felt as though an entire cotton field was growing in his mouth.

“i can't see.” The man tries to rub his eyes and realizes that his hands are bound behind his back. He tries to stretch his legs and feels a shooting pain in his wrists. “what the?” Someone has tied his feet together at the ankles and connected the two bindings with a strand of rope.

“what is going on?”

He can hear the muffled, indistinguishable voices of two men. A sliver of light appears in one of the walls, but the man doesn't see it. He only hears footsteps as they approach him.

An hour earlier

Stan is driving B.J.'s pale blue Plymouth Horizon. The smell has gotten so bad that he is now driving with his head out of the window. “I thought you were supposed to get used to smells the longer you were around them,” he said to himself. Stan's hair was matted to his face from the rain. The rain was more tolerable than the stench emanating from the Horizon. At least with his head hanging out of the window, he didn't feel the urge to retch. “Ugh, he is so much like his dad, it isn't even funny.”

Stan was beginning to believe he might actually make it in time to meet the investors. That was when the car started to lurch and bounce. “no, No, NO!” The engine dies. He gets out of the car and raises the hood. It is nothing more than a obligatory hood raise. The kind of thing that motorists who breakdown feel that they should do – hoping that it is something easily fixed. He grabs the battery cables to see if they are loose, They are secure. He touches a couple of other wires, comes close to burning his hand on the radiator cap; but, deep in his heart he knows that there is nothing that he can do to fix it anyhow. B.J. was just like his old man in many ways, and he has Bob's inability to fix anything mechanical. As a result, there was no way that he was going to have tools in the car. Stan got back in to the car and tried the ignition. “Come on, Blue Beauty. Don't fail me now.” The car just whined back him – wah na na na, wha na na na. She wanted to start; but couldn't. Stan looked down and realized why. Blue Beauty was out of gas. “Great! This day just keeps getting better and better.”

“You have two choices Stan,” he says to himself. “You can go down Pleasantville Avenue out to Route 73 and walk the three and half miles to the business, or you can go three blocks east and then cut through the Sherwood Forest and be at Brogan's in a half hour.” The path through Sherwood Forest was one he knew well. Until a few months ago, he was an avid runner, and Stan would often run to work. Things had changed since his last run, and he hadn't been jogging since early April. “Well, Stan my boy, you have been wanting to get back to jogging. Now is as good a time as any. Especially,” he said defaltedly, “if you want to save the business.” He grabbed his backpack, Stan never could bring himself to carry a brief case, and started to jog.

Stan was two blocks into his journey when his feet started to ache. “Ack, these wing-tips were not meant for running,” he moaned. He stopped to take his shoes and socks off, and as Stan was putting his shoes and socks into his backpack, he heard a gravely voice.

“What are you doing boy?” Jasper McCletus shouted. Jasper called anyone younger than him boy, and that accounted for just about everyone in town except for his own brother. The two of them were miserable pair.

“Just going for a jog Mr. McCletus.”

“In your bare feet?”

“It's a long story Mr. McCletus and I am already running late for an appointment,” and Stan started running again.
“Is that supposed to be some kind of pun?” But, Stan didn't answer, he just kept running. “I don't know what's wrong with people. No one knows how to show someone common courtesy anymore,” Japser grumbled.

Stan had run the last block and was standing at the mouth of the trail. “Maybe going barefoot wasn't such a bright idea.” He resigned himself to continuing on when saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned just in time to see the three figures running at him. They were on top of him before he could react, the world went dark, and Stan's day got a little worse.

To be continued...

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